Monstrous Movie Music is back

By: Randall D. Larson
Date: Thursday, February 02, 2006

THIS WEEK'S RECOMMENDATIONS

After a pair of thunderously powerful retrospective recordings of classic horror film music released in 1996, and an in-depth collection of jungle horror film music like THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON and THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE issued in 2000, David Schecter and Kathleen Mayne of Monstrous Movie Music have finally issued their latest two recordings, with results no less effective and pulse-pounding than their first three.

MIGHTY JOE YOUNG and other Ray Harryhausen Animation Classics (MMM-1953) features premiere and significant newly-recorded suites from MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (Roy Webb: 35:44 min), 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH (Mischa Bakaleinikoff: 21:07 min) and THE ANIMAL WORLD (Paul Sawtell: 4:03 min). Roy Webb, probably the most talented neglected composer of the Golden Age of Film Music, certainly as versatile and melodically-inclined as Max Steiner, with whom he shared a similar stylistic approach to film scoring, is best known in genre circles for scoring the majority of Val Lewton's moody horror thrillers of the 1940s, including CAT PEOPLE, BEDLAM, THE BODY SNATCHER, and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE. His very short Prelude from MIGHTY JOE YOUNG was included in Cloud Nine's excellent 1995 original soundtrack compilation (the first ever of Webb's music), THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE: The Film Music of Roy Webb 1942-1949; but now we have virtually the entire score, faithfully rerecorded by The Radio Symphony Orchestra of Slovakia, conducted by Masatoshi Mitsumoto. The score interpolated Stephen Foster's classic song, "Beautiful Dreamer" (used in the film as a music box tune that calms the Konglike giant ape), which became an iconic love theme between the young girl and Joe Young, the giant ape who has befriended her). The music runs the gamut of vast adventure, including a wonderful theme introduced in the initial African sequences, the savagery of the ape's power, emphasized by muscular brass chords, and straight-out attack scene dissonances, supporting the film's mix of playfulness, pathos, poignancy, and power. As noted in the liner notes, the episodic nature of the film's narrative precluded a wholly coherent musical development from start to finish, but Webb accomplished quite a compelling composition by supporting the film's narrative travelogue, linked by a bold, brassy motif associated with the oversized ape. His music for the climactic scene where Joe saves the children from the orphanage fire is a terrific assemblage of interacting motifs, Joe's Theme, yearning ascensions of strings over downward peals of surging brass, brief figures playing off of other figures, escalating the visual activity to a fever pitch.

The music for Harryhausen's 1957 Venusian monster scuttling Rome movie, 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH, featured original scoring by Mischa Bakaleinikoff and plenty of re-used tracks from the Columbia Pictures music library, including cues from Frederick Hollander, George Duning, and Max Steiner (as a bonus, we are treated to the original version of Hollander's cue "Heaven," recycled from HERE COMES MR. JORDAN but shortened for the introductory narration of 20 MILLION MILES). The MILES music, both its original and recycled library cues, is terrific 1950s horror film music, raging with snarling low brass advancing monster-footsteps chords, furtive woodwind filigrees, swirling brass and percussion horror stingers, and the like. Bakaleinikoff's score is built around a 4-note "creature" theme, which recurs throughout the original segments of the film's score and becomes a ferocious ostinato accompanying the Ymir's escape from captivity and attack upon the Roman landscape. The recycled cues work quite well in achieving various characteristics of suspense and monster-attacks, and play off of Bakaleinikoff's original music (or vice versa) very well. A very short resolution from George Duning's Western music from LUST FOR GOLD, concludes 20 MILLION MILES with a warm spirit of accomplishment and relief.

Paul Sawtell (THE FLY, etc) composed the score for the lost 1956 Irwin Allen documentary, THE ANIMAL WORLD, enhanced this examination of historical dinosaurs with the ferociously pulse-pounding music one might expect from a monster movie. A sole cue, "Survival? & The Ceratosaurus," provides an audible glimpse into the musical heart of this vanished film classic.

