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Posted: |
May 13, 2020 - 2:42 PM
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By: |
Xebec
(Member)
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I recently watched The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971), and enjoyed the film, and was even more impressed by the excellent score. It has a wonderful lyrical quality to it that has been stuck in my head for days.
The film itself is in keeping with Witchfinder General or The Wicker Man, so if you like those you might like this. I feel like it might have influenced The Witch in some way, too.
The musical theme is used in various ways in the film, and it really works for the mystery and creeping horror aspects; it pops up often in various ways, but is always welcome.
I've been listening to it on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lqZ9btdf24&t=12s
I've never heard of Marc Wilkinson, and will be looking to see what other music he produced.
The film is worth a watch, surprisingly grim in places, but don't watch the trailer, as it gives away a lot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeeN7qDQtUc
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Yes it's a good score. I play the CD fairly frequently.
I dare say that CD must be out of print by now.
Cheers
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Yes it's a good score. I play the CD fairly frequently.
I dare say that CD must be out of print by now.
Cheers
I will definitely listen to it a lot in future (on YouTube). The CD is probably a fortune, second-hand somewhere. If it ever got re-released I'd buy it for sure.
@ Mr. Xebec: The CD is a bit pricey, but you can do as I did and bargain with a seller and obtain a copy for a reasonable sum. Good luck. 
https://www.discogs.com/fr/sell/release/1115731?ev=rb
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I've never heard of Marc Wilkinson, and will be looking to see what other music he produced.
Marc Wilkinson wrote incidental music for 5 segments of Tales of the Unexpected, by the way.
He didn't score anywhere near the quantity of his colleagues' output [around 15 feature films between 1968 and 1983] but I place Wilkinson somewhat close to my favourite Brits like Richard Rodney Bennett or Stanley Myers.
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You can all say what you like but the guy's best score was for the 1979 British Euston Films production of Quatermass starring John Mills. Sadly the best I can do is link the closing theme to the final part of the four part serial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLx9iTidefc
We really need to see this music on screen from the moment he sees his granddaughter, who he's been searching for. This climatic scene is for me the most heartrendingly scored sequence in any science fiction production. Yes, it's done in slo-mo but it works perfectly. I'd kill for a soundtrack cd.
It then reprises as the piece above over the closing titles.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078129/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quatermass_(TV_serial)
Oh, and by a strange coincidence it was also directed by Piers Haggard....
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Quatermass with john mills is on talking pictures tuesday at 9pm.
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Posted: |
May 15, 2020 - 2:11 AM
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By: |
Graham Watt
(Member)
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He also wrote a terrific score to "Royal Hunt of the Sun" in 1969 a film despite its epic qualifications ( Producer/ writer Philip Yordan, Dir. Irving Lerner and stars Robert Shaw, Christopher Plummer and Nigel Davenport, from the play by Peter Schaeffer) failed to generate much interest at the box office and consequently no soundtrack was ever forthcoming. A pity because I thought the film and the score were very good. IT ALSO APPEARS TO NEVER HAVE BEEN SHOWN ON TELEVISION.
Hello Stovepipe. I detect that you may reside somewhere in the United Kingdom and that you were in a hurry the morning that you wrote the above post, evidenced by two things - two socks of different colours, and your inability to recall the following showings of THE ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN on television -
Tuesday August 31, 1976 (BBC2)
Sunday November 19, 1978 (BBC1)
Sunday June 30, 1985 (BBC2)
Surely we Brits here are all old enough to remember all three showings, and taping Marc Wilkinson's interesting score "direct from the telly onto cassette", live from our mothers' basement at the age of 36. And it is an interesting score. It's not really an "epic" score because it's not an epic film. It's more fitting for a theatre representation. Did Wilkinson do the score for Shaffer's play when performed down the Old Vic? I remember reading "in a book" that he had done a lot of music for theatre. I would consult the computer, but that would be cheating.
I am in two minds about his score for (THE) BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW. It's appropriately haunting and original, but I'm not sure it would really stand up as a full album. Of course I don't KNOW if that's the case, because I haven't heard it, and indeed "had forgotten" (ie "didn't know") that it had been released. Wait - Did Johnny Trunk release it? The Mr Trunk behind all those wonderful Basil Kirchin library LPs? Wasn't the Wilkinson released on LP only? I could check, but that would be cheating.
The film (THE) BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW - a slip of the keyboard and you get ((THE) BLOOD ON STAN'S CLAW - was very good but a bit silly towards the end when the devil appears (Piers Haggard hopping about in a cloak). I do remember being particularly impressed by Linda Hayden. She was only seventeen at the time, I was a mere boy of twelve and I was smitten. That's when I swore that, much against my grandfather's wishes, I would never become a priest. When I was clapperloader on the film we had a brief affair. She mentions it in her autobiography, about how she was devastated when I chucked her for being too old for me.
Piers Haggard later made a short film about the locations used in the film. Along with WITCHFINDER GENERAL it's one of the few films in which the English countryside becomes almost another character, integral to what's going on. Piers Haggard later became the grandson of H. Rider, him what wrote SHE.
All of this is from memory, so apologies if there are some factual errors.
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Piers Haggard later became the grandson of H. Rider, him what wrote SHE.
Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't he have been his grandson as soon as he was born?
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