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Posted: |
May 4, 2016 - 2:21 PM
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By: |
FredGarvin
(Member)
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I think most "bad" scores I'm pretty ambivalent about. It's an inherent flaw in the art itself, because most work for the movie even if they don't away from it. And I don't envy composers and what they must go through. I think our favorite composers are usually the ones at the top of these types of lists because of our own expectations. This is certainly true for mine:
INCHON - I remember getting this when I was young, and I had never been so disappointed. Considering Goldsmith's amazing output in the early 80's, I was baffled by the uninteresting themes and how poor everything sounded.
DENNIS THE MENACE - The score did its job I suppose, but what a horrifying movie. Tied with this, pretty much any "light-hearted" stuff that Goldsmith did in the 80's and 90's that I could never get into (Mr Baseball, Rent-A-Cop, etc). I always felt Goldsmith's sense of humor worked best in the Dante films he did (as well as NIMH).
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN - Nobody loves a good John Barry 007 score more than me, but wow, this was pretty bad. While there are a few decent tracks, the theme song was awful. Thankfully, Barry more than made up for it with Moonraker.
MIDNIGHT EXPRESS - Serviceable, I suppose and completely different to anything else out at the time, but so overrated and sounds completely daft now. Especially when you look at what it beat during the Oscars that year (Superman, really?). Having said that, I have always admired Moroder's work in pop music, especially with Donna Summer (genius), etc.
I'm sure 100 more bad ones will come to mind after I write this
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D. Dragonslayer by Alex North: Sorry Robert Townson, I seem to have it in for your favorite composer, but Alex really missed the boat with this, in my opinion, biggest failure in film scoring history. He was given everything a film composer could ask for: A solid script, great direction by Matthew Robbins, beautiful locations, special effects way ahead of their time and a marvelous antagonist in the shape of Dragon King Vermithrax, and a story to boot. What does dear Alex deliver? The timid pluckings of what seemed to be a chamber-orchestra-sized band with no themes for any of the characters, no sweeping dragon motif and not a melody in sight. Sorry Alex, zero out of four.
Then there is a score that is very special to me: While it didn't work in the movie, because it was completely anachronistic and stood out like a sore thumb every time the first note of a cue arose, I love it as a listening experience outside the movie. That score is Ladyhawke by Andrew Powell. In 1985, when the movie was released, I was madly in love with a girl named Claudia, and the film was so romantic that I fell in love with it the same way I had with her. The music was supposed to have been "our soundtrack".
It's probably the most mis-scored film ever, but, oh, what a revelation for your ear buds on the stereo. (Especially when you're in love with Claudia.)
So let me know which score affronted you. I hope to hear from you on this message board, be it constructive criticism or blatant rebuttal.
For me, actually, "Dragonslayer" is a wonderful score.
Also -- for me -- both the film "Ladyhawke" and its score are dismally boring beyond imagining. Wouldn't waste another five seconds on either of them.
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Posted: |
May 4, 2016 - 6:37 PM
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By: |
pp312
(Member)
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For me, actually, "Dragonslayer" is a wonderful score.
Well, since Spartacus is probably my second all-time favourite score I would have to assume that, even if I don't get it, Dragonslayer has musical merit, as North wouldn't write rubbish. Nevertheless I'd bet that if you took 100 ordinary movie lovers and asked their opinion the majority would say something like, "Yeah, it WAS kind of weird. Never sort of got going. Bit of a downer really. They should've swapped it out for something with a bit more life."
The musically erudite on this forum can extoll the score's virtues as music, but Dragonslayer was a failure, and I'd be willing to bet that part of that failure was due, however subconsciously, to the music. (And I still can't hear a theme).
Oh, and someone mentioned that Kunzel recording, which I have. I remember thinking the first time I heard it, "What bloody annoying music". I still think so.
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The musically erudite on this forum can extoll the score's virtues as music, but Dragonslayer was a failure, and I'd be willing to bet that part of that failure was due, however subconsciously, to the music. (And I still can't hear a theme)
I'm not sure I can agree with that. Perhaps, who knows, people who mostly listen to rock/pop music may not enjoy listening to DRAGONSLAYER on its own all that much, could be, but many successful movies had more abstract or less melodically hummable themes than DRAGONSLAYER.
There is some emphasis here on North's music being challenging and for musically erudite ears, and it's true there are a lot of interesting things going on in the music that can be analyzed "intellectually" if one is so inclined, but personally, I responded to North's music for DRAGONSLAYER on first listening instantly on a visceral level, "feeling" the sheer power of musical expression and being swept away with it, rather than pondering about it. And there are plenty of easily identifiable themes in the film score, some I recognized were recycled from North's rejected score for 2001 - A SPACE ODYSSEY.
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