Ever since I was a young boy growing up in NYC and in Rochester, NY. I have been fascinated by the music that accompanies Motion Pictures. Many times just hearing the music alone while anticipating a scene or during it would always provide the right effect. Fear. Loathing. Excitement. Wonder. Dread. all these emotions are bared and produced by the visual image that is provided by filmmakers around the world. But what makes these emotions swell up from within ourselves while watching all of these things projected before us is Music. Plain and Simple. Music. Without it how Scary would “Jaws” have been? No scarier than some routine made for Cable animal show about Sharks.

Or what about “The Omen,”  The original film by Richard Donner who asked Jerry Goldsmith to pen the score?  That film score to date has become Iconic and synonymous with films featuring Evil little children.  Which brings me to John Carpenter’s under rated score for his rather pedestrian but very good looking remake of  “Village of the Damned.” “March of the Children” done with the help of Don Davies plays like a lullaby from an infant’s mobile gone completely evil.  It has a very ethereal and menacing motif that starts innocently then just like when children mature it grows dense,  scary and menacing.

I am currently listening to the great works of James Newton Howard. He is my flavor of the month.  Great scores abound with his wonderful scores for “Lady in the Water,”  “King Kong,”  “I Am Legend” and “Defiance.”  His beautifully crafted scores are very popular among young piano prodigies who play his great themes then post video clips on the internet. I have seen some great young talented musicians  interpret his works on keyboards and piano with great agility and command. As they do with with Carpenter’s “Halloween.”

Now that was a score for a horror film if there was ever one. Not since Herrmann’s score for “Psycho” has a horror score brought out such primal, dark and foreboding passions.  I remember wanting to see that film in the theatres but could not work the nerve up because the score sounded too scary for my fragile psyche.  Just like Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” scared the crap out of me as a kid when my very loving Grandparents took their only grandchild at the time, a six year old to see “The Exorcist”  That was a film I wished I had 4 hands for.  2 to cover my eyes and 2 to cover my ears.

More to come on some more Film Soundtracks.  Some about James Newton Howard’s scores and others from the great Maestro Jerry Goldsmith! Thanks.  Be back soon!