Instantly I took the disc, drove home and slid it into my CD player. What followed was an instant barrage of dark instruments that burst through my speakers like fire...then suddenly exploding into brilliant fanfare of the Superman and Krull kind. The kind that makes you want to play the CD over and over again just to hear that 3:19 of score.

It was remeniscent of the likes of old biblical epics such as The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur. The story was based on greek Mythos.

Track after track was the stuff of the film scores of Hollywood's Golden Age...almost rivaling that of John Williams. It had a definate feeling of the Korngold era.

I've listened to the CD 3 times since I got it..and I still can't get enough of this brilliant music.

Oh woops...I forgot to mention the name of the CD!

It's Clash of the Titans by Laurence Rosenthal.

If you have access to this score then get is ASAP, for you may never have a chance to experience such a classic and historical piece of music.

It is probably the greatest fantasy score ever.

Are you just talking about fairly recent films Aaron?

Williams was also reported to be in line for the original BEASTMASTER, but its director Don Coscarelli told me the other day that Williams was never even approached -- they were realistic enough to realize they'd never land him -- but they DID screen the picture for Maurice Jarre, who wasn't impressed, and passed. The final Lee Holdridge score is so terrific that no one was disappointed.

Maybe we need to establish what we're talking about, re: the exact nature of this genre. On reflection, for example, I think I prefer Basil Poledouris' CONAN THE BARBARIAN to Horner's KRULL (apples and oranges, though) -- but is CONAN more or less a fantasy than KRULL? (CONAN's category, if you want to get minute about it, is Sword and Sorcery, which KRULL really isn't.)

Akira Ifukube wrote two wonderful scores for the general Epic Fantasy category, THE BIRTH OF JAPAN (1959) and LITTLE PRINCE & THE 8-HEADED DRAGON (animated, 1963). Masaru Sato wrote the offbeat and terrific THE GREAT BANDIT (1963, released here as LOST WORLD OF SINBAD -- a wonderful movie, by the way, starring Toshiro Mifune as the Bandit.)

Not the best score I've ever heard, but a very nice one: the little-known Jose Nieto's work on the Spanish picture SWORD & THE DRAGON, parts of it available (still, I think!) from Varese on a double CD with another suite by Maurice Jarre (this was the "Seville Film Music Concerts" double -- worth having more for the obscure Nieto stuff than the Jarre music, all of which is easily available, and better performed, elsewhere. Fortunately Varese knocked the price down, so it should only run you the price of a single CD instead of the double it happens to be.)

I didn't mention Herrmann's Harryhausen work because I wanted to go to bed. If we get started on that, we might never stop. But it hardly gets better than THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD (that Sinbad guy again, hmmm)

John Scott's YOR was reissued by Southern Cross with lots of music not heard in the finished film or on the original LP/CD. He also wrote the wonderful, and still woefully unreleased, PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT.

Morricone wrote HUNDRA, among others -- I found a cheap HUNDRA and decided to get it, but I haven't liked it too much so far. (Of the roughly 2 million scores Morricone has written so far, I'm never sure what to buy. It's mainly a question of how flush I feel at the time, I guess.)

Dr. Evil (may I ask whether your doctorate is in Evil itself, or something more mundane like, say, physics, and "Evil" is like, say, a tagname) --

are you suggesting (and I don't disagree) that EMPIRE and CONAN and suchlike are not "fantasy" scores in the same way KRULL and LEGEND are? I was kind of trying to sort out the various subgenres of fantasy in the message above, but must admit that it's more often than not a thoroughly subjective question.

Only curious, pal.

About the scores, yes, I separate Krull and Legend from Conan and ESB, I always had different approaches, a space movie is not a kind of " fairy tale " stuff.
When I was a kid ( last year!),I loved to read all those famous fairy tales. ( I still, but no time for the grow ups). And Legend and Krull fits well in this case, just like Edward Scissorhands.
Well, this is all I have to say about it!!

And, as good as it is, CLASH OF THE TITANS does not live up to, say, THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, THE JUNGLE BOOK, THE UNINVITED, THE WOLF MAN, FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER, A BOY TEN FEET TALL/SAMMY GOING SOUTH, KING KONG, CAT PEOPLE, PORTRAIT OF JENNIE, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (Auric version), GODZILLA (Ifukube, NOT Arnold), NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD, ALAKAZAM THE GREAT, THE TIME MACHINE, 7 FACES OF DOCTOR LAO, LEGEND, DRAGONSLAYER, HEAVY METAL, GORGO, Ifukube's MAJIN scores and numerous other, excellent, scores to borderline horror/fantasy/sci-fi films.

--Kyp

PS: Now let's hope Horner can create a score like "Willow", "Braveheart" and "Titnaic" for "Lord of the Rings" (it he gets the job that is )

Still, I find it hard to narrow anything down to a single best. I think Conan the Barbarian in a top contender as are several others but for me the Charles Schneer/Bernard Herrmann collaborations absolutely define the fantasy filmscore. Jason and the Argonauts, any one of the Sinbads, The Lost World. Brilliant stuff. Don't forget Rozsa's Thief of Bagdad either.

P.S. Is there anyone else besides me that considers the Star Wars Trilogy to be fantasy and not sci-fi? Those scores are at the top of the list too.

I just oulled out the CD this morning for the first time in over a year. I'd forgotten what a marvelous score this is.

I would say that much of what passed as horror in the '30s, '40s, '50, and '60s is closer to fantasy than say SILENCE OF THE LAMBS or more realistic horror, without fantasy elements.

I think that if it were done in an appropriately artistic manner, "silence" in space could work...

Jeron

as is more common than not, I think we're on the same page. "Fantasy" is an extremely broad category -- I wrote a book about the Japanese fantasy films (practically no one read it and it's not in stores, so don't ask me about it -- I'm setting up a New Improved edition though.) By calling the genre "fantasy" films I felt I could cover everything from hard science fiction to monster films to horror films and even to fanciful pictures with little supernatural element like the abovementioned GREAT BANDIT. Even THE CRAZY CATS' BIG ADVENTURE can count as a fantasy film. Of course, the nature of film is INHERENTLY fantasy -- SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is only borderline realistic, if you think about it (Lecter's a great character, but psychologically he's a real mishmash -- I thought the version of the character we saw in Michael Mann's RED DRAGON was more authentic and terrifying -- and Buffalo Bill is entertaining but preposterous -- if you think that hard about it. Good fantasy doesn't allow us to, and Thomas Harris spins great fantasies.)

I suspect what the original posters here meant -- and I responded in kind, originally -- was what we might call "epic" fantasy, for lack of a better word: LORD OF THE RINGS, KRULL, WILLOW, and so on. But as I suggested above, CONAN could slide in there as well, although it belongs to the subgenre of "sword and sorcery" (and though I discounted KRULL from the same category, there's plenty of swords and sorcerers in that one, too.)

Consider the idea of his work and name replacing David Arnold's. I can hear all the wonderful music already. This guy should be working!

ALL of this music is wonderful, and we love it for infinitely diverse reasons!

I grew up with the Harryhausen/Herrmann collaborations, and they remain my favorites.

But I love all of the others mentioned above as well!

"Can't we all just get along?"

Conan...yeah!

Heavy Metal ...yeah!

Krull...yeah!

Legend...yeah!

Dark Crystal (not mentioned so far)...yeah!

everything Herrmann/Harryhausen...yeah!

Loads of others....yeah!

I would proabably update that post and say that Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring is the best fantasy score ever, since I wrote it years before the film came to be.