Inappropriate Movie Scores

The original music choice for the ending of Thelma & Louise is HILARIOUSLY inappropriate:

aka the thread dedicated to 80's synth scores.

...pretty much.

The score for the theatrical Troy. They improved it for the Director's Cut except the one theme that worked: the Achilles vs. Hector fight, which they shouldn't have messed with. One of the few movies where I stopped and said "this score is terrible". Most scores, especially in movies like Troy are forgettable at worst.

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Originally Posted by Bailey 

aka the thread dedicated to 80's synth scores.

Yup. I'll get in here before anyone else: LADYHAWKE.

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Originally Posted by Lightning Slim 

Yup. I'll get in here before anyone else: LADYHAWKE.

And I kinda like the Ladyhawke score, but yeah.

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Originally Posted by Bailey 

aka the thread dedicated to 80's synth scores.

The Keep.

Vangelis.

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Originally Posted by dr.cyclops 

 

The Keep.

Tangerine Dream.

Fixed.

Funny, The Keep was the first thing to come to mind but I think the synth score, while definitely inappropriate for the time period, is intrinsic to the film's bloated 80s weirdness.

GOLDENEYE - Sorry, but I hate that Eric Serra score.  He's done good work in other films, but yeah...this sucks.

A pre-defense before somebody brings it up: The Toto score to DUNE is awesome. So there.

Haha, get outta my brain, people. Goldeneye was another flick that came to mind. The funny thing is that Serra's score was so bad in one spot (the tank chase) that the producers replaced it the Bond-ish piece you hear in the film. Serra's original piece was an awful Eurotrash disco love song that can be heard in the film's Making Of.

..and yeah, Toto's Dune score is fucking great. It's so much better than it has any right being.

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Originally Posted by Art Decade 

..and yeah, Toto's Dune score is fucking great. It's so much better than it has any right being.

Again, it is the legend.

Other than the iconic theme, I always thought the music in Jaws is just way off the mark.

re: Dune

WTF were they thinking....Toto....TOTO ?!?!?

that being said, I really like the Brian Eno piece. IMO, it really works with the images of sand dunes all the way to the horizon.

If only he could have done the whole sndtrk...

Unrelated... but holy shit I can post again! This text editor hates me and all my computers.


Back on topic...
I just saw the original Last House on the Left recently, and my god, what an ill-fitting score.

Shit, someone already mentioned Ladyhawke. Anyway, I'll throw in the Tangerine Dream score for Legend. Jerry Goldsmith's work blows that synthesized shit out of the water.

Love "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", but this music always annoyed the hell out of me. Doesn't work in a Western, and it would be too 70's dated in any genre:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kdl7BC4ZJj0&feature=fvsr

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Originally Posted by akutagawa 

Other than the iconic theme, I always thought the music in Jaws is just way off the mark.

I like to think that opinions can't be objectively wrong, but, no.  Just no.

Serra's score for GOLDENEYE has been mentioned in this thread, but some wrong-footed moments aside (the doesn't-quite-work underscore for the car race at the early part of the film and that abysmal end credits song), I think it's by far the most striking non-John Barry Bond score. The chilly, ethereal atmosphere provided by Serra's score is a big part of the reason that GOLDENEYE stands out so strongly in the Bond canon. Serra nails the score for the opening sequence--playing the Bond theme on timpani is an inspired choice--and the more lyrical, melancholy stuff is gorgeous. I would have been interested to see what he did with another attempt at a Bond score.

I don't remember much from DePalma's MISSION TO MARS, but I remember the score being totally obnoxious in theaters.

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Originally Posted by DARKMITE8 

I don't remember much from DePalma's MISSION TO MARS, but I remember the score being totally obnoxious in theaters.

Someone will probably punch me for saying this, but DePalma is pretty tone deaf when it comes to scoring his movies. Most are either outright bad or ill-fitting.

Morricone does some really ill-fitting organ work on Mission To Mars. You hear it & immediately think "Really?".

Just saw Midnight Run, and Danny Elfman's jaunty good ol' time score really throws me out of the action. Really not a fan.

Argento scoring most of his murder scenes in OPERA to 80's metal is dumb-fuckingly stupid. 

Leone's use of a muzak version of The Beatles' "Yesterday" in Once Upon A Time In America to hammer home an emotional beat was a bizarrely maudlin & hammy music choice.

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Originally Posted by Art Decade 

Morricone does some really ill-fitting organ work on Mission To Mars. You hear it & immediately think "Really?".

I saw a test screening of Mission to Mars that I'm pretty sure had a temp score and I liked the movie plenty. Saw it again on TV a couple years ago, and the score just utterly transformed the movie into a total piece of shit. Why anyone would think that the score to go with them scrambling to find all the leaks in the hull before they run out of oxygen and die with sedate ascending and descending organ scales is mind boggling.

Resevoir Dogs: great soundtrack right? Buncha cool oldies...and BEDLAM...a shitty metal band, that nobody heard of andwho  went nowhere...doing Magic Carpet Ride...because?

