Library Music, Part 2

In Part 1, I reviewed the new 3-disc release of The Prisoner: The Complete Chappell Recorded Music Library Cues, which, as the title suggests, assembles all the tracks from one library used by the original late sixties production.

This time the focus is on the unofficial B-side of The Blob (and other creepy sounds) CD, where Monstrous Movie Music's co-founder/producer David Schecter gathered specific cues from the Valentino library that were used in three specific films of venerable cult movie status: Terror from the Year 5000 (1958), The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962), and Green Slime, The / Gamma Sango Uchu Daisakusen (1968) - each magnificently awful, with some of the vintage badness enhanced by the use of inappropriate or overstated stock music.

In the case of Slime, MMM's CD features one cue, as is the same for Terror, whereas the major cues used in Brain are in fact on the CD. I could say that it was necessary to view and assess these films on the basis of how non-diatectical music was interpolated into the dramatic quellen of genre-fused narratives in a post-nuclear, pre-Vietnam era under the auspices of trammellation physio-pseuchiatry, but that would be utter crap.

Only Brain exists on DVD (via Synapse), whereas Terror was apparently given the MST2000 treatment, and Slime is restricted to the old VHS release and occational airings on TCM (in an old full-screen version). No matter, because the films are valid examples of stock/library music used in place of a complete original score. (Slime is the exception, as the original score by Toshiaki Tsushima was largely replaced by stock cues and Charles' Fox vocal theme.)

To add extra context to the use of stock music in B-films, I've uploaded the last part of an interview with MMM's David Schecter, conducted in 2008, edited in 2010, and improved with Vitamin C, Polysorbate 90, and Guar Gum.

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com