{"id":8153,"date":"2014-03-13T22:51:44","date_gmt":"2014-03-14T02:51:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=8153"},"modified":"2014-03-13T22:51:44","modified_gmt":"2014-03-14T02:51:44","slug":"cd-it-the-terror-from-beyond-space-1958","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=8153","title":{"rendered":"CD: It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"ItTerrorFromBeyondSpace\"<\/a>Score<\/strong>: Excellent<\/p>\n

Label<\/strong>: \u00a0Monstrous Movie Music<\/a><\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>April 19, 2011<\/p>\n

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Tracks \/ Album Length:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a026 tracks \/ (36:14)<\/p>\n

Special Notes:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a016-page colour booklet with liner notes by album co-producer David Schecter \/ Limited to 1000 copies<\/span><\/p>\n

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Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Right from the urgent Main Title with its twirling brass and an unwavering sense of urgency, It! j<\/strong>ust grabs the listener the way most classic B-movies are supposed to: hard, fast, and keeping the audience hypnotized and hungry for blood when nothing is happening (and maybe won’t).<\/p>\n

Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter\u2019s sleek yet declamatory writing style was well suited to monster movies because while one composer excelled at lush themes, the other liked Big Loud Brass, so their scores were ripe with striking contrasts which made them instantly engaging. Being longtime collaborators, there\u2019s excellent continuity between the score\u2019s two main moods \u2013 haunting and aggressive \u2013 as the pair stick with the main theme\u2019s melodic structure, and neatly reduce it for slow cues like the exceptional \u201cAnn and the Colonel,\u201d which beautifully sways from creeping danger to romance.<\/p>\n

The reverberating piano chords in \u201cThe Monster\u201d is very reminiscent of Bronislau Kaper\u2019s superlative Them!<\/a><\/strong> (1954), and the electric violin in the \u201cSpace Ship\u201d and later \u201cSearching the Ship\u201d recall its heavy use by Nathan Van Cleave in \u201cPerchance to Dream,\u201d one of the creepiest episodes of the original Twilight Zone <\/strong>series. (There\u2019s also the step-like, 8-note shimmering motif which vividly recalls a similar use in a few Star Trek <\/strong>episodes.)<\/p>\n

The extensive use of trilling woodwinds (\u201cGino\u201d) was another classic genre convention (the wavering notes were heavily used by David Buttolph in his classic 1953 horror score House of Wax<\/strong>), making It!<\/strong> a perfect sampling of fifties monster music, but unlike the sometimes shrillness of the Universal monster films, there\u2019s arguably a slightly<\/em> richer amount of orchestral colours (and perhaps due to the film\u2019s slower pacing, the composers seem to have benefited in being able to write longer cues to develop and shift between their collection of suspense and shock motifs).<\/p>\n

It! <\/strong>may be short at 36 mins., but it\u2019s a delicious mix of sustained chords, rumbling piano chords, shock stabs, and some haunting organ effects, and without strings, there\u2019s no warmth for what\u2019s ostensibly an early bodycount movie. The repetition of a lumbering motif performed by leadened lower brass and trilling woodwinds adds some unintentional comedy, because it\u2019s so declarative and in your face (and ear drums), but it\u2019s also a fair bet the composers wrote their score tongue-in-cheek, since there was only so much that could be done to heighten the terror of a guy in a rubber suit. (If the mocking vaudevillian and buzzing trumpets in \u201cFoiled Plot\u201d and \u201cThe Reactor, respectively, are any indication, they damned well knew It!<\/strong> was a dopey movie.)<\/p>\n

Even with its genre clich\u00e9s, there\u2019s a dramatic progression within the score which follows the similar peaks & valleys of Alien<\/strong> (1979), the film largely inspired by this classic B-movie, and if one listens carefully to Sawtell and Shefter\u2019s score, it my well have been a perfect fit, had Alien<\/strong> been made in 1958.<\/p>\n

Mastered from very clean mono sources, neatly sequenced, and augmented with two bonus cuts featuring the woo-woo electronic violin and insect-like electronic instruments, MMM\u2019s CD (limited to 1000 copies) also comes with very lengthy and witty liner notes.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2011; revised 2014 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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Additional Links:<\/strong>
\nIMDB: Sawtell <\/a>\/ Shefter \u00a0<\/a>— \u00a0Composer Filmographies: Sawtell <\/a>\/ Shefter <\/a>—\u00a0 Soundtrack Album<\/a>
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Select Merchants:<\/strong>
\nMonstrous Movie Music<\/a>\u00a0—\u00a0Amazon.ca<\/a>\"\" —<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" —<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a>\"\" —\u00a0BSX<\/a> —\u00a0Intrada<\/a> —\u00a0Screen Archives Entertainment<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Right from the urgent Main Title with its twirling brass and an unwavering sense of urgency, It! Just grabs the listener the way most classic B-movies were supposed to: hard, fast, and keeping the audience hypnotized and hungry for blood when nothing was happening (and maybe didn\u2019t)…<\/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":[1457,2603,243],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-27v","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8153"}],"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=8153"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8160,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8153\/revisions\/8160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}