Monstrous Movie Music

The clips include such composers as Herman Stein, Bronislau Kaper, David Buttolph etc. Head on over and have a Monstrously good listen!!

I listened to some of the tracks from CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON and IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE too. Now, I could be wrong, but I think that some of those (mostly Stein) tracks are incorporated into the suites that Henry Mancini did on his "Mostly Monsters..." album. I know that Mancini worked alone on some pieces for the Universal 50s SF/horrors, so it was a bit surprising to see him adapting other composers' work for that album (if that was the case - maybe I'm misunderstanding his contributions).

Listening to the Herman Stein pieces in particular was a real ear-opener. What a wonderful, underappreciated talent. Love those photos of him at the MMM site too - he looks such a very spritely, fun gentleman.

The new THIS ISLAND EARTH release should be great, as should 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH, with contributions from about everybody under the sun. Quite strange to see names like Steiner, Duning and Raksin making an appearance. You'd think that the final result would be all over the shop, but it seems to be all cut from similar cloth, so it'll be sufficiently homogenious I imagine.

The liner notes are copious and contain photos and enough info to satisfy just about anyone. Their selections cover a wide range of some of the best (or worst depending on your view) monster movies ever made. Creature from the Black Lagoon also has some score from the early Tarzan movies. The suite from Them! composed by Bronislau Kaper make this a good buy even if you don’t include all the other great stuff on this CD. More Monstrous Movie Music include score from one of the more obscure Schlock SciFi movies ever, The Monolith Monsters.

Regarding the question of when these new discs will be released, this question came up at FSM in December and here is what David Schecter of Monstrous Movie Music had to say:
QUOTE:Thanks so much for your interest in our upcoming releases.Our next two CDs will be coming out at the same time, and as I told Ray Harryhausen tonight, his "tribute" disc (MIGHTY JOE YOUNG) will come out no later than January of 2003.

You can read the full thread here:
http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.asp?threadID=11058&forumID=1
It contains some interesting news about Tiomkin’s score for The Thing as well as news about things that MMM is doing and will not be doing.

Wooo hooo! Wait. That's this week, right?

quote:

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Originally posted by PeterK:
Can't wait any longer for these![/B]

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But seriously, we recently decided to release both of our next two CDs at the same time, and that meant I had to tie up some legal loose ends (not to mention edit down my 40,000 word liner notes to about 22,000), but I assure you both CDs will be coming out soon, barring any disasters. And this way, you don't have to order one and then order the next one a month later, which means we don't have to box it up twice and stand in line at the post office twice, which is good news for us. It also saves us a TON on printing costs, and with the size of our liner books, that comes out to a big saving. But know that we won't be passing those savings on to you, our devoted customers. We will instead be keeping them for ourselves so that we can eat.

One disaster we've had to work through is what we are now referring to as "The MMM Curse," and all I can say is I'm glad we didn't do any Mummy music or the curse would have probably been much worse. It seems that just about everyone associated with Monstrous Movie Music came down with serious illnesses over the past two years, and that really stopped us at times. No gory details to share with you, but the only one who seems to have escaped unscathed is our great conductor Masatoshi Mitsumoto, who has been in perfect health. It's too bad, too, because his work was finished years ago, and if he had gotten a little sick instead of us, then the project would have continued on schedule. But please don't tell Masa I said that...

Anyway, we're all in various stages of healing, but you're lucky we didn't come out with the discs any earlier, or I have a feeling the "MMM Curse" might have affected our listening audience as well. In fact, our mascot, Mollie Sue MacSchecter has been to the vet quite a few times over the past month, as she's been having some medical problems, too. We will be sure to spray every disc we sell with Lysol and possibly irradiate it to kill all germs before we let it out into the marketplace, so we can once and for all put an end to this curse.

So thanks for hanging in there just a little longer, and know that we're working as fast as we can.

David Schecter
Producer, MMM

P. S. To answer your questions, Herman Stein's Main Title for TARANTULA was written for a Rock Hudson western, as you thought, called THE LAWLESS BREED. The opening and closing of the original version was removed, since it was a little too "western" sounding, and the middle section was re-recorded by Universal-International for TARANTULA.

Yes, Mancini did use some of the themes created by other composers who worked on those same pictures, such as Stein's "Creature theme" from CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON and Stein's Theremin theme from IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE. But he then went off in his own Hankish directions with that music, so it really is "his" music rather than Stein's. When a composer had to use part of a "song" as a theme, he unfortunately didn't get credit for the music he composed, and that's why so much of the music in THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN is not credited to Stein, Salter, or Irving Gertz, who really wrote the score. Instead it's credited to the writers who composed "The Girl In A Lonely Room," a rather dreadful song by two non-film composers, whose melody was incorporated into various cues.

>>Listening to the Herman Stein pieces in particular was a real ear-opener. What a wonderful, underappreciated talent. Love those photos of him at the MMM site too - he looks such a very spritely, fun gentleman.

I passed your kind message on to Herman, who was so pleased to hear it. Yes, he was and still is a very underappreciated talent. He had a very recognizable style, a very muscular American style, jazz-influenced at times, and his music is always a joy to listen to. Had he received more than the handful of screen credits he received during his career, I think he'd be held in much higher regard and would have scored many more films by himself. In Hollywood, if you ain't got a credit, you didn't do the picture.

As for him being "spritely," Herman laughed so hard you could hear his bones creaking over the phone. The only time he is spritely is when he falls, which fortunately isn't very often. But his mind is spritely -- he's quick-witted, funny, and has a great memory for everything that occurred within the last ten or twelve minutes.

Here's a suggestion you might consider--after the release of your next two efforts, why not release a book of your UNEDITED liner notes.

Wow! - Butterfly effect! I'd never ever in a million years have imagined that a comment I made here would end up making Herman Stein's bones creak through a phone! My biggest contribution to changing the future of the world!