Sunday, November 23, 2008

The Wolf Man (1941)

The first film I ever saw with Lon Chaney Jr's wolf man was House of Dracula, 1945. The scene where Chaney has himself locked away in jail to prevent another death became indelibly etched in my memory since childhood. But it took years before I could track down that it was the later film the scene was from. I would have sworn it was in the original film, or at the very least in the sequel Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, 1943. But in the days before video tape I simply never managed to catch the last of the classic Universal horror films on TV. It wasn't until I eventually saw House of Dracula on video that I was able to relive the scene that had transfixed me as a child.

As an adult, however, it is the film score to Chaney's 1941 masterpiece The Wolf Man that has always given me thrills. I was never so happy as when William Stomberg and John Morgan released their suite of Frank Skinner, Hans J. Salter, and Charles Previn's music for the film on Marco Polo in 1995. At last, a full-blooded replication of that fantastic three-note opening and the alternately sweeping and brooding score that followed, that made me feel as if I were present in Universal's recording studio that day in 1941. One thing I did, using iTunes, is to put together all of the tracks in a single suite. There is also source music available from the Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man soundtrack which utilizes the very same music.

As a minor curiosity, one of the fascinating things for me, as someone who studies music, is hearing brief bits of famous music in previous works by other composers. It always makes me wonder if it was something that a composer had heard at one time and subconsciously remembered that explains why it turns up later. I was reminded of this when I recently listened to a cue from Max Steiner's score for Son of Kong, 1933, in which the three-note Wolf Man theme is heard eight years before the Skinner/Salter score.

The Wolf Man is now rightly seen as a classic of horror's golden age, from Lon Chaney Jr's bravura performance, the presence of the absolutely gorgeous Evelyn Ankers, Jack Pierce's makeup, right down to the terrific score by Salter and Skinner. It has been, and always will be, one of my favorite films of all time.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Captain Blood (1935)


My favorite film score of all time would have to be Erich Wolfgang Korngold's rousing music for the 1935 Warner Brothers Errol Flynn vehicle, Captain Blood. In fact, the first film score CD I ever purchased was the Charles Gerhardt Captain Blood: Scores for Errol Flynn. But, as anyone who has this disc knows, the one cue for the film is actually "Ship in the Night," not the main theme. So, to obtain the overture I next proceeded to Gerhardt's best-of disc which claimed on the back tray to have the overture for Captain Blood but, to my extreme disappointment, it was the same "Ship in the Night" cue. It wasn't until years later that by complete accident I stumbled upon the actual main title cue.

When I first went to purchase Gerhardt's disc of Korngold's the Sea Hawk there were two choices available, one with extended suites that I had already heard from a copy at the public library. And since the disc with the shorter suites simply stated only the Captain Blood main theme on the back insert, I naturally assumed it would be the same mistakenly labeled cue as on the other two discs. When I finally purchased a cheap version on eBay of the shorter Sea Hawk disc years later--in my quest to obtain the complete Gerhardt recordings--I was stunned and amazed to finally have procured the Gerhardt version of the Captain Blood overture. It is still the greatest, ever, as are all of the Gerhardt recordings.

Later recordings of Captain Blood have proven uniformly disappointing, including the Andre Previn cues on Deutsche Gramaphon which which are a bit lifeless. But the worst is the Marco Polo/Naxos cues by the Brandenberg Philharmonic which are downright pondering. What I eventually did was create my own suite using the best of the tracks that could be had from all three sources. Because of the disparate sources there is some redundancy, but I think it works well anyway.

On the flip side, there are also the only four cues available from the actual Captain Blood soundtrack recordings that appeared on the Korngold 2-CD set of his Warner Brothers years. This is is a much smaller suite but, short of going the Soundtrack Factory route, the only way to get the isolated original music Captain Blood soundtrack. As one of the great, rousing scores for a film that would begin the illustrious careers of both Flynn and Korngold, Captain Blood will forever remain a classic, one of my favorite films of all time.

Film Score Fanatic

After having several sites on the web that only deal tangentially with film scores, I wanted to have a place where I could deal with everything, classic scores by Korngold, Steiner, Waxman, Herrmann, et al, as well has horror by Skinner, Salter and Bernard, and noir by Webb and Deutsch, as well as newer composers. So, here it is. I don't imagine this will be a hotbed of activity, as I'm pretty busy elsewhere, but I would like to hear from folks who do enjoy the same kind of wide-ranging love of film scores that I do.

In discussing the music I do have my own specific terminology that may not be to everyone's liking but helps me keep things straight in my own mind. When I say "soundtrack" I am generally referring to the actual recorded track on the film, sometimes seperate from but occasionally containing dialog and sound effects. When I speak of "film score" I usually am referring strictly to later, orchestral re-recordings of the restored score. Also, though this is not a music blog per se, I will have links to share suites or cues to music that I talk about in my posts, as well as links to buy cds of many of the great film scores available now.

See you soon, and hope to hear from you soon.

--E.B. Neslowe