MCA was a subsidiary of Mirimax or vica versa? Tarantino was buying blow from them...? QT loves pre-existing songs and scores. This stands out as a big stinker. No one anywhere lets this track play. It's bad.

Optimistically I'd say it's because covers are way cheaper than originals to license and Magic Carpet Ride would still have been a radio fave back then and cost more than the movie.

I don't know though.

Yup, Ladyhawke is so disco it hurts. But incredibly, somehow Marvin Hamlisch's The Spy Who Loved Me totally works.

The one that really bugs me personally is Creator. I swear it's just bits of the same piece played again and again with no variation.

Well, Bond *could* potentially work with a disco score (I have not seen The Spy Who Loved Me). But applying that to a medieval fantasy just seems stupid. And before anyone brings up David Bowie and Labyrinth: not the same thing. That's a more "out there" Henson fantasy, so a pop score isn't automatically inappropriate.

The thing is, on a purely musical level, the Ladyhawke score is actually pretty good.  The times in the film when it's orchestral, it's fun and soaring and romantic and it works great.  It's when it turns into Giorgio Moroder that it becomes anachronistically cringe-worthy.

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Originally Posted by Richard Dickson 

The thing is, on a purely musical level, the Ladyhawke score is actually pretty good.  The times in the film when it's orchestral, it's fun and soaring and romantic and it works great.  It's when it turns into Giorgio Moroder that it becomes anachronistically cringe-worthy.

I seem to actually recall liking the bit that plays over Navarre's initial rescue of Phillipe. Was that one of the times you're talking about, or was that another synth bit?

It's been years since I've watched the film or heard the score, but I recall the very end when Navarre and Isabeau are reunited, it's all strings and it sounds great.

Ah. Yeah, it's been a while for me as well, so perhaps the cue I'm thinking of was synth, it just fit in better than some of the other ones.

Like this:

Maybe a little hokey, but it's lush and romantic and it works.

But when the film kicks off with this:

Well, the mood is completely gone.

Yeah, I can't get past the synth-brass, traps and strings at 1:01. It just screams Your Local Six O'Clock News Team to me.

Ooh, yeah, that's a pretty stark contrast. I had forgotten the film BEGAN with that nightmare.

Yeah, imagine sitting in a theater, the lights going down, primed for some Rutger Hauer medieval-style swordplay, and THAT plays over the opening credits.

It's a tremendous credit to the film that it actually ends up being as memorable as it is when the score pretty much kills it dead one minute in.

I know, right? The movie's damn good on pretty much every other front. One has to wonder what Richard Donner was smoking when he picked an ex-Alan Parsons Project member to score it.

Anyway, enough dogpiling on Ladyhawke. My next pick has to be Leonard Rosenman's score for Bakshi's Lord of the Rings. It sounds cheap, chintzy and too loud when it should be epic and sweeping. His score for RoboCop 2 is also a massive downgrade from Basil Poledouris' work for the original film, and it also doesn't fit 2's nasty, pitch-black tone.

I love Rosenman's main theme for Bakshi's Rings film.  At least, the full presentation of it that the score builds to in the end.  And some of the music for Helm's Deep isn't bad.  But yeah, a lot of this is just dreary.  Much like the film itself.

This could be called the "Zero imagination, everything should be scored the same" thread.  Next someone will complain that Wang Chung's "To Live and Die In L.A." theme is dated and "very 80s" and "takes them out of the movie".  Christ on a cracker.

Anachronism can work -- just look at A Knight's Tale.  But Ladyhawke wasn't trying to be A Knight's Tale.

Imagine Princess Bride with a score like Ladyhawke's.  Then give thanks for the alternate reality we avoided.

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Originally Posted by Richard Dickson 

I love Rosenman's main theme for Bakshi's Rings film.  At least, the full presentation of it that the score builds to in the end.  And some of the music for Helm's Deep isn't bad.  But yeah, a lot of this is just dreary.  Much like the film itself.

Oh, I was talking about when the theme opens the film. It's jarring, to say the least.

Oh god yes.

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Originally Posted by WendellEverett 

This could be called the "Zero imagination, everything should be scored the same" thread.  Next someone will complain that Wang Chung's "To Live and Die In L.A." theme is dated and "very 80s" and "takes them out of the movie".  Christ on a cracker.

Hey it's not our fault that the eighties had a lot of really terrible productions.  It just did.

That Wang Chung one fits ok and is actually pretty restrained.  The anachronism aspect of Ladyhawke isn't the whole problem (I don't think, anyway).  It's also that it has actively terrible music, with terrible instrumentation, badly produced, in contrast with some quite decent stuff.

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Originally Posted by Agentsands77 


I hope a transvestite Michael Caine attacks you in an elevator.

Wha..?! Michael Caine's the killer?! You sonavabitch! I haven't seen that movie yet!

Marc Shaiman's score for A FEW GOOD MEN is kinda awful.  If not for the performances, the whole thing would play like a sleazy HARD COPY story.