FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW

Review of Monstrous Movie Music (Compilations)

MMM

More MMM

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... on any of the equally qualified albums from the 'Monstrous Movie Music' label if you grew up loving those B-rate atomic-inspired sci-fi flicks of the 1950's.

Avoid it... if even the greater fidelity in sound quality of these re-recordings won't satisfy your digital era sensibilities.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Monstrous Movie Music: (Compilations) One of the sensations of the movie music collecting community in 1996 was the introduction of a series of "Monstrous Movie Music" CDs that are like few others ever offered in the genre. The CDs contain re-recordings of classic 1950's and 60's sci-fi B-classics, including Them!, It Came from Outer Space, It Came from Beneath the Sea, and Tarantula, among others. These films are highly unlikely to attract much attention from modern viewers, but for people growing up in the age when the atomic bomb was blamed for all sorts of bizarre natural mutations, they were a staple of Saturday afternoon fun. Hollywood just doesn't seem as interested in showing giant ants attacking Los Angeles or a giant octopus (minus a few tentacles, of course, as part of production cost cutting) attacking San Francisco anymore. The scores for these films were often anonymous because the nature of the films didn't attract A-list composers with big studio contracts. Among names that you will recognize, however, are Henri Mancini and Bronislau Kaper. The original recordings of these scores have rarely made it onto CD, and when they do, it's often in muddled bootleg form. The market simply isn't there. But the "Monstrous Movie Music" albums that first hit stores in 1996 were a whole new concept. Producers Kathleen Mayne and David Schecter recognized that part of the glory of these scores existed in how they were recorded, and not just the compositions themselves. With most re-recordings in the digital era, the obvious temptation is to make everything sound bigger and better, with a wet atmospheric mix that mimics the grandest concert hall. On occasion, some of the scores from this era and genre in Hollywood have been re-recorded in small snippets on album already, but when beefed up in size from the usual 30 to 50 performers of the original to a whopping 80 to 100 of a modern symphony, some of the intimate magic of the originals is lost.

To solve this problem, the husband and wife team of Mayne and Schecter arranged to have an authentically-sized ensemble perform significant numbers of cues from these films in environments not much different from those of the originals. With only a few dozen performers in some cases, microphones were placed in close proximity with the players and the stage was restricted to a smaller size. With Masatoshi Misumoto conducting the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Cracow, a truly authentic recording has been preserved. In some cases, Mayne reconstructed the arrangements, though even fans of the films will be hard pressed to find significant flaws in these interpretations. The resulting performances are impressive in their loyalty to the originals; the major difference, of course, being the fidelity of the recording and the producers' ability to provide cues that that have, in some cases, been lost in their source recordings. The entire endeavor was a labor of love for the producers, whose attention to detail in the project was so meticulous that the booklets for each CD are over 30 pages in length. Their spirit in serving the film music community was so enthusiastic that they even suggested that fans send them requests for future recordings. The original two "Monstrous Movie Music" releases received considerable acclaim in late 1996 and early 1997, including two places in the top ten film music albums of the year list from Tower Records' Pulse! magazine, awards from Cinefantastique (the sci-fi movie magazine), and significant print in Film Score Monthly. In 2000, the label would follow with a third album highlighted by Creature From The Black Lagoon and in 2006, two more albums in the series would feature This Island Earth and Mighty Joe Young in front of several other lesser known scores on each album. The production quality of all the albums, as well as the vintage authenticity for these recordings, continue to impress, and for fans of the genre these products have no weakness. It's interesting that ten years after the initial release of the first two "Monstrous Movie Music" albums, there hasn't been another group attempting the same kind of faithful reproduction of lost classics in the history of film scores.

• Monstrous Movie Music: ****
• More Monstrous Movie Music: ****

TRACK LISTINGS:

