I hear licks he used in "The White Damwn", "Wait Until Dark", "Sunset", "Visions of Eight",etc..

What you might not know is that LIFEFORCE was very much a return to the style that Mancini used back in the 1950's for alot of low-budget horror films like "It Came From Outer Space", "Creature from the Black Lagoon",etc....

There's a great album called Monsters,Murder and Mayham" or something to that effect that shows off the darker and more orchestral side of the Late Mr. Mancini's work.

Did you know that John Williams got his start as a session piano player and worked in Mancini's orchestra for years, as a matter of fact he was the pianoist on PETER GUNN TV Series. Which predates the start of his own Career.

What you are hearing might well be the influance of Mancini on Williams as opposed to the other way around.

IMHO of course.

Regards

There's nothing to do with John Williams' work if you ask me (actully you did).

A ***** score!

Lonely Guy returns to the discount CD store, only to find that the one copy of Lifeforce has already been sold.

"HA, HAAA!" laughs the store manager, "Late AGAIN, Lonely Guy! That CD was SOLD just moments after YOU put it back on the rack! It was purchased by a fella with two gorgeous blondes on his arms! He told me that he met them at www.prisonbabes.com! Two hours later he called to tell me that he SOLD the Lifeforce CD at eBay for $200!!!"

"Next time, I'll think about BUYING a bargain CD!" Lonely Guy laments...

There are alot of things I could say in reply to this.

What I will say is this, Henry Mancini was IMHO was one of the greatest composers EVER to work in Hollywood, In my view is was in the same league as Rozsa,Herrmann,Waxman,Goldsmith,Newman,etc..

His scores set a very high standard in the field, His "Pop Style" was designed more for the record buying public when it came to his soundtrack albums, however his scores were quite a different matter...

Go watch "Days of Wine and Roses", "Two for the Road", "Wait Until Dark", "The Night Vistior","The White Dawn", "The Great Imposter" and countless other others.

The Man was a master of the art of scoring,a first rate musician and a kind and giving human being.

The Day he died we lost one the giants of film music.

And LIFEFORCE is IMHO one of the best scores I've heard in the last twenty years.

Regards

Ford A. Thaxton

Mancini was (and still is) one of the greatest composers of our time.

I just found The Great Mouse Detective awhile back. Fun stuff!

As for the film, it's one of the nuttiest things I've ever seen, almost awe-inspiring in its badness. Yet it's another of those hugely enjoyable guilty pleasures. Good shots of naked women too.

...Interesting how Mancini soundtrack albums like Tiffany's weren't score albums, per se, but mostly pop-arranged pieces derived from score themes. Gleason did the same thing for his (credited) Gigot album. Either way, the sound is oh so marvelous.

PS
Hey Shaun, here's a preview of Part 3, now that you mention it...

Steve brought up Mancini and the "cocktail sound"; after excitedly correcting him on the proper usage of the McKone classification "cocktail lounge music", the juices got flowing again.

"I don’t know how many times the subject of 'Moon River' came up, but it wasn’t a true Mancini celebration until Guy talked about his favorite placement of it in Breakfast At Tiffany’s. And for the rest of my everlovin’ Tiffany-viewing life, every time that Greyhound bus pulls out with Buddy Ebsen ('Doc') staring wistfully at his beloved Lula Mae...well, it's impossible not to think of Guy. That shot with that music was Guy’s signature piece. He owned it."

*********************************************************

quote:

---

Originally posted by logied:
alas I can,t read music.

---

It's not that hard to learn if you have a piano or some other sort of keyboard, actually. The main problem is to be able to read it fast enough so you can play at normal speed without counting the lines for each note - I can't.

I understand that George A. Romero wanted him to score THE DARK HALF, but the studio was in violent opposition to the idea, so thoroughly mired in the "Mancini=pop" delusion were they. (Romero was happy with the score he WAS allowed to purchase, by Christopher Young. Although as Chris would be the first to admit, Mancini was masterfully scoring Universal horror pictures while Chris was still in his jammies.) Mancini did get to score the strange psychic horror film FEAR, however (1990 or thereabouts.)

Some of Mancini's score was lifted from the film of LIFEFORCE, to be replaced with tidbits by a young unknown named Michael Kamen (none of whose work appears on the Mancini LIFEFORCE album, of course.) I think a third composer may have worked on it as well, but the IMDb doesn't have the name. David Whitaker, mentioned above by Mr. Watt, is as good a guess as anybody.

His earlier horror scores are classics of the genre, and while LifeForce is something of a return to form, it is with a larger palette than he had previously had access to at Universal, therefore giving the score a much larger scale.

The album is quite good and highly recommended.

The American version of LifeForce severely cut down a long sequence at the beginning of the film in which the characters explore the alien craft. This was re-scored by Michael Kamen and James Guthrie, with a bit here and there from David Whitaker.

Anyway, since this is a more general Mancini thread, I have to ask the following: