{"id":7294,"date":"2013-12-03T12:13:11","date_gmt":"2013-12-03T17:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=7294"},"modified":"2013-12-03T12:45:30","modified_gmt":"2013-12-03T17:45:30","slug":"cd-she-demons-1958-astounding-she-monster-the-1957","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=7294","title":{"rendered":"CD: She Demons (1958) \/ Astounding She-Monster, The (1957)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Soundtrack \u00a0Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>S<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Rating: Excellent<\/p>\n

Label: Monstrous Movie Music<\/a>\/ Released: April 10, 2013<\/p>\n

Tracks & Album Length: 53 tracks \/ (57:29)<\/p>\n

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Special Notes: 20-page colour booklet with liner notes by David Schecter.<\/p>\n

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Composers: Nicholas Carras \/ Guenther Kauer<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

MMM\u2019s couplet themed around female invaders \/ demons shines the spotlight on two forgotten composers whose work in film was rather sporadic.<\/p>\n

Nicholas Carras\u2019 time may span a good twenty years, but his roughly 25 credits are tied to low budget exploitation fodder, often directed by less than stellar filmmakers, but if She Demons<\/strong> (1958) is any indication of his talent, he as more than well-versed in exploiting the intimacies and bluster of an orchestra, writing tight themes and knowing when to move from agitated strings to all-out bombast.<\/p>\n

She Demons<\/strong> has a jazzy underbelly \u2013 the title theme is a crazy mash-up of jazz, and exotic percussion \u2013 and there are a few moments when the title track sounds like some long-lost Elmer Bernstein work because of the harmonics and some of the brass writing, but the entire score is a real treat for B-movie fans wanting a skilled, all-orchestral work with a strong central theme and many moody variations. Carras splinters this theme into many small guises, adding some swaggering brass, sustained chords, or grinding double bass notes which make She Demons <\/strong>unusually rich (and likely gave the film a sheen it perhaps didn\u2019t deserve).<\/p>\n

The strongest sections are the most restrained, especially \u201cNazis in Pursuit,\u201d where Carras repeats his collage of agitated strings and colours the cues shifting tension by effortlessly gliding between woodwinds and strings. It\u2019s a beautifully orchestrated cue, and while most tracks average around a (1:30), with some running significantly less, the score has a tight flow \u2013 perhaps the clearest example of how Carras organized his material into a lean work which, when placed n chronological order, moves like a taut suite. Avoiding repetitions, redundancies, and clich\u00e9s, She Demons <\/strong>is shockingly classy.<\/p>\n

Guenther Kauer\u2019s The Astounding She-Monster<\/strong> (1957) is a mash-up of classical (Stravinsky, Debussy) and maybe a little contemporary (Bernard Herrmann, Leith Stevens), but it\u2019s also a weird, free-floating mass of eerie and suspense-building passages interrupted by a flatulating 4-note \u2018uh-oh\u2019 motif for what remains one of the most ineptly made films among a large pot of 1950s Grade Z schlock.<\/p>\n

Director Ronald V. Ashcroft\u2019s background was in sound and picture editing, and while he may have had the skill to assemble material into a coherent form, She-Monster<\/strong> is a mess that moves from gangster drama to sci-fi in which humans trapped in an isolated cabin are periodically teased by a she-monster (a busty woman in a zippered Lycra suit).<\/p>\n

With little story or money to flesh scenes into something even visually arresting, Ashcroft has most of his cast wandering in and out of the cabin, wandering back and forth through the hills, and once in a while brings his she-monster, gangsters, and hostages to closer proximities before bungling what should\u2019ve been a straight conflicts. The most memorable aspect of She-Monster <\/strong>\u2013 besides the visible zipper of the monster\u2019s silvery suit \u2013 is Guenther Kauer\u2019s uh-oh motif, which is heavily used throughout the score, either because Kauer knew the exceptionally dull film needed some goosing, or as David Schecter writes in the album\u2019s liner notes, Ashcroft had so badly hacked up the cues that what remained tended to be a lot of \u2018uh-oh\u2019 cues tracked over all those preposterous wandering scenes.<\/p>\n

Kauer\u2019s score was recorded in Germany and sounds sharp in mono, but it was never properly synced to picture because of Ashcroft\u2019s edits, so MMM\u2019s disc offers fans of the film to really hear the composer\u2019s intentions, or rather how he intended to save a dull picture from anesthetizing its audiences into deep comas.<\/p>\n

Kauer\u2019s approach is to feature plenty of swirling motifs (\u201cWalk to the Cabin\u201d has a wonderful opening set of bars before it decelerates to a pensive variant with lovely woodwinds, and like Herrmann\u2019s North by Northwest <\/strong>(1959), the use of a fandango (\u201cBrad Goes Outside\u201d) is highly effective in creating an unstoppable momentum. His uh-oh motif does get weary towards the end, apparently being both the film\u2019s \u2018danger\u2019 and \u2018busty alien approaching\u2019 alerts, but its inclusion in \u201cShe\u2019s Back!\u201d is especially humorous because the cue is such a mash-up of material that borrows from Stravinky\u2019s Rite of Spring and interpolates the \u2018Ringle-Rangle\u2019 melody which Jerry Goldsmith used just as potently in Legend<\/strong> (1983).<\/p>\n

Both film\u2019s may live on due to their own merits as classics of cinema fromage<\/em>, but this lovingly crafted release is a testament to skills of two men whose film and TV careers mandated using their wits to support the banal, the clich\u00e9d, and the utterly ridiculous and give them some class.<\/p>\n

Carras\u2019 other score, Missile to the Moon<\/strong> (1958), is also available from MMM.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2013 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References:<\/p>\n

IMDB: Carras<\/a> \/ Kauer<\/a> — Soundtrack Album<\/a> — Composer Filmographies: Carras<\/a> \/ Kauer<\/a><\/p>\n

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Select Merchants:<\/p>\n

Amazon.ca<\/a>\"\" —<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" —<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a>\"\" —\u00a0BSX<\/a> —\u00a0Intrada<\/a> —\u00a0SAE<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Soundtrack Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0S<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to:\u00a0Home \/\u00a0Soundtrack \u00a0Reviews \/ S . Rating: Excellent Label: Monstrous Movie Music\/ Released: April 10, 2013 Tracks & Album Length: 53 tracks \/ (57:29) . Special Notes: 20-page colour booklet with liner notes by David Schecter. . Composers: Nicholas Carras \/ Guenther Kauer . . Review: MMM\u2019s couplet themed around female invaders \/ demons […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[2367,2365,2364,2366],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-1TE","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7294"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7294"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7313,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7294\/revisions\/7313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}