The Car (1977) - Soundtrack

Leonard Rosenman's score for The Car was one that I had ached to have a soundtrack recording of for almost four decades. It took thirty-eight or so years for it to happen, but Intrada managed to secure a commercial release of Rosenman's atmospheric and kinetic music for The Car in 2015. Better late than never.

The brevity of the score, which runs a few seconds shy of a mere 34 minutes, might be one reason an album version was not released in 1977. Another could be Rosenman's choosing to score, for the most part, only scenes where the Car is either present or its the aftermath of an attack.

The lone exception to that latter reason are a few moments involving the character Luke (Ronny Cox) and his relapse into alcoholism. The remainder of the human drama and character moments are not scored and play out in an almost noticeable silence.

Jeff Bond, in his liner notes for this release, notes how "Rosenman's dissonant, agitated and aggressive soundscapes [were] a natural fit for horror and science-fiction movies." I both agree and doubt that there was a composer better suited for this material than Leonard Rosenman.

Another interesting and appropriate choice on Rosenman's part, in addition to not giving his score any human coloring, is his use of Dies Irae as the score's primary theme. Dies Irae, perhaps best known for its use in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, becomes an auditory signature for the Car that is every bit as recognizable as its distinctive, and iconic, horn blasts.

Dracula - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - July 3, 1930

While Universal's film adaptation of Dracula would not start shooting until the very end of September. There is a very real possibility that, at the time this traveling production of the Broadway play performed in Oakland, Bela Lugosi would have known that he had been cast to play Dracula in the film version.  

I'm also surprised to learn that Lugosi and the rest of the Broadway cast performed in Oakland. Go figure.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) - Trading Card #66

The Search

After the three students disappeared, separate search teams combed the Black Hills Forest for over a week. Several volunteers, including a few with their own bloodhounds, aided local, state, and federal law enforcement officials, but to no avail. This lack of success convinced many witchcraft believers and historians that the three missing students were the most recent victims of the Blair Witch's ongoing curse. 

Psycho III (1986) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - July 2, 1986

In addition to the underperforming Big Trouble in Little China, a second sequel to Psycho was also released to theaters and drive-ins across the United States on the fourth of July weekend of 1986.

And, just as was the case with the former, this was another that seemed to come and go from theaters before I returned from an overseas visit to my family. Which seems weird, as I saw Maximum Overdrive on its opening weekend, which was a mere two weeks later, while I was visiting friends in Dallas.

That being said, when I did finally get around to seeing Psycho III I found it to be an atmospheric and interesting close to what I have come to consider an unexpected trilogy of films. I also tend to ignore the contradictory nature of the film's final image, as it smacks of being something mandated by the studio so that a Psycho IV could be (and was) made.

Alien (1979) - Trading Card #63

Dallas and his team devise a plan for disposing of the Alien: with an electrical rod, they will force the monster into an air lock and out of the Nostromo!

Although I have not watched Alien in some time, I have seen it enough times to know that Dallas and his team still believed they were dealing with a quart-sized creature at this time in the film. One they could capture by hand and either shoot out the airlock or freeze for later study.

This is just another example, or reminder, of how this trading card series stream-lined or altered the film's narrative for whatever reason(s).

Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974) - Soundtrack

Although ignored and dismissed by audiences, critics, and even its own production company at time of release, Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter would survive to become a minor cult classic. One that, after I managed to catch up with it, became one of my favorite latter day Hammer Film offerings.

Randall D. Larson's liner notes for this limited edition release offers a detailed history of the film's genesis, production, and release, before focusing on Laurie Johnson's excellent score.

"The title sequence of any film," Johnson explains in the liner notes, "is really furnishing a house for a guest to come in to." No surprise that the film's Main Title serves as an auditory introduction to the film's narrative themes.

First is a rousing motif for trumpet that is countered by an energetic theme for violin. This melody characterizes Kronos's heroic purity and nobility. A second theme is then introduced. This darker and less melodic section represents the vampiric menace Kronos will be battling.

While those three themes serve as the foundation and backbone of the score, with variations on them weaved throughout the film, there is another that is pointed out that is worth mentioning. A low-end bassoon is used to create a rumbling texture that introduces and underplays during vampiric attack scenes.

