Skulls III
Film released on video/DVD by Universal 2003.03.09
No score soundtrack available
For soundclips of music by Douglas Romayne Stevens, see
http://www.bleujean.com/drs.html
BRIEF REVIEW
In the review of Skulls II, Bluntinstrument advised caution in being typecast in the teen genres of film scoring. Recent films have seen him mix teen with more general family oriented fare. Skulls III, though, is a bit of an oddity, having no fewer than three known composers. It is thus impossible to add soundclips of Beck's music, although Douglas Romayne Stevens' representatives have helpfully supplied some for him. The film itself is a somewhat tiring re-tread of the first two films, but the twist is that now the hero is a heroine, played by the ever gorificusness Clare Kramer, who played the big bad God in Buffy's fifth season (and even starred in Bring it on too). J. Miles Dale's film is at least more entertaining than the first sequal, since it appears to know where to maintain suspense and where to cut to the chase, but it still suffers from deja vu and budget cramps. Now for the musical background:
Television music is rife with ghost writers and scoring assistants who contribute or adapt cues. This is a fact of life in an industry that favours "names" and shows that run for 22 tightly scheduled episodes a year. Films can often suffer from related fates, where orchestrators are occasionally hinted at having creative input. Skulls III is another case entirely. In Beck's own words: "I dislike hiring ghostwriters because I end up being more of a manager than a composer. So I swore off it years ago. I still have my assistant write source cues once in a while but I don't farm out whole chunks of scores these days. Except for Skulls 3, that is. In this case a friend of mine (the guy who gave me my first real TV job) got his first chance directing a feature... I was simply too busy to give the project the time it needed, and he was OK with me getting some help." DRS has a long association with CB, since he was a former assistant, and is now creaking through from uncredited to credited television work and now into film. Mark Killian is a longterm friend of CB's, also the other half of their band Ape Quartet. Furthermore, Beck confirms that there were two other uncredited composers who also contributed cues, one of which is credited on imdb.com as Thomas Bergersen. So far the only detail about specific contribution comes from DRS, who wrote ca.15 minutes of the ca.60 minute score.
Webmaster's note: No fuller feature is planned for this score.
Full music credits