Lambro of the Living Dead

By: Randall D. Larson
Date: Thursday, March 16, 2006

THIS WEEK'S RECOMMENDATIONS

Watching the film, there is little to relish about 1973's CRYPT OF THE LIVING DEAD, which was released in England as VAMPIRE WOMAN and may be found on DVD sales bins as YOUNG HANNAH: QUEEN OF THE VAMPIRES. It's a mishmash of a Spanish horror movie filmed in Turkey that was taken over by an American company which refilmed a new ending in Malibu and tried to make sense out of the whole thing with limited success. CRYPT had to do with a group of people on a remote Turkish island who awake the last of the vampires, Hannah, who had been buried there. Aside from a poetically nightmarish concluding montage and some wonderfully atmospheric photography, the film had little visual style, absolutely zero suspense, and virtually no sensible narrative. However what it did have it had in a big way and that's what's being released on CD by Perseverance Records next week (PRD 009) its stunningly horrific musical score by Philip Lambro. One of only a handful of scores that Lambro composed for Hollywood (his appeal for tinseltown waned after the big score he composed for Roman Polanski's CHINATOWN was summarily rejected by the studio; its replacement provided Jerry Goldsmith with one of his finest moments), CRYPT is a mesmerizingly chilling, aggressively atonal score that creates some of the most haunting and disturbingly frightening sounds you'll ever hear in any horror film. I had the opportunity to write the notes for this CD release but my enthusiasm for the score goes far beyond that momentary association; I'm certainly getting no commission so my recommendation is not beholding to that assignment either. But I am continuously impressed with how effective this score is in establishing such a potent feeling of dread and discomfort and imagining how this score could have supported a film that was more worthy of its character. Lambro, whose score for MURPH THE SURF, a completely different jazz-based approach, will soon be released by Perseverance also, said that he was so struck by the film's utter lack of anything suspenseful that he took it upon himself to create that mood from scratch. He did so by developing a musical fabric that joins together an assortment of carefully stitched sound textures that, using sound design rather than melodies, create the motifs that create the score. Listening to the CD isn't a totally fun experience, but it's an amazing example of the power of music to, truly and ruthlessly entirely on its own, develop a sensation of suspense and foreboding and true cinematic horror. I suggest leaving the lights on. www.perseverancerecords.com

James Newton Howard's latest score since BATMAN BEGINS and KING KONG is for Joe Roth's urban action thriller, FREEDOMLAND. The film explores inner city racism as it describes the search for a white woman's son inadvertently kidnapped in a carjacking. Unlike Howard's more familiar symphonic/melodic compositional style, FREEDOMLAND is a gritty, percussive, almost electronica composition, released last week on CD by Varese Sarabande (302 066 717 2). The music evokes a kind of hip-hop noir, effectively echoing the stark, hopeless austerity of the inner city and the malignant racism that the film dwells on there. The score's primary attribute is one of bleak pessimism, associating itself with the external ambiances that exists within the films subtexts of racism and poverty and attitudes. Tracks like "The Lie" and "Unrest"

and "Rafik is Arrested" are thick with distorted electric guitars, heavy percussion and drum loops, electronic pulsations, and other rhythm/texture based attributes. It's only when Roth's storyline pulls back the layers of prejudice and presumption that we begin to get a clearer picture of what the movie and its subtexts are all about, and it's here that Howard's score moves into more motivic and heartfelt territory, and we see the human element existing within Roth's gritty environment. "Brenda's Apartment" is an eloquent, softly reflective motif for solo piano over woodwinds and strings. With track 7, "Freedomland," Howard introduces his main theme, a persuasive rhythmic atmosphere for hope and honor that is a significant contrast to the pessimistic environmental music hitherto emphasized in the score. The poignant warmth of the "Freedomland" theme lends a heartfelt resonance to the score's musical flavor, including a reprisal of the family theme introduced in "Brenda's Apartment." The album closes with the wistful and melancholic "Little Angel," returning to an then expanding the melody from "Brenda's Apartment," resolving the score with a gentle, homespun melody for piano over gradually increasing strings, completely eclipsing the sonic environment of the inner city with a resonant tonality for the human spirit; breaking free from the trappings of milieu or gender or race and driving to the heart of what it is to be human. That's what the music suggests to me, anyway, not having seen the film yet. The score's experience on CD, as a listener, is highly worthwhile and provocative. www.varesesarabande.com

