Super size me!
With King Kong back in theaters, in “Kong: Skull Island,” we’re thinking big this week, on “Picture Perfect,” with outsized thrills from movies featuring gargantuan creatures.
We’ll begin with “Godzilla” (2014), the most recent incarnation of the pop-cultural icon, originally a metaphor for the destructive power of nuclear weapons, but now seemingly more of a jack-of-all-trades restorer of natural balance. Either way, it’s generally man’s overweening pride that brings on the destruction. The composer for this latest version was Alexandre Desplat.
Then we’ll take a storm-swept hot air balloon to “Mysterious Island” (1961). Jules Verne’s novel becomes the framework for a series of battles between a band of castaways and giant creatures at an uncharted locale in the South Pacific. The great Ray Harryhausen provided the special effects – including giant bees, birds and crabs – and Bernard Herrmann underscored the outlandish situations to perfection.
Henry Mancini gained world-fame for his breezy melodies for “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and the “Pink Panther” films, but he got his start writing for B-movies of the 1950s. In “Tarantula” (1955), scientists conduct experiments on animals in order to develop a super food nutrient, as a preemptive strike against future overpopulation and world hunger. However, as the countryside becomes littered with cattle carcasses and pools of arachnid venom, clearly something has gone awry. Mancini collaborated on the score with 1950s science fiction maestro Herman Stein. Don’t go into it expecting “Moon River.”
Finally, we’ll hear selections from literally the 800-pound gorilla of giant monster movies, “King Kong” (1933). Oscar Levant memorably described “Kong” as “a symphony accompanied by a movie.” The music was certainly a great part of the film’s initial – and enduring – success.
Max Steiner’s concept and execution of the music for “Kong” was really the first of their kind. Thanks to “Kong” and other early efforts by Franz Waxman and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, a prototype of the Hollywood sound was formed, and the spectacular images onscreen, especially those characteristic of the fantasy and adventure genres, were expected to be accompanied by equally lavish and outlandish orchestras.
No doubt, Hollywood would have figured it out eventually, yet it’s very gratifying to say, if it weren’t for “Kong,” there would be no “Ben-Hur,” there would be no “Star Wars,” there would be no “The Lord of the Rings.” At any rate, “Kong” got there first.
I hope you’ll join me for these outsized musical adventures this week, on “Picture Perfect,” this Friday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
