Mono-thematic dread dashed as the boot trembled suddenly becoming... beastly, innocent, marauding, mysterious, never indulgent. Transylvania Castle black in the moon was by day a scarlet flake. 

Impressively, John Williams dances ignorant of the Hammer/Gothic waltz. He looked to his own clockwork demon, found a theme, gave it shape, watered it with blood and called it Dracula.

Without faces, what can the soundtrack achieve? Music encompasses by bringing together sweat, soul, muscles, fibres of consciousness and the unreachable riddle. The theme can be like a solar system: dire, thoughtful, exponential, intimate, crass, simplistic, or a personal talisman made universal. For there are as many beats in the heart as shells in the ocean.

What made this curtain of music lift? From tooth to neck, Williams negates the Transylvania flux. His tone scares away the timid, the familiar, the known lightness of spaces. It's a cavernous boom, frothing on all sides, each surface intangible. 

He chances a rush into stimulating embrace, the receiver holding the rabid out of sight. Firmness from which a brow might escape recognition. Yet the great vampire does not weep, although a symphony could make tears for him. Nor does he yearn for the innocent flesh denied him on the darkest noon. Sanctuary belongs to time, a future anonymous, the past broken into fullest fragments. They whisper of vampiric holdings; breath before kiss and rush of claret upon a drought. Such lonely surprises. 

The monster cannot speak, yet his tormented soul borrows the daylight as insomnia plagues a dream. Primarily, Williams makes good on the dust, and the unlit veil which must seem pale as a red iris. 

Overall, Dracula graduates the mystical school of atmospheric candle-making via a four star appreciation.