The Mancini score is an all-time great! (Certainly a candidate for the all-time winner for disparity between score quality and film quality.) Anybody who doesn't have it should get it.
The fact that Kamens music contributed in the realization of its own album is a testament that its going to be a worthwhile purchase. This could easily have been a 3CD Set but I guess Kamens estate must have had a say in to get this into a separate release.
There is indeed orchestral music by Michael Kamen in the film: The opening sequence and the Evil Visitation scene come to mind. None of it was on the BSX release. If I remember correctly, some of Kamen's music even plays simultaneous to the Mancini music. I once recorded a rip directly from the film and coupled it with the BSX recordings. The cues featuring Kamen's material total about 38 minutes. There may be less, because some of those tracks feature stretches of Mancini music, and there may be more if there's unused music we don't know about yet. Soon we'll know. Very happy about this release.
The fact that Kamens music contributed in the realization of its own album is a testament that its going to be a worthwhile purchase. This could easily have been a 3CD Set but I guess Kamens estate must have had a say in to get this into a separate release.
Yes, the real reason for it being a separate album might not be running time, but the wishes of the Kamen estate. I don't know anything of course, it just seems plausible.
Its a hell of a score by Mancini with one of the greatest MainTheme.Kamens score is pretty weak in my taste but nice to have.Get it if you dont have it already!
As far as I remember... (and it's been a while), Cannon decided to recut (especially the opening) of the movie, and that required a rescore. Mancini was unavailable and/or didn't like the re-cuts, and he had already moved on to another project, so Kamen was brought in to re-score the re-edited sequences, and some electronic overlays, and he used mostly electronics to do that.
Yeah this is going to interesting because as Kamen was just brought in as a 'patch up' job I thought that the BSX release was pretty much all he did ( apart from the minor bits mentioned). It'd be good just to get better sound anyway though.
I know 'you can't always get what you want' (as an ageing rocker once said), but the guessing thread about this title had gotten my hopes up for a spanking new REIVERS with Williams & Schifrin or maybe LES MISERABLES by Poledouris and Yared (I know)...and this title has left me a tad disappointed. I have the BSX 2 disc edition and while I enjoy the Mancini score, the Kamen stuff isn't the type I really enjoy by him. I can't imagine much revelatory music to shake my foundations about this soundtrack (and if I'm honest, it's not like I even play the BSX time and time again). But Hey Ho, I hope it sells well for Intrada (I see a few already who don't have the BSX quite excited about it).
Since I've been around for a while, apart from a very few oddities that seem to be of interest to know one but me (I can live with that), I pretty much have all the film scores I ever wanted. That doesn't mean I won't buy any anymore, if there is a release I am really interested in, but anything that is now released and of interest to me is just icing on my already well stuffed cake. So I am never "disappointed" with whatever is released, simply because there isn't really anything I "long" for.
I already have the BSX release of the score, and, while I have no doubt the current Intrada edition will improve on it, I rarely feel the need to re-buy a release I already have. However, I think it's great to see this score re-released.
The Mancini score is an all-time great! (Certainly a candidate for the all-time winner for disparity between score quality and film quality.) Anybody who doesn't have it should get it.
This movie is one of our favorite guilty pleasures. We still watch it every few years. (The original cut, not the American edit we first saw.) I won't argue that it's a great film, but it is a hoot! (And no, I'm not making a naughty pun.)
My wife and I were two of about five people in the theater opening day matinee, and I think we were the only ones who enjoyed it. I'll always remember the effect of Mancini's main theme at the end, it was just fantastic! (And I wondered at the time at the weird unevenness of the score, but it didn't bother me, just confused me when I got the soundtrack on cassette and the opening music etc was nowhere to be found.)
I even picked up the Colin Wilson novel in the grocery store - the only time he ever hit the checkout racks. Which led me to a life-long ambivalent love/not-love of Wilson's fiction and non. (But that's another subject.)
I'm all in on this new double-decker edition, and proud to claim the terrible wonderfulness of the movie, and the just plain wonderfulness of Mancini's score. (And Kamen's cool too!)
Spence wrote music for NFL Films that would play in bumpers, clip packages, etc. Someone will no doubt correct me if I'm wrong but I believe Spence's piece was composed well before LIFEFORCE.
