The American soundtrack for BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF
© 2001 Virgin

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BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF

While Sam Raimi's gone on to bigger things, Joseph LoDuca has somehow never quite left his world, which certainly isn't for a lack of projects that the director has given him. LoDuca did even better with his scores for the two EVIL DEAD sequels, the last one a swashbuckling zombie score worthy of Eric Wolfgang Korngold. However, it was the curse of the low-budget composer that thwarted LoDuca from scoring DARKMAN and THE QUICK AND THE DEAD for Raimi, two films that would have surely given him a Hollywood brand name if the town could have just seen beyond LoDuca's resume. But at least the years that he's spent scoring the Raimi-produced shows XENA and HERCULES have let the composer delve into world music and period adventure. Now LoDuca's TV penance pays off handsomely with his new score to BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF, a full-blooded score that just might give LoDuca the break he needs to finally take his rightful place in the big leagues.

BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF wants you to know it's a class act. Sure it's got martial arts, an iron-plated beast and more than a bit of the old ultra-violence. But this is French film, meaning that these exploitation elements are grafted into a subtitled costume drama. Imagine LA NUIT DE VARENNES meeting FISTS OF FURY by way of METALBEAST and you get the crazy-quilt score that LoDuca had to deliver. And he does so with amazing fluidity. LoDuca's music hits just about every note, from the classical chamber music of 1765 France to the ethnic flutes and voices of its kung fu American Indian. The monster prowls a landscape of Gypsy and African percussion, while the nefarious villains are right at home with brooding orchestrations. Even though much of the score's strings are synthesized, the strange beauty of LoDuca's music turns what could have been a budgetary disadvantage into yet another example of the score's unearthly beauty. There's a constant sense of inventiveness, the sense of a composer charting some weird, yet wondrous realm of darkness.

I can't imagine how much music LoDuca has written for all things Raimi. What made the scores good is that LoDuca did more than churn them out. And BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF shows just how well he has run with what he's learned among the zombies and barbarians. Great themes, a sense of epic adventure, the talent for blending together ethnic music, and a spellbinding sense of the uncanny -- all are on display in this winning BROTHERHOOD.

Even if they do love Jerry Lewis, the French have also given Joseph LoDuca the opportunity to score a film he's deserved for a long time. So maybe the French do have taste after all.