Customer Reviews

Day the Earth Stood Still (Score)

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The year is 1951 and director Robert Wise is about to throw panic into Washington D.C. and the film world with "The Day the Earth Stood Still", when an extraterrestrial spacecraft lands near the White House. Very dramatic, intelligently directed and a well-craft screenplay with an outstanding cast. Our players are Klaatu (Michael Rennie) plays the alien invader and the Earth People who may be worth saving are Helen Benson (Patricia Neal), Dr. Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe), Bobby Benson (Billy Gray) and Tom Stevens (Hugh Marlowe). With first-rate cast we have a first-class composer of Bernard Herrmann, who creates the well established trademark of sci-fi with the theremin-dominated musical score. The theremin on this album is played by Celia Sheen, haunting with eerie imagery seeping through the orchestration. Wonderful arrangements by the composer himself, with excellent conducting by Joel McNeely. Each section of the orchestra ~ the pianos, hammonds, harps, brass and electronic instruments amplify within each cue. As Celia is carefully in complete control with the entire ensemble. The result is colors come shining through with a perfect performance and a credit to the classic composition by Bernard Herrmann.

Total Time: 38:43 on 33 Tracks ~ Varese Records 302-066-314-2 ~ (3/04/2003)

Bernard Herrmann, the famous coposer of so many classics of the cinema, has never written a boring film score, and in this science fiction classic,he sets the standard high again for great film music. This film is one of the classic science fiction movies of all time and this film score matches its subject with great force, music of the heavens and space and great music for Gort the robot. Highly recommended. This music fills you with awe and great harmonies. Herrmann was one of our greatest film composers and anything he wrote is worth listening to again and again.

but I like it as well if not better. This is Bernard Hermann's original score performed by orchestra (including Theremin) at Abbey Road Studios in 2002. The attention to detail and consideration of original arrangement is exemplary. As a long time fan of this film classic (and if you haven't seen it, find it ! After 58 years, it still speaks volumes of the human condition and futile politics) I've heard the original soundtrack within the film many times. This is different, of course, but excellent within its own right. If you wish to study the Theremin exquisitly used in an orchestral environment, this is the score and one the best recordings I've heard. Hermann's composition is simply classic of the genre.

This is not the original, but a fairly faithfull re-recording of the score. Purists may be put off by this and wish to seek out the original, but I think most will find this a beautifully recorded album. There are only minor changes to be found here, most have to do with the difference in recording techniques. The sound is fuller and richer that the one used for the film. I have to admit I purchased this thinking it was the original, but any bad feelings I had about that fact quickly went away.

I originally heard this soundtrack on the classical music station in Central Oregon. It took me a few moments to recognise what I was listening to but I caught on quickly enough.
Soon afterward, I did the usual Internet search and found the 'Day the Earth Stood Still' soundtrack on Amazon. My purchase was sent out promptly and the item was delivered exactly as advertised.
The soundtrack itself is excellently recorded and mixed. The liner notes are quite informative.
The various tracks each provided the soundtrack for various scenes in the film 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'. Each is appropriately titled.
I've seen that film more times than I care to remember and was pretty much able to place each CD track to its proper place in the film.

I've listened to the soundtrack album several times, both at home and on automobile tours. If anything, the 'Day the Earth Stood Still' soundtrack CD is creepier than the movie. A definite recommendation from me !!

being a huge fan of the movie and having the original soundtrack already I decided to give this re-recording a listen as it had extra tracks, well I was pleasantly suprised by how joel mcneely had reproduced the sounds and style of herrmanns original soundtrack,
with it obviously being in stereo it gives you that extra depth and feel to the movie,
well done mr mcneely your a credit to the industry.

The Day the Earth Stood Still is perhaps the greatest science fiction film of the 1950's; a decade shrouded not-so-much with pink poodle skirts, jukeboxes and hula-hoops as its growing fear of a confrontation with the Soviet Union and the atomic holocaust surely to follow. If the purpose of film as an art is to dissect the culture in which we live, then screenwriter Edmund H. North and director Robert Wise are the two guys in the sugar-filled ice cream truck making their rounds across suburban neighborhoods of America, shouting their terrifying message of self-destruction, the need for a stronger United Nations, and eventual demolition of nuclear arms to children running up and down those streets with silly putty in their hands and Davy Crockett hats on their heads.

Before listening to The Day the Earth Stood Still, I conducted a little research into its scoring sessions in order to further wet my appetite. Following Bernard Herrmann's writing efforts with 1941's Citizen Kane, and more recently his 1949 atmospheric score to The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (both of which I have yet to hear but expect to later unearth), Herrmann, like most masters of any particular trade, still had something to prove; he wasn't your typical Hollywood musician.

Recorded in August of 1951, Earth Stands Still showcased unusual overdubbing and tape-reversal techniques, a skill that 1960's experimental rockers like Jimi Hendrix, Brian Wilson (with Good Vibrations) and the Beatles would further develop. Unusual instrument combinations were used as well; violins, cellos, three electric basses, two Theremin electronic instruments, organs, electric organs, vibraphones, glockenspiels, marimba, tam-tam, timpani, celesta, and others.