The late Michael Small remains one of the most unsung composers within the film music pantheon of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Partly due to the type of films he chose, partly due to the understatedness of the music he wrote, Small never achieved the kind of popular recognition many of his colleagues did. For his filmmusical output, relatively few of his works have been preserved on disc - the few that have (KLUTE, BRIGHTON BEACH MEMOIRS [lp only], JAWS THE REVENGE, MOBSTERS, MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON, CONSENSING ADULTS) have become fairly elusive. Small scored some of his era's most significant pictures (KLUTE, THE PARALLAX VIEW, THE DROWNING POOL, THE STEPFORD WIVES, NIGHT MOVES, MARATHON MAN) yet only one of these titles is available on a legitimate soundtrack album (or will be, when UK's Harkit Records releases KLUTE next month), and rarely

is Small remembered the way Bernstein, Goldsmith, Williams, Schifrin, and others have been. So It's very good news to find Intrada's Special Collection Vol. 29, limited to a meagre 1200 copies, preserving Small's fine score to Bob Rafelson's stylish 1987 thriller, BLACK WIDOW. The movie was a terrific example of style over substance the insubstantial plot about a seductress (Theresa Russell) marrying a series of wealthy men only to murder them and collect their estates, succeeding due to her assumption of multiple identifies, becomes a sensual neo-Noir by focusing upon duelling female protagonists (the other, wonderfully portrayed by Debra Winger, a dowdy investigator on Russell's trail who becomes attracted in more ways that one). Small's score is characteristic he shuns broad melodies and transcendent leitmotifs in favor of more concise figures and introspective musical collectives to create instead what Julie Kurgo describes in her CD notes as a "piercing psychological intensity" through a strings-heavy ensemble. Michael Small had a terrific affinity for discovering the psychological core of a character's or a storyline's essence, and was able to emphasize that through the carefully realized implementation of tone, nuance, texture, and counterpoint, while maintaining a tonality that is as romantic and as sensual as Winger's suppressed yearnings and Rafelson's sleek and suggestive directing style. www.intrada.com

La-La-Land Records lavish 33-track recording of Akira Ifukube's classic score for 1964's KING KONG VS GODZILLA (LLLCD 1041) preserves this rousing and aggressive horror-adventure score for the first time outside of Japan. Largely a resequenced reissue of the 1993 Japanese Futurama 43-track full soundtrack album (sound effects tracks having been eliminated), the power of Ifukube's full score is readily realized. While reprising many of the themes introduced in Ifukube's original GOJIRA score, KKvG is an expansive recreation of them, including a wholly new main

title theme featuring chorus and orchestra, associated with the jungle tribes (the theme, "Sleeping Chant," was resurrected in 1995 as Ifukube's End Title for GODZILLA VS. DESTROYAH, his final film score). The score is full of deep, groaning, echoing chords and textures, as if recorded in the very bowels of Godzilla himself; the score instantly suggests hugeness, darkness, and a growling malevolency. Ifukube's music for King Kong is just as primitive, a 5-note motif reminiscent of the beasts thunderous growl; as with most of Ifukube's scores, these monster themes are balanced by significant orchestral material associated with the military's noble efforts to save the countryside from the battling behemoths. The composer's orchestration is malignantly magnificent, every resource of the orchestra turned as dark and savage and aggressive as possible, as in the rough piano whaps that cap each brass top note in "Operation 'Burial'" and the rustling cymbals that sizzle above the orchestra in "Operation 'One Million Volts.'" An amazing and thrilling exercise in pure malevolent monster music. Unique to the La-La Land release is a special a capella version of the main theme by the Japanese choral group Bukimisha, who had performed at the composer's 90th birthday celebration.

As Your enjoyment of the score will be greatly enhanced by Toho music expert David Hirsch's excellent and thorough liner notes, who not only carefully delineates the creation of the film and a track-by-track analysis of the score (including the differences between Ifukube's original Japanese release score and what many of us heard in the film's American release that was recycled from earlier Universal programmers: much of Ifukube's score was never heard in the American release of the film; Hirsch also squashes the long-running rumor that the Japanese version of the film had Godzilla winning while the American version has Kong triumphant; both versions end identically with Godzilla submerging and Kong swimming away; the only difference is that in the USA release only Kong's roar is heard before the fadeout. Godzilla's cry is eliminated). Virtually every GODZILLA score is available in Japan in any number of variant forms; La-La Land's latest effort (along with their release in 2004 of the complete GOJIRA/GODZILLA score) has been the first outside of compilations to make them available directly to the American market. Let's hope La-La's trend will continue. www.lalalandrecords.com  