This is a terrific score for a wonderful "little" movie that tried, but failed, to birth a new heroic horror movie icon. Which is too bad, because the potential displayed in this introduction is just breath-taking.

Big Trouble in Little China (1986) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - July 1, 1986

Having recovered from the stinging rebuke of 1982's The Thing, John Carpenter suffered yet another stinging rebuke with the disastrous under performance of Big Trouble in Little China.

As much as I was looking forward to seeing this on the big screen, I was unable to. I believe I might have been overseas at the time, in Hong Kong, visiting family when it opened. By the time I returned to the United States, Big Trouble in Little China, having sunk like a stone at the box office, had vanished from theaters. So it goes.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) - Trading Card #65

Missing

The "missing" poster was first posted in Burkittsville toward the end of October, 1994. Almost exactly a year later, it was redistributed with the discovery of the students' footage. "It's strange that (something) always happens in a fifty-year pattern," commented Bill Barnes, director of the Burkittsville Historical Society. "She (the Blair Witch) always surfaces, or something surfaces that leads to her..." 

At the Earth's Core (1976) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - June 30, 1976

The mid-to-late 1970s saw the release of a handful of science-fantasy adventure movies based on the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs. All of them starred Doug McClure and were directed by Kevin Connor.

Two of the films were produced by Hammer Film rival Amicus Productions. The Land That Time Forgot (1974) and, the subject of today's post, 1976's At the Earth's Core.

Today's subject would also be the last film from Amicus Productions. So it goes.

I don't think I actually watched At the Earth's Core, start to finish, until well into the 21st century. Better late than never, I guess.

Contemporary viewers can snicker and crack jokes about the dated rubber monsters and unapologetic artifice of the film's studio-bound sets, but that is also what gives this movie its ample character and charm.

If watching this film, which even at the time of its original release looked and felt hopelessly out of date, can warm your heart and make you smile, then congratulations. It appears your inner child is alive and well.

Alien (1979) - Trading Card #62

The murderous Alien is loose on the Nostromo! It cannot be blown to bits, as its acid-like blood will eat through the metal of the tug. How, then can the Creature be killed? 

Cat National Parks Travel - A 1000 Piece Puzzle

28 Days Later (2002) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - June 27, 2003

2003 was not a good year for me. That having been acknowledged, I can say that the stateside release of 28 Days Later did allow me an appreciated escape into a world of apocalyptic and cathartic terror. What an exhilarating rush seeing it for the first time, on the big screen, was for me.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) - Trading Card #64

Finding the Car

The only piece of evidence found by the police was Joshua Leonard's car, parked on Black Rock Road. "We checked the car over completely. Never found any clues with the vehicle," stated Burkittsville Sheriff Ron Cravens who conducted the original search. Cravens has been criticized, off the record, for his handling of the high-profile case by forces within his own department.

Having reached the end of the movie, the cards return to the deleted backstory elements cut from the finished film and that were used to market the movie instead.

Captain America: Civil War (2016) - Soundtrack

While this score for the third Captain America adventure does have its energetic moments, overall it is a formless, characterless assembly of orchestral background noise.

Filmtracks posted a scathing three star review dismissing the score as "a disloyal mess of scatterbrained ideas." Ouch. 

But I have to agree with their assessment that Jackman's work here is "procedural and businesslike." That it offers little that grabs or holds my interest. 

The little would be a momentary blip in the first minute of Track 12, Civil War. Which underplays, or punctuates, the airport fight and was what motivated me to purchase this album and add it to my collection.

That momentary blip returns and is nicely expanded in both Track 18, Clash - underscoring and punctuating Cap and Iron Man's fight over the fate of Bucky (The Winter Soldier) - and Track 19, Closure - where it serves as something akin to a dirge to lament the end of Steve and Tony's friendship.

Everything else is just generic orchestral soundscape. Musical filler with no thematic center to hold it together. Which is just saddening.

Prime Evil - Edited by Douglas E. Winter - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - June 26, 1988

One of the stories in this anthology, which suffers when compared to Kirby McCauley's far larger and more breathtaking opus Dark Forces, stuck in my memory. David Morrell's Orange is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity. That story managed to wallop me good. I loved it.

