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CD review: THE BLOB original soundtrack (2,000 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 06/19/2011
THE BLOB original soundtrack | ©2011 La La Land Records

Ahhh, to be back in the synth-driven days of horror scoring, especially covered in red, keyboard goo, voices, dark strings and feverish percussion that accompanies the 1988 BLOB– all placed into an undulating musical mass by Michael Hoenig. Having played with Tangerine Dream, Hoenig’s first synth credit was gracing GALAXY OF TERROR before establishing his own composing chops on such genre cult favorites as MAX HEADROOM, THE WRAITH, THE GATE and I, MADMAN. While THE BLOB’s music seems to be all effectively shapeless stings dribbling tones, and militarism for the true government bio-villains, Hoenig’s score really kicks into gear during […]Read On »


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CD review: PRIEST original soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
PRIEST original soundtrack | ©2011 Madison Gate Records

When it comes to the musical battle between heaven and hell, Christopher Young plays the clash of Godly might and the unholy’s fearsome forces like few composers in the supernatural scoring business, especially with the massive symphonic and choral power of such soundtracks as HELLRAISER, BLESS THE CHILD, THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE, DRAG ME TO HELL, GHOST RIDER, etc. Now Young’s religioso voices and snarling orchestras have at it again with terrifically entertaining fury on the future, vampire-plagued Earth of PRIEST. It’s one thing to unleash the tropes of musical hell, but it’s another to truly know how to […]Read On »


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CD Review: MONSTERS soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 05/29/2011
MONSTERS soundtrack | ©2011 Vertigo Media Limited

The best electronic-heavy sci-fi scores like John Murphy’s SUNSHINE and David Holmes’ CODE 46 transport you to a place that’s far more about hallucinogenic chill than it about bug-eyed creatures, or gigantic tentacled ones in this movie’s case. MONSTERS stands as the most conversely beautiful, acid trip scoring done for a title like this, as rock synthesist Jon Hopkins takes the cool grooves he gave to Massive Attack and Brian Eno (particularly on his LOVELY BONES score) and applies them to a soundtrack that’s about learning to understand the enemy, if not necessarily making peace with them. Never once descending […]Read On »


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CD Review: UNFORGETTABLE soundtrack (1100 copies limited edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 05/28/2011
UNFORGETTABLE soundtrack |©2011 Perseverance Records

It seemed only natural that Christopher Young’s talents for melodic darkness would evolve from the satanic strains of his HELLRAISER-ish scores, and put him on the more “respectable” map of the romantic mystery thriller, a genre he was particularly prolific with in the ’90’s in such scores as COPYCAT, DREAM LOVER, HUSH and JENNIFER 8. Perhaps Young’s most interesting, and romantically yearning score during that decade was 1996’s UNFORGETTABLE. John Dahl’s now-cult film saw Ray Liotta using a memory regressing drug to ferret out his wife’s killer, a process whose elements of sci-fi and horror allowed Young to use the […]Read On »


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CD Review: YOUR HIGHNESS original soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
YOUR HIGHNESS original soundtrack | ©2011 Varese Sarabande Records

After the somewhat unintentional hilarity of the TRANSFORMERS movies, Steve Jablonsky gets to score an outright gonzo take on ’80’s sword and sorcery films, with all of the sound and fury he usually applies to Optimus Prime. And that’s perfect when it comes to playing this unabashedly rude fantasy spectacle for real. Like a composer who’d been subjected to CLOCKWORK ORANGE-like viewings of THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, THE PRINCESS BRIDE, KULL THE CONQUERER and WILLOW, then turned loose on the world, Jablonsky wreaks loud havoc with every musical cliché in the genre book, as reworked for a rock orchestral […]Read On »


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CD Review: MEGAFORCE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 04/17/2011
MEGAFORCE Soundtrack | ©2011 Buysoundtrax

Sure there’s THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, but Barry Bostwick’s most outrageous exercise in retro-camp might just be 1982’s MEGAFORCE, a proto-G.I. JOE exercise in souped-up spandex do-gooding, blessed with extra oh-so ’80’s musical oomph by composer Jerrold Immel. Immel had the macho sound of TV scoring down with the likes of HARRY O and POLICE WOMAN when America’s first line of motorized defense came knocking at his studio in the tight-fitted form of Bostwick as “Ace” Hunter. Immel rose to the not-too-serious challenge with the rocking synth pads that any connoisseur of the decade’s action cheese would dig- “dated” […]Read On »


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Interview: Composer John Ottman enters the UNKNOWN

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 03/10/2011
UNKNOWN movie poster | ©2011 Warner Bros.

Among the composers who’ve been chased by international killers, engaged in murderous games of cops and robbers, or have spied on the antics of various psychopaths, John Ottman might consider himself a marked man. Making a huge splash along with film school buddy Bryan Singer as the editor and composer of 1995’s THE USUAL SUSPECTS, Ottman’s way of ratcheting the dramatic stakes up with walls of creeping, orchestra-heavy melody has led his talents to far more visceral ends in the genre with the likes of TRAPPED, CELLULAR and HIDE AND SEEK, topping off his multi-hyphenate hat as perhaps the one […]Read On »


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CD Review: CLUE Original Soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 03/06/2011
Clue Soundtrack | © 2011 La La Land Records

For all of the toy-to-movie adaptations ever made by Hollywood, 1985’s CLUE still stands as the only one done from a board game (sorry doubters, but JUMANJI was made up for that film). Director Jonathan Lynne’s staging of CLUE’s lethal antics as an all-star bedroom farce further propelled the picture to cult status. Now a phenomenon that’s grown to ROCKY HORROR stage show heights gets another wonderful knife in the attic with the release of John Morris’ wonderfully antic underscore, a Baroque-style dark and stormy night of screwball music. As the prime musical suspect behind such Mel Brooks satires as […]Read On »


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CD Review: SUNSET BOULEVARD – Original Soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 02/09/2011
Sunset Boulevard Soundtrack | © 2010 Counterpoint Records

If it was only talk that helped to kill the silent movie stars, it’s likely that some of them may have been able to squeeze a few more years out of the goggle-eyed mooning and over-expressive hand gestures that passed for screen acting. But when the rapturous strains of Eastern European émigrés like Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Max Steiner and Franz Waxman joined with the newfangled dialogue recording and sound effects, the silent stars were indeed shot deader than the screenwriting lothario who messes with the wrong Hollywood cougar in 1950’s SUNSET BLVD. So it would be fitting that one of […]Read On »


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CD Review: BRUC soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/31/2011
Bruc Soundtrack | ©2010 Movie Score Media

You can likely put the number of Napoleon-ea action scores on a short list, a unique quality that makes the genre open musical territory for Spanish-born (and American-trained) composer Xavier Capellas, who’s handled the scoring chores on such Spanish-funded horror pictures as BEYOND RE-ANIMATOR and FAUST. BRUC carries as similarly unhinged quality as a Catalonian goes Rambo on the Emperor’s assassins who pursue him through the mountainous wilds of Monteressat, giving Capellas the opportunity to unleash heroic hell in one of the more weirdly off-kilter period scores since Joe Lo Duca’s BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF. Here more symphonically traditional adventure […]Read On »


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