Among strange instrument names like celesta and tam-tam, I had never heard of the Theremin before now. It was played by a master of that instrument, Dr. Samuel Hoffman, a then in-demand musician for sci-fi horror (which later included "The Thing from Another World" 1951, "Phantom from Space" 1953, and "It Came from Outer Space" 1953). It was first described to me as a car radio antennae controlled by its player or something of that nature. Possibly a bit confusing, it's actually a better description that one might conclude. Still, the Theremin can best be explained by seeing it in action. A simple video web search should suffice. Let's just say, play its eerie sound in the dark to unsuspecting audiences and they'll be looking for flying saucers hovering over your house before the night is through, which is precisely what makes Herrmann's score so provocative.

Danny Elfman would later say that Bernard Herrmann, and Earth Stands Still in particular, were the chief reasons he was inspired to become a film composer. A quick listen to the title track of Mars Attacks, Tim Burton's 1996 film, will reveal obvious comparisons, but now that I've listened through Earth Stands Still multiple times, one might see other Burton comparisons to Herrmann's terrifying piano strumming on his 1989 masterpiece score, Batman. Other commentators have pointed out that John Barry was perhaps inspired by Herrmann's piano work seventeen years later on Planet of the Apes.

The current compilation of The Day the Earth Stood Still was conducted in 2002 by Joel McNeely, the first time the complete score has been made available. Listening to re-recordings of original tracks never excites me. I find them flat and dry, but Joel McNeely has proven the integrity of the original recordings in his efforts to bring their silenced sounds to later generations. McNeely also recorded a massive project reinstating Herrmann's Twilight Zone score, which I'm also eager to listen to.

Turning off the lights, laying back on my leather sofa, shutting my eyes and letting the music do its surgical work on my lobes, I was immediately taken back by Herrmann's score because it was more atmospheric, less thematic than so many of its early golden age pomp and circumstance counterparts. It's opening cue is ear-piercing, and if that doesn't get your spine tingling, the wavy tides of the Theremin and the glockenspiel and its percussion counterparts to follow will. My wife almost immediately slung the upper proportions of her body around the hallway and asked, almost terrifyingly, what I was listening to. It was about that time that the Theremin shifted into its full earth invasion mode, and I knew I was in for something otherworldly.

The second track, Radar, is a particular favorite of mine. The sounds of the cosmos on the albums Prelude quickly drift away, almost as though we've left the atmosphere and touched our feet down upon the ground, but it's not a pleasant landing. Herrmann's chaotic piano dance insights feelings of dread, as if we're running through darkened streets, edging through alleys, cutting corners, always running from the threat of looming shadows.

The next couple of tracks maintain a softer ambiance while rehearsing themes of the prelude. Though a feeling of danger lurks, it's still distant, and for the time-being our fears our held at bay. It's not until Gort that we come to understand that the terror of the skies has finally come upon us (picked up again on the track Gorts Rage). but that's only the beginning of the record.

Almost every track maintains Herrmann's eerie atmospheric mood, though with enough dream-like variation to support each songs existence. Rebirth, with its cheerless use of strings, takes this space invades earth soundtrack to a new level of emotion. A welcome comfort suddenly appears on Arlington and Lincoln Memorial, which I must presume by the titles to refer to the monuments in Washington DC. I say "welcome comfort" because it's the first time that we hear a very earthly and familiar sound intruding as the intercessor; soft trumpeted winds slowly bellowing by in a sad military drone. As far as my recollection goes, we won't distinctly hear these trumpets played again in this same manner until the end of the album, Farewell, now mixed with atmospheric flavors, before swiftly concluding with a rephrase of the prelude, Finale.

The Day the Earth Stood Sill is definitely worth a trip through the nightmarish saucer plagued night and back for lovers of the genre simply based on its exclusive and innovative sound, and will certainly bring much of you back for another listen. I've already come in for seconds, and thirds, and fourths. Like many great scores, this one only improves with each additional listen.

Bernard Herrmann is a perfect example of a film composer who writes and performs evocative pieces of music without warranting the need for a movie to back it up. Later scoring such Hitchcock films as Psycho, North By Northwest, and innovating a new plateau to the movie score with his recording of fowl inclusive reverberating sounds on Birds, his contributions to the music medium amounts to everything that the art of the film score should aspire to.

The musical score from The Day the Earth Stood Still is as moving today (at least to sci-fi fans) as it was when it was originally produced for film. This version on CD was faithfully rescored and contains all the excitment of the movie production by Bernard Herrmann.

I so loved this musical score that back in the very early 60's I rebroadcast tape recordings of the entire film soundtrack on a home built wireless (AM) broadcaster to the buildings surrounding my own back in the old Bronx. Local friends who were dedicated sci-fi fans would listen to the announced broadcasts on their (then very new) transistor radios while cruising the neighborhood, while I played DJ on my rooftop. This was my way of sharing this hard to find but great commodity.

This re-recording is the best version of this film's soundtract I have ever heard! It is just awesome and with it's 21st century stereo sound recording techniques, you won't believe how good this sounds. It is really erie and powerful stuff. Man, when I put the sound up for the music when Gort the Robot first appeared in the film, no kidding, it is so ominous you just want to run away! Can't get better than this. Highly recommended.

Listening to this soundtrack recreates a haunting story wherein a visitor with an important message was spurned-- to our dismay. Turn it up!