I also vaguely remember being somewhat baffled and intrigued by Whitley Strieber's story The Pool. It was the first piece of fiction that Strieber wrote after finishing Communion and the thematic connection between the two seemed clear. Beyond that, I remember feeling lost and confused about what I had just read...

1988 was a long time ago and I no longer have the book close at hand. But I was able to track down its table of contents, so I could check to see if anything else in the book might jog a memory. Only two did.

First would be Stephen King's The Night Flier, which contains a bathroom scene that is equal parts gruesome, goofy, and, being Stephen King, pretty darn scary. Have not seen its movie adaptation, yet.

Then there is Peter Straub's The Juniper Tree, which I must admit to having no memory of reading in this anthology, but when I read it in a collection of Straub's fiction, it really knocked me for a loop. Maybe my psyche was ready for just how close to home this story hits.

There is also a Clive Barker story in the anthology, titled Coming to Grief, but I have no recollection of it whatsoever. Perhaps it is time for a refresher?

Alien (1979) - Trading Card #61

A smear of blood blossoms on Kane's chest. Seconds later the fabric of his shirt is ripped open as a small monster head - about the size of a man's fist - bursts through the officer's mangled body!

I read the novelization of Alien before I was able to see the film, so I knew what was about to happen when Kane started coughing and convulsing at the table. Our father, however, did not.

"This thing grabbed onto this guy's face, but then it fell off," I remember him telling mom, after we got home. "And I thought, okay, that must have been the alien and the rest of the movie is going to be about the people on the spaceship. But then the guy starts to get sick at the dinner table and I see Chad's eyes get real wide and he tenses up, so I knew something bad was about to happen."

Alan Dean Foster's description of the event in the novelization was less traumatic than what was shown in the actual movie...

Gigantis The Fire Monster [Godzilla Raids Again (1955)] / Teenagers from Outer Space (1959) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - June 25, 1959

It took four years for the quickie sequel to the first Godzilla movie to reach theaters and drive-ins in the United States.

When it arrived its title, storyline, and characterizations were altered, of course, to better suit the questionable attitudes of the day. Not that the original version was all that better, though. Both are talky and feature special effects that, because of an error in film speed, lack the look and feel of the first, and far more serious, film.

Coupled with Gigantis The Fire Monster would be Teenagers from Outer Space, a notorious no-budget cheapie about nefarious aliens attempting to turn Earth into a breeding ground for giant, carnivorous lobster-like creatures.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) - Trading Card #63

Their Fate

Josh's cries for help become more pronounced. "I hear him downstairs!" yelled Mike as he ran through the old house. As he entered what appeared to be the basement, passing walls covered with strange symbols and handprints, Mike's video camera was knocked out of his hands and onto the floor. When Heather entered the room, her 16mm camera recorded the black-and-white image of Mike standing motionless, back to her, facing a wall. Then Heather's camera also hit the ground. 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) - Soundtrack

The score to my favorite Captain America movie takes a far different approach than that for the first film. No surprise, really, considering that The First Avenger was a period piece, while The Winter Soldier is set in a modern era awash with all manner of science fiction infused gizmos and gadgets.

So composer Henry Jackman leaned heavy into electronics and pounding rhythms, rather than instrumentation that invokes a bygone era. Well, save for Track 3, The Smithsonian, when the film called for that very approach.

One flourish I quite like is a processed scream, which sounds something like a bird cry, used as a kind of auditory signature for The Winter Soldier.

When I did a search for information or interviews regarding the score, the former was sparse and the latter rather negative. There was a great deal of grumbling about repeating loops, banging and clanging industrial effects, and groaning electronics.

While I can and do understand the reasoning for those legitimate complaints and criticisms, I do not find listening to this soundtrack to be all that painful of an experience.

Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - June 24, 1970

My introduction to the first sequel to Planet of the Apes came via its truncated edit on The 3:30 Movie. The bleak, nihilistic direction the film took left me shocked, shook, and slack jawed. I also loved it for what it did, of course. 

Alien (1979) - Trading Card #60

Suddenly, without warning... Kane's face screws into a mask of agony! He clutches at his chest, then whirls onto the table as his startled friends watch in horror...

Note that, unlike the previous card, Kane and Dallas are not wearing jackets.

