John Frizzell's latest effort in the horror realm involves the malevolent spirit of the historic Hungarian Countess Erszebeth Bathory, who somehow curses a new video game and has players die just like their online counterparts. It's a novel concept, although it's a bit of a variation on Herschell Gordon Lewis' Wizard of Gore (1970), where audience participants suddenly retrograde to the trauma they 'magically' survived after attenting a ghoulish (and stomach-turning) magic show.

The poster art for Stay Alive deliberately evokes the ad campaign for Hostel, Eli Roth's R-rated wallow into torture-porn, and while the tone of each film is markedly different, like Hostel, Stay Alive benefits from an excellent, atmospheric score.

Unlike Nathan Barr's witty Hostel, Frizzell plays the horror and tragedy with a straight face, and as with his prior scores - particularly the music for Dark Castle entries like Ghost Ship and Thir13en Ghosts - he dips into modern experimental techniques. That's one of the core benefits in scoring a horror film, though it helps if the filmmakers and studio are open to a more avant garde approach to scaring an audience.

Frizzell's score has been dubbed as aleatoric - a term that has actually several meanings, as when applied to composition, actual performance by the musicians, or electronic music. When referring to the performance aspect, aleatorical refers to specified areas wherein the musician is given a choice of components to play; sometimes in what order or what sections, as outlined by the composer. It's an approach not dissimilar to jazz, where musicians are allowed to improvise, provided it sticks within a structure agreed upon by the composer and/or fellow musicians.

When referring to aleatoric electronica, the musical material is created by random combinations of units or components, which themselves can be interrupted by the composer to achieve differing results - an approach that sounds quite similar to the various sounds and methods DJs use to improvise and extend material, although the final piece simultaneously guides and feeds off the energy from dancers.

In Frizzell's hands, the theory was applied to differing performances - in/out of tune, different keys - of specific cues that were mixed with a straight version of the score, plus electronic enhancements and additional compositions. The result is, well, a horror score with an experimental edge; music that seems to regularly waver to reflect the film's core hook about players whose realities are blurring with the fantastical digital world of a video game.

It's a clever approach that makes for an engaging album, available as part of a limited 1,000 disc run from new label Nicabella Records. Frizzell's music maintains a brisk flow, as pulsing synth beats and strings blend with orchestral passages for the action sequences, and mournful cues like "Loomi's Funeral" and "Hutch's Story" offer tender material, with piano and string solos. (Frizzell's use of chamber-styled strings has always been elegant, and closing cues like "Final Encounter" give the film and its doomed characters some emotional depth.)

"Meet the Counters" is one of the more ideal examples of the ambient aural terrains that straddle the film's reality/fantasy realms, whereas cues like "End of October" have specific bars being cross-blended with digital and orchestral performances, giving the impression that a walk on a cement sidewalk might yield an illusory slab, through which the walker will tumble, and disappear.

The album's running time is fairly brief - a classic dilemma with exploitation shockers padded with songs, and more songs for the end credit crawl - but Stay Alive is worth examining for Frizzell's unique and fun approach.

© 2006 Mark R. Hasan