Monstrous' other release, THIS ISLAND EARTH And Other Alien Invasion Films (MMM-1954), highlights a premiere re-recording of 37:42 minutes of music from Universal's classic 1955 science fiction thriller, THIS ISLAND EARTH. Composed, like so many of the studios genre pictures of the decade, by a collaboration of its music department mostly Herman (CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON) Stein with Hans Salter (THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN) and Henry Mancini (TARANTULA, before achieving worldwide success with Blake Edwards and THE

PINK PANTHER, et al). The music is thrillingly melodic, capturing both the malevolency of the Metaluna Mutants with a savage, snarling ostinato not unlike Stein's shrieking CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON motif, as well as a fair amount of meandering music associated with characters and the mysteriousness of the Metaluna planet and its environment. The music ranges from the exotic (Stein's almost oriental passages for Exeter's Mansion delineate a fragile yet intelligent environment) to the assaultive (the Mutant music is relentlessly aggressive. Stein also includes plenty of soft Americana-esque string passages as the earthmen recall memories of their distant Earth. Stein's seminal outer space music ("Shooting Stars" and the theremin-heavy "Meteor Battle;" the former was recorded by Dick Jacobs for the 1950s' Themes from Horror Movies LP; reissued on CD by Varese Sarabande) is beautifully evocative, despite the use of theremin and the Novachord to suggest "space" and the heavy-handed "monster chords" associated with the Mutant, the music itself is quite heartfelt and stimulating. Mancini's "Metaluna Catastrophe, Part 2" contains some trilling interplay between propulsive string patterns and piping woodwinds (parts of the track were later re-used in TARANTULA), and some of the score's most amazing ascending Mutant-horror crescendos.

The other main feature of this collection is 20 minutes of music from Ron (CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED, FRENZY) Goodwin's score to the fascinating but flawed 1962 adaptation of John Wyndham's exercise in vegetative horror, THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS. The score exemplifies Goodwin's talent for rhythmic melody, developing a churning, rapid-fire motif that gave the film's fearsome fauna a sense of movement and direction that they rarely exhibited on film, a recurring "traveling" motif, and a touching, lyrical theme for the character of Susan. Goodwin's final battle between humanity and the munching mulch monsters consists of terrifically pounding, punchy passages of orchestra, brass and percussion, resolved in the final track by a surging of triumphant orchestral bliss. It's an excellent score and appears here for the first time ever. Much of Goodwin's score was tampered with, edited, shortened, removed for the film's final release - the soundtrack includes some "additional music" composed by Johnny Douglas when the film was re-edited after Goodwin had gone on to another project all of which is ably described in the CD booklet. David Schecter has done a fine job of restoring this score both what was used and what was not and paying respects to what Goodwin intended to do with the score prior to studio interference.

Rounding out the collection is the Main Title cue from 1958's WAR OF THE SATELLITES, composed by Walter Greene), and Daniel Amfitheatrof's title tune from 1956's EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS, both wonderfully and pulsatingly evocative opening tracks.

Both volumes included an exhaustively researched and details-rich CD booklet (40 pages for JOE YOUNG, 38 for ISLAND EARTH) with a ton of details about the films, the music, their composers, the present performers and reconstructionists and, of course, the special effects wizard who brought the film's animated characters to life.

www.mmmrecordings.com  

FILM MUSIC NEWS

Oscar Nominations for best score were announced this week:

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
Gustavo Santaolalla

THE CONSTANT GARDENER
Alberto Iglesias

MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA
John Williams

MUNICH
John Williams

PRIDE & PREJUDICE
Dario Marianelli

According to official sources, Scoremagacine reports that Craig (RAY, MOULIN ROUGE) Armstrong is now working with Oliver Stone in his latest film about the tragic 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York. Armstrong has been the personal choice by Oliver Stone who is a great admired of the composer's work. Most film music aficionados assumed that the film would be scored by John Williams, a New York native himself and one of the director's usual collaborators (BORN ON THE 4TH JULY, J.F.K, NIXON) though it was Craig Armstrong who won the assignment in the end (Harry Gregson-Williams [KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, CHRONICLES OF NARNIA] was also considered by the producers and Stone, but he couldn't accept the assignment due to scheduling conflicts, according to Scoremagacine). The 9/11 film, with a temporary title of WORLD TRADE CENTER, will focus on the aftermath of the 9/11 disaster in NYC, with hope still being alive and strong. Refusing to bow down to terrorism, rescuers and families of the victims are moving ahead. Their mission of rescue and recovery is driven by the faith that under each piece of rubble, a co-worker, a friend a family member may be found alive, inspired by the true story of John McLoughlin and William J. Jimeno, the last two survivors extracted from Ground Zero and the rescuers who never gave up on them. The project stars Nicholas Cage, Maria Bello, and Maggie