FILM MUSIC NEWS

Last week, composer Danny Elfman recorded his score to the new film version of the beloved children's classic, CHARLOTTE'S WEB. An 82-piece orchestra, conducted by Pete Anthony, performed the score over a five-day period at the Newman Scoring Stage at 20th Century Fox. The film, directed by Gary Winick, is a live-action adaptation of the novel, and features Dakota Fanning as Fern, with Julia Roberts voicing Charlotte, as well as Oprah Winfrey, Steve Buscemi, Kathy Bates, John Cleese, and others lending their vocal talents. Elfman's score features Dean Parks and George Doering on guitar, adding the necessary rustic edge to the emotional music. For the full session reports, with lots of photos, see: www.soundtrack.net  

GDM Music has released an expanded special edition CD reissue of Ennio Morricone's seminal score for Sergio Leone's PER UN PUGNO DI DOLLARI (A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS). The score, despite its fame, has had an unusual history on soundtrack album concurrently with the film's 1964 Italian release, a 45-RPM single appeared featuring two tracks, but not until a year later did a full LP appear and that one combined seven stereo selections on the A side of an LP paired with Morricone's score for the sequel, FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE, as side B. In America, RCA Released a full LP containing the FISTFUL soundtrack, however all it really contained were those same 7 tracks on side A, and the exact same tracks re-mixed into a "FISTFUL OF DOLLARS Suite" on side B. While innumerable compilations have reprised those same tracks (LPs/CDs pairing the FISTFUL score with the FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE score have been very frequent, as have compilations including those and selections from THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY), few proffered anything new from any of those films. The latest in GDM's ongoing series of expanded reissues of landmark Morricone scores (which have thus far included THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY, FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE, MY NAME IS NOBODY, and ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST; hopefully DUCK YOU SUCKER/GIU' LA TESTA will follow eventually [BTW: a 20-track bootleg 'expansion' on the "Revolution Records" came out last year under the alternate title, ONCE UPON A TIME THE REVOLUTION]) finally provides us with as full an expansion of the original FISTFUL score as we're ever going to get. The CD was prepared in close cooperation with Ennio Morricone, who authorized 10 previously unreleased tracks coming from the original 1964 mono session tapes. Through digital remastering and careful restoration, GDM remastered those tracks as close as possible to modern standards. This CD features the music chronologically sequenced as it appears in the movie (alternating the re-recorded stereo mixes from to the newly discovered original mono mixes). www.gdmmusic.com  

Silva Screen Records has released Music from the Harry Potter Films, a very nice digitally re-recorded performance by the City of Prague Philharmonic (James Fitzpatrick conducting) of John Williams' and Patrick Doyle's music for the first four Potter movies. Featuring fifteen tracks very faithfully re-performed, the recording is

concise compendium of Potter's main music to date. www.silvascreenmusic.com  

Percepto Records will soon release a limited recording (1,000 copies only) of Ronald Stein's grandeloquent score to 1960's DINOSAURUS! Produced by Jack H. Harris and directed by Irwin S. Yeaworth, Jr., the successful team behind THE BLOB, this ambitious Technicolor adventure starred Ward Ramsey as the stalwart engineer building a new harbor on a Caribbean isle whose undersea explosions unwittingly unleash a titanic struggle between a kindly brontosaurus and a ferocious T-Rex awakened by a strike of lightning. Throw in a wacky Neanderthal man, a precocious orphan boy, a sizzling romance and a greedy island boss, and you have one of the prehistoric genre's most entertaining spectacles. Composer Ronald Stein, the master of 1950s/60s B-movie horror scores (IT CONQUERED THE WORLD, INVASION OF THE SAUCERMEN, ATTACK OF THE 50-FOOT WOMAN, THE HAUNTED PALACE, DEMENTIA 13 etc), was never one to be intimidated by the widescreen ambitions of its filmmakers or their insufficient budgets, and pulled off one of the most rousing scores of his diverse career. www.percepto.com  

Composer Michael Giacchino is slated to score the next game in the highly acclaimed Medal of Honor series. Medal of Honor: Airborne is a first-person World War II shooter that follows a group of paratroopers. It will be released in late 2006 for PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Xbox360. Giacchino scored the first three Medal of Honor games earlier in his career Visit Giacchino's new website at www.michaelgiacchino.com/  

