Geoff Love and his orchestra pretty much had the
budget film soundtrack market cornered in the seventies. A veritable cottage
industry, Love released a series of albums themed around a particular film genre
where his orchestra would play the main themes from the soundtracks from the
most famous films therein. Big Western Themes, Big War Themes, Big Love Movie
Themes - all were grist to Geoff's mill and that mill was certainly working
overtime. Most of these can be bought for pennies these days and I could have
picked up any number on a single visit to my usual charity shop, but I decided
to settle on 'Big Terror' as the representative sample from the oeuvre, partly
because of my long time love of horror films, but mainly because of that
magnificent cover.
Because magnificent it certainly is, though you'd
expect no less from Tom Chantrell, a man with a fine pedigree of designing movie
posters, including the best ever 'Star Wars' poster. As the album dates from
1976 it presumably knows a good cash in when it sees it as the 'Jaws' shark
dominates, but genre fans can have hours of enjoyment identifying which image
represents which film.* And ironically, that's where it all starts to come
unglued too. The very
title 'Big Terror' suggests....well, some big terror. 'Jaws', 'Psycho', 'The
Exorcist' - these films tick the right box so fair enough, but 'Earthquake'?
'Three Days Of The Condor'? 'The Eiger Sanction'? These, I'd submit, stretch the
noun somewhat; no doubt someone with no head for heights would get the sweats at
the thought of roping up to Clint Eastwood and climbing Mt Eiger, but if we're
going to be that subjective then why not cover the theme music from
public information films about visiting the dentist or how to reverse park into
a tight space on a busy road, both of which would get some people's pulses
racing. But
whatever, it's too late to challenge it now so I have to take it as I find it,
and I find it a bit of a mixed bag to be honest.
Most film soundtracks tend to be scored by a
composer and, like any piece of the classical repertoire, the conductor and
soloists have a degree of discretion in their interpretation of that score. For
example, the Karajan and Furtwangler recordings of the Beethoven symphony cycle
are different enough to warrant owning both, and though Glen Gould recorded
Bach's 'Goldberg Variations' twice in his career (1955 and 1981), the former
version runs for 38 minutes while the latter takes a more sedate 51. It's all
down to interpretation.
The difference with film soundtracks is that a version
of a film score will tend to be 'fixed' to the one that plays over the opening
credits of that film, and a good score can become as inseparable from the film
as the lead actors and dialogue. Anybody tackling the
more famous soundtracks would be wise not to stray too far from the familiar,
and Geoff doesn't re-arrange his selections into musique concrète or anything like.
After listening to the whole though, then as a general rule I can say he's
weaker on the bigger, more 'traditional'
soundtracks but better where there's more room to cut loose; it kind of feels as
if Love has too much reverence for the major players to colour
too far outside the lines and so tries to play them with a straight
bat, but his versions are as own brand Corn Flakes are to Kellogg's.
For example, Love's take on John Williams'
(rightly) famous 'Jaws' main theme remains faithful in tone, but the horns sound
less like the deep, primal warning of a great white shark approaching than the
sound of a fat man farting in a half full bath. Similarly, the jangling nerve
violin screech of the 'Psycho' theme is, in Love's hands, muted and polite to
the point that it would be more at home playing over a scene in an alternate
film where Norman Bates knocks on the bathroom door to make sure Marion Crane is
decent before he comes in and murders her. On the other hand, Love takes the
spare piano fragment of 'Tubular Bells' that appears in 'The Exorcist' and gives
it a full band blaxploitation treatment that's as interesting as it's
unexpected, while their take on Herbie Hancock's 'Death Wish' theme swaggers
with as much funk and groove as the original. Perhaps even moreso.
Which kind of sums up the whole album really - half
of it works, half of it doesn't, but it's hard to be too critical; buying the
full 'official' soundtracks for each of these films would, then as now, cost a
pretty penny, even if you could find them and so as a cheap sampler of genre
soundtracks it remains good value. Couple that with that superb cover and you
have a charity shop cast off that's genuinely worth hearing and keeping.
* Not really, but
see if you can spot the reference to 'The Executioner'.
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