Gyllenhaal and is reported to be one of the most anticipated films of the year.

Digitmovies three latest vintage Italian soundtrack CDs will be available on the 15th of February, and include Ennio Morricone's very first score, 1961's IL FEDERALE, a 1966 Bruno Nicolai western score, EL CISCO, and one of my favorite Nicolai war film scores, LA BATTAGLIA DEL DESERTO (1969). www.digitmovies.com  

Zbigniew Preisner, the composer who came in the spotlight in 2004 with a beautifully melancholic, subtle, but wholly melodic string-led score for THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR now returns with an ambitious project about the mysterious death of George Reeves, TV's Superman. Its title might possibly change soon, but for the time being it carries TRUTH, JUSTICE AND THE AMERICAN WAY, according to scoremagacine.com. In other news, Preisner has replaced Ennio Morricone as the composer on Dutch film SPORTSMAN OF THE CENTURY, directed by Mischa Alexander. Morricone had been attached to the project for some time, but ultimately the production company PVPictures had to change plans due to budget limitations. Preisner, the celebrated Polish composer behind the popular scores for the films of Krzysztof Kieslowski as well as more recent films such as THE BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY and IT'S ALL ABOUT LOVE, has already recorded his score for SPORTSMAN OF THE CENTURY in Poland. The film is expected to premiere in Europe in April. - via www.filmmusicradio.com  

For the first time ever on CD in North America, La-La Land records presents the original motion picture soundtrack to the classic 1962 Toho Studios monster thriller

KING KONG VS. GODZILLA. Legendary composer Akira Ifukube (GOJIRA/GODZILLA) fashions a spellbinding orchestral score to chronicle this one-of-a-kind battle between two of filmdom's most beloved creatures. Remastered from Toho Studio vault sources, with bonus tracks and featuring exclusive liner notes, this is the definitive release of Ifukube's amazing score. Godzilla celebrated his 50th Anniversary in 2004 with many worldwide events and King Kong has seen a resurgence of interest with the new Peter Jackson film and a new DVD release of the original movie. For track listing, see: http://www.lalalandrecords.com/KingKong.html  

French composer Alexandre Desplat burst onto Hollywood's radar with his Golden

Globe nomination to GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING. Now he's quickly moving up the ranks, with last year's HOSTAGE, Casanova, and the Golden Globe nominated score to SYRIANA. He has a new thriller out next month, FIREWALL (soundtrack CD out from Varese Sarabande on Feb 14th). SoundtrackNet has posted a fascinating interview with the composer. See: www.soundtrack.net  

Film Score Monthly reports that John Williams and Yo-Yo Ma are slated to perform a selection from MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA on NBC's THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO on Monday, February 6, 2006. The show will be broadcast later that week on CNBC Europe.

Composer and producer Aaron Zigman (JOHN Q, THE NOTEBOOK) has scored ALPHA DOG for writer/director Nick Cassavetes and New Line Cinema. The film, starring Justin Timberlake, Dominique Swain, Shawn Hatosy, Ben Foster and Sharon Stone, is a drama based on the life of Jesse James Hollywood, a drug dealer who became one of the youngest men ever to be on the FBI's most wanted list. To match the grittiness of the film, Zigman scored it to have an edgy urban feel, with a lot of rap, techno and rock. The composer created "scource" music, a term for music that is somewhere between song and score, rather than underscoring emotion and creating traditional characters' themes. He co-wrote most of the songs in the movie, and layered them underneath the story to portray the pastiche of the music indigenous to violent world of the high school-aged characters.

