Mystery Score Clips

Reveal:

"All Summer in a Day"

A group of students on Venus are in school for the day and are getting excited because the sun is predicted to actually come out for a bit. Normally it's just sort of dark and raining all day. The kids don't remember the sun, except one little girl who was born on Earth. Some start to become jealous of the little girl.

Written by the late Ray Bradbury, whom passed away a few months ago, the short is very well done and handled (though you need a little suspencion of disbelief for the science). Fans of the original black & white episodes of "The Twilight Zone" should enjoy this.

The composer is David Michael Frank (credited as "David Frank" in the short). Some of you might know him from his '80's action scores which were more synth in work (as opposed to the pure orchestra used in hte short), or even possibly his work on the reality TV series "The Mole".

Frank scores very little in the passed few years, and has only one new assignment listed on his website ("UPCOMING FILM SCORES" thread).

Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QWmahMdeGU

Mystery Score Clip 27


Unless plans change, this will be my second-to-last mystery suite.

We're going back a few decades again, though this time the FX should give away the decade. The composer is a known name, more so on the FSM board. Not many scoring credits, though I suspect the IMDb page is only half completed, but likely some of you have heard this person's work before, multiple times even for some.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aljEtImtHU

Nothing from this clip 27 sounds familiar to me.

Since you say this music is by a "name" composer, is it safe to ignore the orchestrators (Greig McRitchie) and music directors (Stanley Wilson) who wrote scores on an "as needed" basis rather having a decades-long career as a film composer?

Unforeseen circumstances kept me away until late yesterday, but here it is now:

"House on Greenapple Road"


Duane Tatro's second scoring project (according to his IMDb resume); his first had been some episodes of "The Invaders".


The film had a striking main title cue, and some orchestral investigation music (no current police proceedural synth tones here). Like I said, the film was released in theaters, then cut down by 30 minutes and again released, but on TV. I'm not sure if the outro music stingers were added later or not (I just have a hard time beliving a film had outro stingers like that) and whether they were by Tatro (I think one outro stinger was in the suite).

The film is best forgotten. The opening title with music seemed to promise more; the aggressive music and the cuts of the murder, without showing who it was, mixed together was certainly thrilling. The film, however, did not deliver what that promised.

There's been a murder, the mother is missing, and there's a string of men who knew her, as suspects, intercut with flashbacks of events.

The string of of them and the detail becomes clear as to their need, in the end, but I really feel this film could have been tighter and written better. Sometimes it was wooden, sometimes it was slow, and it just sort of dragged until the end (which was not as good as the opening titles).

Maybe the twist at the end was surprising back then, but it's been pulled some many times in films and television since then that it's lost the intended affect. Granted, though, that the film sort of wears on you and the surprise even back then might have not been worth the wait and jaded the viewer.




New suite I suspect a number of people will enjoy but never have heard, coming when I have a chance (maybe later tonight).

Clues:

Going back some decades again. Multple award-winning composer with a number fo very well known films under his belt, and at least one very famous score. This particular work has never been released officially and no cues on compilations, either. Likewise no promotional CD.

Reveal.

"American Journeys"

This is a Disney short film made as a Circle-Vision 360° film shown at Disneyland, in 1984 (it ran for a number of years).

You all know the late composer, Basil Poledouris. There was a boot with 16:32 minutes of score, which I assume is complete, since the short runs 21 minutes.


Hopefully Intrada can bring stuff like this out. A multi-disc set of short film scores would be great.

What is remarkably easy to you, Justin, is usually insanely obscure to the rest of us.

From the dialogue, it sounds like something from COPS or something. Some of the music sounds like a skimpy cross between Jan Hammer and Harold Faltermeyer.

Thor, the one person I actually thought may not identify it, is half right.

I've always wanted a Dounce Cap.

Sounds like Bernard Herrmann's music for episodic television.

It could come from any one of the following dramas or thrillers (doesn't sound like a Western, and doesn't sound like it's from Herrmann's TV music already on disc such as Alfred Hitchcock Hour or Twilight Zone):

STUDIO ONE
THE LINEUP
CLIMAX!
LANDMARK
PLAYHOUSE 90
WESTINGHOUSE DESILU PLAYHOUSE
PURSUIT
KRAFT SUSPENSE THEATRE
BOB HOPE PRESENTS THE CHRYSLER THEATRE

The difficulty with much of these is attempting to pinpoint which individual segments were scored by Herrmann and what are those episode titles.

There's even more TV series (and radio programs) on which Herrmann worked that I don't cite above because they're Westerns or Americana-orientated material or Christmas-related, etc.

Another guess could be this was the music Herrmann wrote for the radio play "The Hitch-Hiker", which later served as the source for TZ's 1st season "The Hitch-Hiker"...

Hmmm ... the car horn honks and dogs barking make me think of police procedurals and crime thrillers.

Late-1950s series such as PETER GUNN and M SQUAD associated jazz with crime, so Herrmann's full-bore dramatic utterings lead me to think this mystery clip is pre-1958 in this regard.

I'll go out on a limb here and hazard a guess that it's a mid-'50s item, probably an episode of THE LINEUP from '54 or '55.

I could be wrong, though, since I've never actually seen any of the TV programs I've mentioned above.

[I'm also thinking that dialogue edits are not as crucial for anthology shows as they are for TV programs with continuing characters... ]

Reveal.


"Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre"
Episode: "Seven Miles of Bad Road"


A young-ish man with good looks, hitch-hikes across America to get to California where he hopes to be a movie star, having done some acting and one commercial previously.

While on the outskirts of a town, trying to get picked up, an old truck stops. In it, an older woman whom seems to be flirting with him, but won't give him a ride, instead telling him about her cafe and a free lunch once in town.

Something in town isn't quite right, and once in the cafe, things starting going downhill faster & faster and his safety hangs in peril the whole episode.

The episode takes some surprise turns, not always going where you expect and offering up three or four twists that all feel totally belivable (no "suspension of disbelief" type ones, I should say).

Bernard Herrmann's score, as you can hear, is enjoyable, with a bit of pounding dramaticism. For a tiny bit in one cue you can hear some vague resemblence of the repeating suspense material from "North By Northwest".


There's a gold mine of unreleased scores from these old studio hour programs.

That's very interesting. While TWILIGHT ZONE entered its last season and THE OUTER LIMITS commenced its first season, this early "Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre" segment appeared in October 1963 in color!

Based upon the sound of the YT clip, the Herrmann music sounds "older" (to me) than 1963, though.
Perhaps this is due to the condition of the print quality?
Nonetheless, when I listened to the 18 soundtracks in the Herrmann @ Fox box from Varese in chronological order, I've accumulated an opinion about Herrrmann's music losing its freshness around 1957 (A HATFUL OF RAIN, specifically). Herrmann's scores from 1953 & '54 represent his zenith, IMO, with WHITE WITCH DOCTOR & GARDEN OF EVIL being personal favorites of mine.
By the time of his 1967 clarinet quintet, though, I feel Herrmann had passed his prime and his sentimental nostalgia yielded anachrononistic romanticism during the final phase of his output.

John Williams did several scores for that show too, including the theme, so yeah -- it should get a release!