Chadwick H. Saxelid's Blog: Ghoulies, Ghosties, and Long-Leggedy Beasties, page 19

Captain America: Civil War (2016) - Soundtrack

While this score for the third Captain America adventure does have its energetic moments, overall it is a formless, characterless assembly of orchestral background noise.

Filmtracks posted a scathing three star review dismissing the score as "a disloyal mess of scatterbrained ideas." Ouch. 
But I have to agree with their assessment that Jackman's work here is "procedural and businesslike." That it offers little that grabs or holds my interest. 
The little would be a momentary blip in the first minute of Track 12, Civil War. Which underplays, or punctuates, the airport fight and was what motivated me to purchase this album and add it to my collection.
That momentary blip returns and is nicely expanded in both Track 18, Clash - underscoring and punctuating Cap and Iron Man's fight over the fate of Bucky (The Winter Soldier) - and Track 19, Closure - where it serves as something akin to a dirge to lament the end of Steve and Tony's friendship.
Everything else is just generic orchestral soundscape. Musical filler with no thematic center to hold it together. Which is just saddening.

Prime Evil - Edited by Douglas E. Winter - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - June 26, 1988
One of the stories in this anthology, which suffers when compared to Kirby McCauley's far larger and more breathtaking opus Dark Forces, stuck in my memory. David Morrell's Orange is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity. That story managed to wallop me good. I loved it.

I also vaguely remember being somewhat baffled and intrigued by Whitley Strieber's story The Pool. It was the first piece of fiction that Strieber wrote after finishing Communion and the thematic connection between the two seemed clear. Beyond that, I remember feeling lost and confused about what I had just read...

1988 was a long time ago and I no longer have the book close at hand. But I was able to track down its table of contents, so I could check to see if anything else in the book might jog a memory. Only two did.

First would be Stephen King's The Night Flier, which contains a bathroom scene that is equal parts gruesome, goofy, and, being Stephen King, pretty darn scary. Have not seen its movie adaptation, yet.

Then there is Peter Straub's The Juniper Tree, which I must admit to having no memory of reading in this anthology, but when I read it in a collection of Straub's fiction, it really knocked me for a loop. Maybe my psyche was ready for just how close to home this story hits.

There is also a Clive Barker story in the anthology, titled Coming to Grief, but I have no recollection of it whatsoever. Perhaps it is time for a refresher?

Alien (1979) - Trading Card #61

A smear of blood blossoms on Kane's chest. Seconds later the fabric of his shirt is ripped open as a small monster head - about the size of a man's fist - bursts through the officer's mangled body!

I read the novelization of Alien before I was able to see the film, so I knew what was about to happen when Kane started coughing and convulsing at the table. Our father, however, did not.

"This thing grabbed onto this guy's face, but then it fell off," I remember him telling mom, after we got home. "And I thought, okay, that must have been the alien and the rest of the movie is going to be about the people on the spaceship. But then the guy starts to get sick at the dinner table and I see Chad's eyes get real wide and he tenses up, so I knew something bad was about to happen."

Alan Dean Foster's description of the event in the novelization was less traumatic than what was shown in the actual movie...

Gigantis The Fire Monster [Godzilla Raids Again (1955)] / Teenagers from Outer Space (1959) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - June 25, 1959
It took four years for the quickie sequel to the first Godzilla movie to reach theaters and drive-ins in the United States.
When it arrived its title, storyline, and characterizations were altered, of course, to better suit the questionable attitudes of the day. Not that the original version was all that better, though. Both are talky and feature special effects that, because of an error in film speed, lack the look and feel of the first, and far more serious, film.

Coupled with Gigantis The Fire Monster would be Teenagers from Outer Space, a notorious no-budget cheapie about nefarious aliens attempting to turn Earth into a breeding ground for giant, carnivorous lobster-like creatures.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) - Trading Card #63

Their Fate
Josh's cries for help become more pronounced. "I hear him downstairs!" yelled Mike as he ran through the old house. As he entered what appeared to be the basement, passing walls covered with strange symbols and handprints, Mike's video camera was knocked out of his hands and onto the floor. When Heather entered the room, her 16mm camera recorded the black-and-white image of Mike standing motionless, back to her, facing a wall. Then Heather's camera also hit the ground. 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) - Soundtrack

The score to my favorite Captain America movie takes a far different approach than that for the first film. No surprise, really, considering that The First Avenger was a period piece, while The Winter Soldier is set in a modern era awash with all manner of science fiction infused gizmos and gadgets.
So composer Henry Jackman leaned heavy into electronics and pounding rhythms, rather than instrumentation that invokes a bygone era. Well, save for Track 3, The Smithsonian, when the film called for that very approach.
One flourish I quite like is a processed scream, which sounds something like a bird cry, used as a kind of auditory signature for The Winter Soldier.

When I did a search for information or interviews regarding the score, the former was sparse and the latter rather negative. There was a great deal of grumbling about repeating loops, banging and clanging industrial effects, and groaning electronics.
While I can and do understand the reasoning for those legitimate complaints and criticisms, I do not find listening to this soundtrack to be all that painful of an experience.

Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - June 24, 1970
My introduction to the first sequel to Planet of the Apes came via its truncated edit on The 3:30 Movie. The bleak, nihilistic direction the film took left me shocked, shook, and slack jawed. I also loved it for what it did, of course. 

Alien (1979) - Trading Card #60

Suddenly, without warning... Kane's face screws into a mask of agony! He clutches at his chest, then whirls onto the table as his startled friends watch in horror...

Note that, unlike the previous card, Kane and Dallas are not wearing jackets.

Midnite Spook Show(s) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - June 23, 1956
It might not be a Friday the 13th, but that fact will not stop the venues in the Fox West Coast Theaters chain from holding yet another Midnite Spook Show.

If I had to choose between being able to see the classic chestnuts of Frankenstein (1931) and Dracula (1931) or the more contemporary House of Wax (1953) and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) on the big screen, I just might have leaned toward the latter. Because I do love me some giant monster action.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) - Trading Card #62

Ominous Shadows
Aiming their cameras, Mike and Heather entered the crumbling old house and slowly moved from room to room. The place was a hellhole, with peeling plaster and blackened windows and weird markings all over the walls. Then, suddenly, Mike heard Josh's tortured cries coming from somewhere in the decaying building. With Heather not far behind, Mike began to bolt up the stairs...

Is that a noose?