The latest CDs from Film Score Monthly are now available to order. The label's Golden Age release for January presents the LP tracks to two scores by George Duning: 1958's BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE and 1959's 1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS, both acquired from the Colpix Records LP masters. (BELL was released for the first time on CD by England's Harkit in 2004; NIGHTS has not been available on CD prior to FSM's release). BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE starred Kim Novak as a lonely New York City witch, and Jimmy Stewart her romantic target, with supporting turns by Jack Lemmon and Ernie Kovacs. The film was one of George Duning's favorite projects, allowing him to exercise his gift for melody, romance, and jazz. Duning was always at his best with romantic elements, and the film's fantasy aspects allowed him to extend his musical imagination into colorful depictions of witchcraft. 1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS was an animated feature film starring Mr. Magoo (voice of Jim Backus), here "Abdul Azziz Magoo," the uncle to Aladdin, as in "Aladdin and The Magic Lamp." Duning enlisted several "ethnic" musicians to depict the Middle Eastern locale, incorporating them into a traditional symphonic setting.

FSM's January Silver Age release features two discs of action-thriller music from the early '70s. ZIGZAG features Oliver Nelson's score for the offbeat thriller starring George Kennedy as a man who learns he has a terminal illness and frames himself for a capital crime, only to see his plan backfire unexpectedly. Nelson was one of the first African-Americans to break through into Hollywood feature film scoring, and is best known to film music fans as the composer of THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN theme. The CD features Nelson's original score tracks as well as his album re-recording. Also on the Silver Age disc is Jerry Fielding's score to THE SUPER COPS, a light-hearted, urban cop action movie, whose most memorable element (besides Fielding's music) was a colorful poster depicting the heroes bursting through a wall while hanging onto a wrecking ball a scene which was much less spectacular in the actual movie. Along with Fielding's score, the disc features source cues from SUPER COPS as well as from his score to THE OUTFIT (the score from THE OUTFIT appeared along with POINT BLANK on a 2002 FSM release), and is filled out by Fielding episode scores for the James Stewart lawyer-mystery series HAWKINS, whose Jerry Goldsmith pilot score was featured on an earlier FSM disc. www.filmscoremonthly.com  

In March, La-La Land Records will present the first commercial release of an exciting

and much desired Jerry Goldsmith score, for the 1976 Western mystery BREAKHEART PASS, which starred Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland, Ben Johnson and Richard Crenna, and was directed by Tom Gries, for whom Goldsmith scored Breakout and the Emmy-winning QB VII. BREAKHEART PASS was one of a handful of Goldsmith's train-themed scores (VON RYAN'S EXPRESS, THE CASSANDRA CROSSING, THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY) and, most importantly, was his last Western score for 18 years, until BAD GIRLS returned him to the genre. La-La Land's CD will be a limited release, taken from the film's mono master tapes. www.lalalandrecords.com  

Intrada presents a world premiere 2-CD set of soundtrack music from twin Irwin Allen fantasy films: THE LOST WORLD (1960, music by the composing duo of Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter) and FIVE WEEKS IN A BALLOON (1962, scored by Sawtell alone). Sawtell and Shefter, two of the 1950s and early 1960s best genre film composers

(THE FLY, KRONOS, THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, JACK THE GIANT KILLER, etc) serve as musical tour guides as we musically travel with Professor Challenger (Claude Rains) and company back to lost worlds full of dinosaurs, then soar by balloon over Africa in Jules Verne's classic adventure tale. Both scores are presented in stereo from original elements, including colorful main titles, a zesty balloon title song (sung by the then-popular folk quartet, The Brothers Four), and alternate takes. Minor deterioration is sometimes evident but audio remains dynamic, highly listenable throughout, according to Intrada. This is a Limited Edition of 1200 copies, Volume 28 in Intrada's Special Collection, totaling 110:31 mins of music.
www.intrada.com  

Music from the Movies' chief correspondent Mikael Carlsson has launched a new film music company, MovieScore Media, and their first release is Peter Calandra's jazz score for the indie drama UNKNOWN SOLIDER, available through iTunes. - Original Motion Picture Score, its firstsoundtrack release. The film, which was named "Best