Monstrous Movie Music:
Total Time: 68:38

The Mole People: 1956 - Herman Stein, Heinz Roemheld (2:43) • 1. Trademark (0:25) • 2. Prologue (0:52) • 3. Main Title (1:26) Them!: 1954 - Bronislau Kaper (27:13) • 4. Main Title (1:00) • 5. Lost Girl (1:59) • 6. Wreck/Intercommunication (3:14) • 7. Little Girl Wakens (0:40) • 8. Ant Hole/Burning the Ant Hole (3:27) • 9. The Descent/Ant Chamber (4:11) • 10. Conference Table/The Wall Map (3:08) • 11. Interior of Morgue (1:39) • 12. Military Takes Over/Through the Tunnels (3:04) • 13. Ant Hole #2/End of the Monsters (1:22) • 14. Ant Fugue (3:29) It Came From Outer Space: 1953 - Stein, Gertz, Mancini (20:11) • 15. Main Title (0:27) • 16. Sand Rock (0:51) • 17. Star Gazing (1:37) • 18. Visitors from Space (2:37) • 19. The Thing Follows (1:31) • 20. Mysterious Desert (1:48) • 21. Globs Give Instructions (1:55) • 22. Prospector Globbed (1:45) • 23. Dr. Snell Disappears (0:46) • 24. Kidnapping Ellen (1:10) • 25. Glob Frank Killed (2:15) • 26. Killing Glob Ellen (1:10) • 27. End Title (0:56) • 28. End Cast (1:02) It Came From Beneath the Sea: 1955 - Mischa Bakaleinikoff (9:16) • 29. Atom-Powered Submarine (0:21) • 30. Main Title (1:28) • 31. Love by the Sea (0:49) • 32. Mister Monster #2 (0:43) • 33. Tentacle/It vs. Golden Gate Bridge (1:04) • 34. Mister Monster (1:14) • 35. Suckers in the Streets! (0:51) • 36. Monster Beneath the Sea/Destroying the Beast (2:31) • 37. Bakaleinikoda (0:15) Bonus Tracks from It Came From Outer Space (not listed on packaging) • 38. Main Title (0:29) • 39. Visitors from Space (2:38) • 40. The Thing Follows (1:33) • 41. Prospector Globbed (1:46) • 42. Kidnapping Ellen (1:11)

---

More Monstrous Movie Music:
Total Time: 59:03

Tarantula: 1955 - Herman Stein, Henry Mancini (18:42) • 1. Introduction (0:11) • 2. Main Title (1:11) • 3. Gruesome Corpse (1:15) • 4. Radioactive Research (1:05) • 5. Spider on the Loose (3:05) • 6. Burying the Evidence (1:35) • 7. Side Effects (1:15) • 8. Big Bunnies (0:56) • 9. Agar to the Rescue (1:23) • 10. Evening Snack (1:33) • 11. Bringing Down the House (2:51) • 12. Blasted Arachnid (1:50) • 13. End TItle (0:32) The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms: 1953 - David Buttolph (18:46) • 14. Main Title (1:11) • 15. Far North/Expedition/Monster (2:06) • 16. Lost Scientist/Beast Sighted (2:20) • 17. Chord (0:09) • 18. Extinguishing the Lighthouse (0:57) • 19. Diving Bell (1:13) • 20. Bell And Octopus (1:54) • 21. Absent Professor (1:31) • 22. Monster Does Manhattan (1:57) • 23. Herald Square/Germs (1:14) • 24. Up the Coaster/Finale (4:14) The Monolith Monsters: 1957 - Irving Gertz (1:03) • 25. Main Title (1:03) Gorgo: 1961 - Angelo Francesco Lavagnino (19:43) • 26. Main Title (1:48) • 27. Restless Sea/Underwater/Tidal Wave (2:21) • 28. On the Island/Inner Room (2:08) • 29. Gorgo Sighted/Gorgo Surfaces (1:48) • 30. Fire Fight (1:23) • 31. Making A Plan/Ocean Voyage (1:35) • 32. Gorgo Escapes/Mama Rises (1:14) • 33. Jet Alert/Battleship Barrage (1:07) • 34. Military Might/Torpedo Attack (2:05) • 35. Big Ben Demolished (0:56) • 36. London Trampled (1:09) • 37. Return To Sea/End Title (2:09)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert includes very extensive information about the scores and films. Producer David Schecter states:

"Our goal in the 'Monstrous Movie Music' series is to present the music as it might have sounded had you been on the scoring stages, which is how most modern film soundtracks sound. This is opposed to most labels' re-recording projects, which have a distant-sounding orchestra that reminds one of being in the concert hall. Our CDs do sound different from practically anything else out there in the film music market, and we've received lots of compliments from people who have told us that along with the Bernard Herrmann Phase IV recordings of the '70s and the Leroy Shields Little Rascals' music, ours sound more like film music was meant to sound than most other film music releases. So we're pleased that we seem to have achieved our goal. I feel film music should be vibrant and powerful, and above all, be a dramatic listening experience, not a passive one."

Copyright © 1996-2024, Filmtracks Publications. All rights reserved.
The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Monstrous Movie Music are Copyright © 1996, Monstrous Movie Music and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 10/31/96 and last updated 5/29/06.