Ed Wood: Original Soundtrack Recording [SOUNDTRACK]

Howard Shore

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 18, 1994)
• Original Release Date: September 28, 1994
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Soundtrack
• Label: Hollywood Records
• ASIN: B000000ODJ
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #81,059 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
To capture the story of the director of Plan 9 from Outer Space, Howard Shore plays with '50s-style camp. On the minus side, this disc has no consistent mood and puts too much emphasis on the silliness over the more original and slightly more serious pieces. The overriding form here is "exotica," drawing obvious inspiration from Les Baxter (who was often himself a budget-horror-movie orchestrator). But Cuban noise maker Perez Prado, cult organist Korla Pandit, and Shore's own variations on "hep" get a bigger slice than the more elegant and eerie work of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, complemented by Cynthia Millar's Ondes Martenot (an early synthesizer) and Lydia Kavina's theremin. Still, Shore does a fine job re-creating phrases from old production-music tunes. The dialogue snippets are still hilarious. --Joseph Lanza

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Almost as much fun as the movie itself..., June 19, 2002

By	William E. Adams (Hobbs, NM USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

For my dough, "Ed Wood" was one of the most enjoyable films of the '90's, and Shore's soundtrack is also excellent. While there are a few campy dialogue snippets from the movie, and a few moments of dissonant typical-50's horror sounds, overall this is actually a lovely piece of work. Mixed together almost perfectly are the Strange, the Beautiful, the Exotic, the Lounge, and the Comedic. If you liked the film, you can't help but like the disc. Even if you didn't see the movie, and even if you don't know who Ed Wood was, you probably will like the soundtrack. Shore dedicated this effort to the late Henry Mancini, who got his start doing horror music in the 50's..."Creature From the Black Lagoon" being one. This is fun, but it is also good music, well-performed. The real Ed Wood was inept and troubled, but he loved the movies, and he perservered in making them on his own no matter how many months it took and how incomprehensible they turned out. His life may not deserve a score this good, but the film they made about him certainly did.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Campy and haunting..., April 10, 2002

By	DrSpecter (United States) - See all my reviews

This is my favorite soundtrack CD! There's the simultaniously campy and haunting mixture of theremin, endes matinot and conga drums. There's the bouncy beatnick jazz numbers. There are actual orchestrations of a lot of the library music cut-ups Wood scored his films with. There are amazingly poigniant pieces like "This Is The One" that beautifully evoke the mysteries of fate that made a star of Wood years after he died in abject poverty. And there are two well-chosen pieces by the whacked out Cuban mambo genius Perez Prado, and the best thing I've ever heard by Korla Pandit (who got this weird close-up cameo in the movie like a major star.) This really deserved an oscar, as did the film.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Shore Thing, November 4, 2001

By	W. Davidson (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

You already know how fantastic this film is, so now to the soundtrack... Composer Howard Shore has provided the perfect musical accompaniment to Tim Burton's B-Movie bio. Many of the tracks from this soundtrack sound exactly like the sort of music that Ed Wood may have chosen for his pictures if he had had the luxury of an orchestra. The main title immediately evokes the ghosts of cardboard graveyards and a genre of fantastic cinema the likes of which we sadly no longer see.

Many of the tracks feature dialogue from the film which I usually find intrusive on soundtracks, but not here. Criswell pops out of his coffin and welcomes you to the "SHOCKING story of Ed Wood Jnr!!!", later on, Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi inexplicably screams "Pull the string! Pull the string!!!!" as the orchestra swells to a creepy crescendo.

Complimentary to the thrills and chills original soundtrack is the music used as background in the club scenes in the film. Cuban mambo genius Perez Prado gets a look in with `Kuba Mambo' and Indian organist and turban-revivalist Korla Pandit plays some bewitching Hammond on his `Nautch Dance'.

Play it at Halloween, play it to scare the neighbours, but whatever you do, play it.