Aaron Zigman, one of Hollywood's fastest-rising composers with his soundtracks for THE NOTEBOOK, ALPHA DOG, FLICKA, ATL, TAKE THE LEAD and AKEELAH AND THE BEE will now be scoring THE ATTACKMEN for director Topher Straus (KRUSH). Set on the lacrosse fields and schoolrooms of a private Catholic school, THE ATTACKMEN stars Nick Slatkin (THE CLIQUE) as a Jewish student who encounters prejudice as a life-altering game approaches. This 35mm dramatic short also stars Marshall Bell (CAPOTE), Dominic Keating (STAR TREK ENTERPRISE), Jeffrey Combs (RE-ANIMATOR) and Michael Shamus Wiles (FIGHT CLUB). A composer who's skilled at both powerful drama (JOHN Q.) and intriguing musical textures (AKEELAH AND THE BEE), Zigman will be applying both to THE ATTACKMEN'S emotional story of a young man coming to grips with the anger around him. THE ATTACKMEN will be premiering at film festivals this year.

William Ross has been hired to score an upcoming horror film entitled DRIFTWOOD. Described by its director, Tim Sullivan, as a teen COOL HAND LUKE set in a haunted attitude adjustment camp, the film stars Ricky Ullman, Dallas Page, and Talan Torriero and is set to premiere in the fall. Sullivan directed another genre film last year, 2001 MANIACS, which was scored by Nathan Barr. Ross has scored films such as HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS (adapting John Williams' themes), LADDER 49, TUCK EVERLASTING, and TIN CUP; this is his first horror scoring assignment.

Varese Sarabande Records will release John Powell's melodic, adventurous, and comic score for ICE AGE 2: THE MELTDOWN on April 4th. The label will release

Christophe Beck's (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, ELEKTRA) exciting score for THE SENTINEL on April 25th. Directed by Clark Johnson (S.W.A.T.), the film stars Michael Douglas as a disgraced special agent to the White House who endeavors to foil a conspiracy to assassinate the President.

The online soundtrack label MovieScore Media presents its second release of an original motion picture score: SHADOWS IN THE SUN, composed and conducted by prolific British composer Mark Thomas, whose other film credits include music for films such as DOOGAL, GREYFRIARS BOBBY and the effective werewolf film, DOG SOLDIERS. The film, starring Harvey Keitel, Joshua Jackson and Clarie Forlani, is a romantic and thoughtful drama beautifully shot on location in Tuscany, written and directed by Brad Mirman. Mark Thomas' poetic and touching orchestral music fuses elements of romantic underscoring, featuring many delightful solo parts, with Italian folk music, resulting in an honest and beautiful musical work. The original motion picture score will be available from iTunes and other digital music stores on March 14, 2006. www.moviescoremedia.com 

For more information on Mark Thomas, please visit http://www.markthomas.co.uk 

In other Mark Thomas news, Milan Records has released the soundtrack to DOOGAL, a children's film scored by Mark Thomas that branches off of the British hit children's show THE MAGIC ROUNDABOUT. In addition to 11 score tracks by Thomas, 5 score tracks by James Venable, and 11 pop songs, including Kylie Minogue's "Magic Roundadbout" song, several songs newly written for the film, and reprised classics by T. Rex, The Archies (an odd pairing, one must admit), and others. www.milanrecords.com

And in other James Venable news, the composer is re-uniting with his director on JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKES BACK and JERSEY GIRL, Kevin Smith, to score Smith's latest project, CLERKS II. The new comedy picks up 10 years later from the first film, 1994's CLERKS, is "about what happens when that lazy, 20-something malaise lasts into your 30s," described Smith. "Those dudes are kind of still mired, not in that same exact situation, but in a place where its time to actually grow up and do something more than just sit around and dissect pop culture and talk about sex." The film gets its release from box officer clerks worldwide on August 18th, 2006.

Former editor/publisher of CinemaScore magazine, Randall Larson was for many years senior editor for Soundtrack Magazine and a film music columnist for Cinefantastique magazine. He is the author of Musique Fantastique: A Survey of Film Music in the Fantastic Cinema (Scarecrow, 1984) and Music from the House of Hammer (Scarecrow, 1995). In addition to Soundtrax and Music News for Cinescape.com, Randall reviews soundtracks Music from the Movies, writes for Film Music Magazine, and in many other fields.

Recommended Soundtrack sources:
www.buysoundtrax.com  
www.intrada.com  
www.screenarchives.com  
www.footlight.com  
www.arksquare.com/index_main.html (Japan)
www.intermezzomedia.com/ (Italy)
www.moviegrooves.com  
www.moviemusic.com  

For questions or comments, contact the author at Soundtrax@cinescape.com