When a score is sucessful, it's due in great part to non-score fans, who are trying to re-live some moment of beauty from the film itself. Ocassionally, you get the break-away pop theme, like Chariots of Fire, or St. Elmo's Fire which show up on easy listening stations to this day.

Other times, you get the heavily thematic syrupy-themed albums, like Somewhere in Time and Titanic, which Non-soundtrack fans purchase for some unclear reason they can identify themselves, except that "it sounds romantic."

And then you get the people who like the neo-classical/new-age/celtic/world/epic sound, (which is a large and sometimes unclear grouping in and of itself), but these are typically non-score fans who find albums like Conan the Barbarian and Last of the Mohicans a fantastic listen--also for reasons they can't quite define.

Now, these movies enjoyed some kind of popularity, which accounts for the reason that their music is still heard today. Barring those particular gems that film-music fans treasure, I cannot think of a popular score that came from a non- or even moderately popular/sucessful movie. Perhaps there is one out there....

But to the point, I do think a film's success is aided by its' score. I think the effect is subliminal to most, however.

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Originally posted by Lancelot:

Other times, you get the heavily thematic syrupy-themed albums, like Somewhere in Time and Titanic, which Non-soundtrack fans purchase for some unclear reason they can identify themselves, except that "it sounds romantic."

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lol

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Aside from the obvious mentions, I think Pirates of the Caribbean was aided a great deal by its score, although I'm sure many disillusioned teenagers were disappointed when they realized their attention span couldn't enjoy a film-score out of context....

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Those of you who live in non-English speaking countries will have no doubt seen many classic films on TV dubbed into the local language (that's another subject for discussion) where the music score has been completely changed. The examples are too numerous to mention, but it's amazing (or perhaps not) how most people don't see the difference. Boris Karloff is still THE MUMMY, even when he's speaking Spanish and is backed by Franz Reizenstein's score for the Hammer remake.

In many cases (JAWS, PSYCHO, THE OMEN - but not only in the horror genre, it's just that these are closest to my heart), the music is part of our collective memory, and the original scores do go a long way in anchoring the movies in our subconscious, but if those particular films never had those particular scores to start with I don't think their place in movie history would have been terribly different. A reduced bunch of us would like some films a lot less or a lot more, but that's probably about it.

What about generally accepted great films with "nondescript" scores. Who remembers Max Steiner's score for THE BIG SLEEP? Would it have been more popular, and even more highly regarded, with a stunning Bernard Herrmann score? Perhaps only by us here on the Board.

Well to begin with we can take a film with the most nondescript score there is, something like THE BIRDS, which doesn't really have a score, and wonder if it would be more effective with one by Herrmann. Certainly TORN CURTAIN would've been more tense with a Herrmann score over the Addison one.