I am another loyal FSM customer who would love to see a release of Leonard Rosenman's THE CAR. The music sets the mood perfectly along with some of Albert Whitlock's matte paintings.
I think it would be a natural to Do a double CD of THE CAR and RACE WITH THE DEVIL also by Rosenman.
Brian ?
Yeah those two movies are pure grindhouse feel and putting them both on a cd if there wasn´t enough music for one to fill out, would be awsome... Great forgotten gems from a great composer Love Prophecy too
I saw this film on its first release in cinemas. It was of course, back then, the best film ever made (along with a hundred other things which I saw back then - THE MANITOU, RUBY...). I bought the DVD a few weeks back, and what WAS surprising (to me) was just how effective the film is today. Yes, it's Spielberg's DUEL meets JAWS, but it's never boring, in fact I was hugely entertained, and I hadn't even had beer. I must admit, I found Kathleen Lloyd's "spunky" (no jokes, you Brits) heroine just a little annoying (although I fancied her when I first saw it), but all in all it's a very well-made film.
What stood out once more was Leonard Rosenman's exciting score. Rosenman is always Rosenman, so you get multiple tone pyramids, a lot of "dum-dum-dum-dum" and, as you may know, his take on THAT old horror staple once more, but it's all quite thrilling.
I don't really NEED a release of the score, but if anyone releases it, I'll give you, say, 5 dollars. 2.50... OK, 10.
Just posting in as another FSM customer who would love to see a release of THE CAR on CD. Anchor Bay released the first edition of this under-rated film on DVD and had a great surround mix so, you could get some decently isolated music by playing around with the surround sound. It just made me appreciate Rosenman's score even more and revealed some nice subtle things there. This plus his Prophecy score OR Race with the Devil could make a great double album. PLEASE PLEASE! thanks Brian
Someone at Intrada told me they had looked into doing RACE WITH THE DEVIL but the elements had deteriorated and were unusable. Or unsalvagable. I forget the exact wording. That was about 10 years ago. But maybe as restoration technology improves... They might be able to tell you more on the Intrada forum - if their memory is better than mine.
Those particular choices would be difficult to do as double-headers. THE CAR is Universal. RACE WITH THE DEVIL is Fox. PROPHECY is Paramount.
As a long-time Rosenman fan, (loved his contributions for Combat! TV series), I thought he did a great job with The Car. It was a great interpretation of Franz Liszt's "Totentanz". John Williams also used some of Totentanz nicely for certain portions of his score for Close Encounters. The score for The Car is long overdue.
Love that demonic "Lincoln" inspired hell-mobile. Would be nice to have this score, but with no album to have access to the Universal masters... It may take a little longer to get.
That Lincoln hell mobile you refer to was actually a Continental Mk. III (which was NEVER a Lincoln) that was customized by the legendary George Barris. He said that curved front end was one of the most difficult things to make on the car. Rosenman's score was noted for incorporating the "Dies Irae".
Well, I'm 6 years late but I'm glad to find a discussion on The Car soundtrack so here's the story....
I used to watch The Car religiously when I was 6 years old, gawd knows why, but I haven't seen it since.
I also used to watch Bakshi's animated version of Lord of the Rings on loop, from childhood well into my twenties... it's a big film for me, quite often I'd put it on as bedtime 'music' when I was at university, to pass out to when i was pissed/stoned.
So, tonight I watch The Car for the first time in 30 years, and what was the familiar musical phrase that I find recurring? There's a lot of similarities, he was clearly working through some ideas.
I urge anyone who is familiar with one of the films to watch the other, it's fascinating to see the cross-polination. It makes perfect sense that Rosenman would reuse the idea, but to stumble across this tonight is pretty mind-blowing... I wonder if this has been noticed before?
I did not know the name Leonard Rosenman before tonight but to discover that musically he connects two soundtracks of my childhood is deeply satisfying. And utterly weird.
