Summer arrives today at 10:42 p.m. EDT. But who’s keeping track? This week on “Picture Perfect,” time means nothing, as we’re bound for an hour of music from fantasy films set in lost worlds.
In “King Kong” (1933), filmmaker and entrepreneur Carl Denham hires a ship to an uncharted island, known only from a secret map in his possession. There the crew discovers the titular gorilla and other outsized, should-be-extinct creatures. Kong is abducted from his natural habitat – and you know the rest. The composer, Max Steiner, pulls out all the stops. “Kong” was one of the first films to demonstrate how truly powerful an orchestral soundtrack could be.
Then we travel to the earth’s core, courtesy of Jules Verne and “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (1959). James Mason plays the professor who leads the expedition. The film sports one of Bernard Herrmann’s most outlandish soundscapes, the orchestra consisting of winds, brass and percussion, but also cathedral organ, four electric organs, and an obsolete Renaissance instrument called the serpent. Watch out for that giant chameleon!
“One Million Years B.C.” (1966) is a guilty pleasure if ever there was one. Produced by Hammer, the studio that gave us all those repugnant yet somehow delicious Peter Cushing-Christopher Lee horror team-ups, the film features special effects by the legendary Ray Harryhausen and an equally legendary fur bikini, sported by Raquel Welch. The music is by Mario Nascimbene, who wrote one of my favorite scores for Kirk Douglas, for “The Vikings.” We’ll be listening to the film’s climactic volcano sequence.
As he did with the Indiana Jones films, director Steven Spielberg turned to B-movie source material as his visual inspiration for “Jurassic Park” (1993), based on the novel by Michael Crichton. The herky-jerky dinosaur effects of yore are replaced by state-of-the-art computer-generated imagery, in this story of a remote island safari park gone wrong.
Sure, we’ve come a long way from Raquel Welch being carried off by a Pteranodon, but admit it, we all still want to see people fight dinosaurs. Instead of fudging history, now we can feel superior by fudging science. “Jurassic Park” plays on modern scientific thinking, with DNA extracted from mosquitoes trapped in amber, cloning, and the theory that dinosaurs were not lizards, after all, but rather birds. The music is by long-time Spielberg collaborator, John Williams.
If you happen to forget a compass, or a watch, don’t panic! In the words of Ian Malcolm, life finds a way. Join me for “Lands That Time Forgot,” on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
Leave a Reply