Ever since childhood, I've loved film scores. I'd say that if anyone should get the credit for that, it's John Williams (about whom I wrote extensively here years ago just because I was of a mind to do so); I was born in 1974, and here's a partial list of what Williams did during my first decade of loving movies:
- 1975 -- Jaws
- 1977 -- Star Wars AND Close Encounters of the Third Kind
- 1978 -- Superman
- 1980 -- The Empire Strikes Back
- 1981 -- Raiders of the Lost Ark
- 1982 -- E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
- 1983 -- Return of the Jedi
- 1984 -- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, plus a theme for the Summer Olympics
And that's just a handful of the blockbusters. You can, and should, go deeper than that. My point is, I don't know how anyone who lived during that time to fail to love John Williams, if not the entire medium of film music. I've become less wide-ranging a scorehead than I was at one point, but there were some years there where I aspired to have basically every score ever written. Never quite managed to get there thanks to the press of other interests crowding it out, but on some other level of the Tower, some Twinner Bryant is still plugging away at that honorable goal. We wish him well and wonder if he likes Hans Zimmer.
Given how devoted I am to keeping up with the movies and television shows based on the works of Stephen King, it makes sense that I eventually also developed a love for the music spawned by them. Which brings us to today: I'm going to attempt some rankings.
I'm not quite sure how to explain my approach; maybe it'll make sense, but I'm not betting on it, so let me try to at least justify it. I'm making these rankings based on the general use of music within the films (or plays, albums, etc.). You'd think it would be relatively easy to just rank the scores themselves, but it isn't. For example, most of what sounds (to those who don't already know better) like an original score in Kubrick's The Shining is actually repurposed symphonic music composed decades beforehand. Does that mean that film should only be judged on the merits of the score that WAS composed expressly for the film?
The easiest answer to that question is: yes, yes it should. But I'm in a mood to take a more all-encompassing approach. So what I've come up with is this: I'm weighing the original scores more heavily into my thinking than any other type of music, but I am also taking the use of previously-existing music into consideration, as well. This will apply not merely to symphonic/instrumental music, but to songs as well.
In most cases, I am only considering projects which have had a commercial release of some sort. There are a number of King films which have not been thus graced, meaning that if you are a big fan of the music for, say, The Langoliers or In the Tall Grass, you are not going to find those titles represented here.
As if that weren't frustrating enough, I've also include a few projects which are not movies. Because why shouldn't Ghost Brothers of Darkland County or Carrie the musical be included here? Ever heard of the album King sang on by The Wrockers? You will soon.
Bottom line: I've just included whatever I felt like including. There is method to the madness, though, so it's not pure tomfoolery. And even if it is, here come them rankings, y'all. Real quick, though, a disclaimer: like all such lists, this one is bullshit. Just complete stinking bullshit, complete with flies buzzing around it and making it their nursery. I'll read what I wrote here a year from now and wonder what I was edibleing, ranking __________ so far down the list. Hey, it is what it is.
We'll actually begin with some non-rankings:
HONORABLE MENTIONS
I
want to begin on a positive note, so we are going to examine a trio of scores that, though they are not from adaptations of Stephen King
films, do have a sort of connection (if only in my own mind). One is from a film based on a novel by his son, Joe Hill; and the other two are from
projects by his collaborator, friend, and contemporary Peter Straub.
We will tackle them in chronological order, beginning with:
Full Circle (1977)
original score by Colin Towns
Full Circle is full obscure these days, and kind of always has been. It's based on Peter Straub's first horror novel, Julia,
which is terrific. I'm not sure the movie lives up to it, but it's an
interesting and worthy piece of work in its own right. A big part of
that is due to the music by Colin Towns (check out the main theme below,
and if it seems a bit of a bore initially, the good stuff kicks in
around the 2:15 mark).
I
hope that movie gets rediscovered someday; a Blu-ray is highly
overdue. I'm not positive it ever even got a VHS release, though, so
we're talking about a true rarity.
Ghost Story (1981)
original score by Philippe Sarde
I know literally nothing about Philippe Sarde apart from his score for this, the second and (thus far) final movie based on the books of Peter Straub. You've got to figure that eventually both The Talisman and Black House are going to bit hitting a screen of some kind, and it is, of course, that King connection which prompted me to mention the two extant Straub movies. Anyways, though, Philippe Sarde. Wikipedia informs me that he was nominated for the French equivalent of the Oscar twelve times, so he was clearly no slouch.
His music for Ghost Story makes that evident. It might hit some ears as corny or even cartoonish, but don't let that be you, dear reader; don't let your years of being ear-poisoned by non-melodic film music render you incapable of enjoying the work of a guy who not only knows what an orchestra is good at but seems determined to put one to its fullest use. Sarde's score sounds like it might have been written during the Golden Age of Hollywood; and if that sounds to your ears like a bad thing, I'd argue that that's on you, not on Sarde.
On that contentious note, we move on to modern times, with:
Horns (2013)
original score by Rob
Rob (also known as ROB) is the stage name for Robin Coudert, whom someone ought to have given permission to use his whole name. You want to go with a single name, you better be an Elvis or a Prince or a Madonna. "Rob." Gimme a goddam break.
Anyways, hey, guess what? This is a pretty freaking good score. In a more just world, the movie might have gotten a decent release and been a hit; if it had, I suspect Rob's score would have become a favorite for a lot of people. I wouldn't be surprised if it had anyways.
Speaking of Joe Hill, the music for the television series Locke and Key is also worth talking about, but because I'm lazy, I've never listened to the soundtrack, so I'm not allowing myself to even include this as a full honorable mention. (This is weak logic, I am aware.) The main theme by Torin Borrowdale kicks ass, though; have any high-school bands played it during halftime of a football game? If not, y'all have all failed, high-school band members.
Also appearing in the Honorable Mention category is this curiosity:
Wendy Carlos: Rediscovering Lost Scores Volume One and Volume Two (2005)
original music for Stanley Kubrick's The Shining
Disclaimer: I do not own these two CDs. I'd love to, but they are long out of print and command over $100 each, which, no. Not going to happen, at least not this year. However, back in the Wild West days of the internet, I found MP3s of them, and so here we are, able to talk about it.
It's seemingly a set of archival music from Wendy Carlos's personal stash, representing (I assume) demos, unused cues, and other ephemera from the composer's career. A great lot of it is focused on The Shining, which is represented by 31 tracks. Some of them are less than a minute, but others are two, three minutes; this is a generous amount of music from that movie, and if you've got an interest in it that runs deep enough to include the score, then you might well flip out just a little to hear some of this unused material.
Maybe not all of it. There are some tracks that are hard to imagine being part of that film, and even the ones which you can imagine as part of AN adaptation of The Shining will be hard connect to THIS adaptation. A few, though, sound rather like Carlos's work for A Clockwork Orange, also a Kubrick film.
Most excitingly for me, there are a number of tracks which find Carlos exploring the "Dies Irae" in varied ways. For that alone, this stuff is a treasure. Not exactly something you'd be apt to listen to frequently, perhaps, but who knows. Certainly worthy of an honorable mention on this list.