Midnite Spook Show(s) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - June 23, 1956

It might not be a Friday the 13th, but that fact will not stop the venues in the Fox West Coast Theaters chain from holding yet another Midnite Spook Show.

If I had to choose between being able to see the classic chestnuts of Frankenstein (1931) and Dracula (1931) or the more contemporary House of Wax (1953) and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) on the big screen, I just might have leaned toward the latter. Because I do love me some giant monster action.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) - Trading Card #62

Ominous Shadows

Aiming their cameras, Mike and Heather entered the crumbling old house and slowly moved from room to room. The place was a hellhole, with peeling plaster and blackened windows and weird markings all over the walls. Then, suddenly, Mike heard Josh's tortured cries coming from somewhere in the decaying building. With Heather not far behind, Mike began to bolt up the stairs...

Is that a noose? 

The Thing (1982) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - June 20, 1982

I would not be able to see The Thing until Saturday, June 26. But, if I had been in San Francisco at the time, I totally would have tried to attend this preview screening at the Royal Theater. 

Alien (1979) - Trading Card #59

With spirits high following the recovery of Kane, the Nostromo crew gathers together for a hardy supper.

Another card, another continuity error. This image is not from the infamous dinner scene. It is from earlier in the film, when Dallas explains to the rest of the crew that the ship has been diverted so they can investigate a signal of unknown origin.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) - Soundtrack

The best thing about this score is Silvestri's instantly memorable five-note fanfare for Cap. Yet that fanfare also has an ironic weakness. Its rousing chest-thumping projection of strength, resilience, and nostalgic Americana is ill-suited for subtler or gentler referencing or interpolation within the narrative underscore. While the fanfare is great for a dramatic punctuation whenever Cap does some heroic feat, or makes a dramatic entrance, it is ill-equipped for anything else.

Which is appropriate for Cap, considering how every conflict is rooted in Cap's rigid and inflexible beliefs standing firm against beliefs and forces that oppose him. Making the fanfare's ballsy intractability a perfect auditory representation for how out of step the man is with just about everyone and everything around him. Nice.

Ben (1972) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - June 19, 1972

Although the original Willard was a yet another seeming staple of our syndication channels and afternoon movie time slots, I remember its sequel Ben as being a tad more scarce on that front. My memory has it that I might not have seen it until I was able to rent it on home video, although I also recall watching it when it was on The 3:30 Movie.

But does it really matter?

Picking up right where Willard ended, Ben and his army of rats proceed to do nothing all that interesting. The one great thing about this movie is its Academy Award nominated song, performed by the late Michael Jackson.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) - Trading Card #61

The House

In the middle of their final night, Heather and Mike were awakened once again by the distant, anguished cries of what appeared to be Josh. "Somebody! Please!" the muffled voice shouted. "That can't be him," said Mike. "Somebody! C'mon, help me! Heather!" Mike grabbed the video camera while Heather took the 16mm camera and both followed Josh's voice through the woods. They finally came upon an old, abandoned house...

No tale of the supernatural would be complete without a spectral and spooky dilapidated house for the spirit(s) to infest. Right?

When they arrived at the house, I had no idea that it was supposed to be Rustin Parr's. Parr being the fictitious child murderer mentioned during the interviews with the townspeople.

The filming location was a dilapidated place known as Griggs House. After the release of The Blair Witch Project it became something of a tourist attraction and was being picked apart by opportunistic visitors, which only caused further damage and increased danger of injury to those venturing inside.

Although an attempt was made to preserve the house, it was demolished. So it goes.

The Day of the Triffids (1963) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - June 18, 1963

I never really understood just how bungled this film adaptation was until I had the pleasure of reading John Wyndham's source novel. The difference between the two is akin to that between night and day.

That sad fact acknowledged, this 1963 movie does have some stilted b-movie charm to it, if taken on its own terms.

Alien (1979) - Trading Card #59

Only hours after Kane's horrifying experience, he appears to have totally recovered. Some simple investigating reveals the lifeless remains of the once-fearsome monster.

Okay, that is one whopper of a continuity error they got there. I'm guessing no useable, or workable, images of the lifeless Face Hugger were available or allowed, so they used this image from a memorable set piece later on in the film.