Bad Movies with Brilliant Scores

Yes I did start up bad scenes from good movies in response to good scenes from bad movies.

But once in a while,said bad movie will be completely devoid of a good scene or the bad scenes will bring a movie down,....

Or they would if the composer didn't have great music all the time for these parts. They exist

Personally I find this most evident in Batman Forever which is a terrible movie. however Elliot Goldenthal though not as epic as Danny Elfman is no slouch. Truly he really captures the heroic and light themes,for the record the main theme beats Molossus by a longshot. Also Batman And Robin is much less of a burden to watch to.

Then Leonard Rosenmann actually had brilliant parts put into the LordOfTheRings such as the main theme or "Theoden's Victory"

And finally, James Horner pretty much was the only reason I didn't give up on Avatar.

So what are some of your movies/scenes made easier via good themes?

edited 5th Oct '11 2:07:01 PM by terlwyth

Ennio Morricone's score to Red Sonja. Kalidor's Theme should have been in a much better movie than this dreck.

I would say the Star Wars prequel trilogy in general had great music, though I do not consider the movies themselves as bad as popular opinion seems to...

While as a fan, I'm reluctant to call it a bad movie, Child's Play 2 has a really fantastic musical score by Graeme Revell.

It could be more epic than ol' Chucky deserves.

edited 27th Sep '11 8:37:19 PM by Prowler

Danny Elfman did the theme on that one. He was supposed to score the entire film but after watching a rough cut, pulled out. Graeme Revell listened to Elfman's theme, lobbied for it to stay in the film and built the score around it.

There's only one site on the entire internet that says that. I believe Graeme did the entire score.

...and now I find someone bringing up that someone else made up some BS about Elfman having a "rejected" score for Child's Play 2 so I imagine the rumor that he worked on the movie started there and spread wherever else that information was seen.

I wanted to call that one a crock before, because if Elfman worked on the film in any capacity, it would be brought up at least...well, once.

edited 27th Sep '11 8:52:30 PM by Prowler

Here's the claim: [1]

Elfman wrote a theme before watching the film but hated the film. Revell saw Elfman's written notes for the theme, liked them and lobbied Universal to use Elfman's work for the film. So basically, Elfman wrote some additional music and chose to be unbilled.

This is from Rejected Film Scores, which always checks their sources.

edited 27th Sep '11 8:54:48 PM by Buscemi

That's where I saw it before, and I'm more than a little nonplussed by that.

A few people on Elfman's forum mention that some dumbass made a fake "boot" with his rejected score, so...I still don't buy it.

A really awful film with a good score is Jaws: The Revenge.

edited 27th Sep '11 9:22:12 PM by Prowler

One of the profs at my school actually did the score for The Room. True to form, they spelled his name wrong in the credits...It's definitely a bad movie, and while the score may not be brilliant, I think it displays a slightly higher level of competence than any other aspect.

Some others:

• Alan Silvestri - American Anthem
• Alan Silvestri - Mac And Me
• Alan Silvestri - Identity. The movie was good until the awful ending. At least said ending has a nicely creepy score accompanying it.
• Randy Edelman - The Big Green
• Randy Edelman - Leap Year
• Daniel Licht - Children Of The Corn II
• Ennio Morricone - Orca
• Ennio Morricone - Exorcist II: The Heretic
• Ennio Morricone - Mission To Mars
• Trevor Jones - Chaos
• Christopher Young - Priest
• Jerry Goldsmith - The Mummy (YMMV, of course)

edited 27th Sep '11 11:10:50 PM by Buscemi

I hesitate to call it bad, but Dust Devil was definitely not great. The score, though...

@Arsidas: Curse you. I was just coming in here to say that.

I've heard mixed things about Insidious, but I find the soundtrack on par with George Crumb in ominousness.

edited 29th Sep '11 8:47:30 PM by Merlo

Joseph Bishara did a great job, and the movie itself was great...or I thought so, at least.

The music from The Avengers - y'know, that weird movie with Uma Thurman and Ralph Fiennes. The music just makes me happy. :D

Michael Kamen wrote a whole bunch of music for it that ended up rejected due to the massive amounts of cuts. When asked if there would be an Avengers 2, Kamen said that there was barely an Avengers 1.

Too bad that hasn't be released (I don't remember any of Joel McNeely's material from the film, the only movie I remember his music from is Squanto: A Warrior's Tale).

It's funny that, for me at least, the music in Star Wars episode 1 is best. As well as the fight music there was the use of the force theme (I think that's the name?) when Qui-gon was sabering through the door.

Probably not an example but The Dollars Trilogy would have been not so great (or even terrible) with different music. It'd just be two guys staring at each other and a quick shot, rather than the epic duels that take place. It's built like a music video, with the pieces being done beforehand and the filming done second. example- ecstacy of gold, just a guy running in circles, with any other music, a pointless waste of time. But with the right music it is pretty epic.

Even though A View To A Kill is one of the weakest James Bond movies, the only awesome aspect being Christopher Walken as Max Zorin, its title theme by Duran Duran is easily one of the best.

Also I liked in a rare moment of awesomeness (for this guy at least), I enjoyed James Newton Howard's score for The Village and even parts of his otherwise generic score for The Last Airbender

And finally if I didn't already say this, I only sat through the romance scenes of Star Wars Episode II becuase of John Williams' score,which actually seemed the convey the romance when the dialogue,..... just,.... didn't

edited 5th Oct '11 2:08:11 PM by terlwyth

I may not like Howard The Duck but I do love this score though.

Cannibal Holocaust has weirdly haunting, beautiful music for a zero-budget Exploitation Film.

Oh - forgot the Twilight films. They have some pretty nice pieces in there.

Marco Beltrami's score for the third 'Crow' movie is beautiful.

While Halloween 3 was considered a bad movie, it had a haunting soundtrack with plenty of sinister synth.