Narrative Feature" at the 2004 Los Angeles Film Festival and was nominated for a 2005 Independent Spirit Award, is currently airing on the cable network Starz. "We are very proud to announce Peter's infectious jazz score to a world-wide audience as our very first release. The music for this independent picture has already won a lot of critical acclaim and I am sure it will astound both soundtrack fans and jazz aficionados," said Carlsson. "MovieScore Media is devoted to make high quality film music available using new digital technology," Carlsson added. "The goal is to release interesting and original film scores - more often than not from smaller projects where the quality of the music, rather than commercial properties of the film itself, counts."
www.moviescoremedia.com  

Speaking of new soundtrack labels, Mellowdrama Records has released its fourth soundtrack CD, the Ivor Novello Award-winning score to ENDURING LOVE composed by Jeremy Sams. Sams' intelligent scoring for this adeptly-weaved thriller is furnished with a musical dynamism that favors intensity and heart-racing agitation. Expertly colored throughout with virtuosic part-writing and jagged performance directions, the music is lent a false sense of intimacy that charges the furious settings of the composer's character studies. With a captivating performance by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the album also features extensive liner notes and lavish artwork.
www.mellowdramarecords.com  

FILM MUSIC ON DVD NEWS

Before THE LORD OF THE RINGS and KING KONG, when Peter Jackson was just an unknown genre filmmaker, he cranked out his Hollywood debut, THE FRIGHTENERS, and had it scored by Danny Elfman. Underfed in the promotion department, and released in a busy summer season, THE FRIGHTENERS failed to scare up much at the box office. Now, almost ten years later, billions of Hobbit and Elf dollars later, and within weeks of Jackson's KING KONG hitting theaters, Universal has resurrected THE FRIGHTENERS with a special edition, director's cut DVD. Essentially the old laserdisc in DVD form, all of the material from that previous release has been carried over to this single, double-sided DVD edition. Included in the more than four hour (!) behind-the-scenes feature is an extensive segment on Danny Elfman's score, including a vintage Elfman interview, scoring session footage, music and sound effects comparisons and more.

Soundtrack.net notes that while the special edition DVD of Cronenberg's THE FLY didn't have anything on Howard Shore's score, there is a small featurette on the sequel, "Composer's Master Class: Christopher Young" in which Chris Young talks about his approach to scoring THE FLY II. He also shows up in the lengthy documentary, and the most interesting bit is when he reveals that he was told to forget Shore's score entirely and proceed entirely on his own.

GAMES MUSIC NEWS

Earlier this week, at Signet Studios in Hollywood, Bruno Coon recorded his score to the upcoming computer game based on the Disney/PIXAR Film, CARS. Randy Newman's music editor for many years, Coon wrote a fully original score for the computer game, keeping the same rustic musical style as the one Newman established for the feature film. The 55-piece orchestra was conducted by Joey Newman, with Mike Lang on keyboards providing synth "sweetener" to the string section. Orchestrator Jonathan Sacks, and score mixer Frank Wolf - both of whom worked on the feature film - lent their skills to the Cars video game score. For the full story of the recording session, including photos. see: www.soundtrack.net/news/article/?id=712  

Sumthing Else Music Works, Inc., through a licensing relationship with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd (SCEE), is pleased to announce their first release of 2006: MediEvil Resurrection Original Soundtrack, the third title in the multi-

million selling MediEvil series, developed by SCEE's Cambridge Studio. The MediEvil Resurrection Original Soundtrack encompasses an eclectic mix of styles that reflects both the gothic horror and the irreverent humor of the MediEvil series. Featuring original compositions as well as new arrangements of the previous MediEvil game scores written by Bob and Barn (MediEvil, Primal), the re-mastered score was orchestrated by Nic Raine and recorded by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir in the Czech Republic. Piers Jackson, producer of MediEvil Resurrection, said, "I've often heard Bob and Barn state that of all the games they have worked on MediEvil is their most requested soundtrack, so for all of you who have been waiting for it, and for all of you to whom this is the first outing, I hope you gain as much enjoyment from it as I have."

www.sumthing.com  

for music samples please visit www.bobandbarn.com  

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