Chadwick H. Saxelid's Blog: Ghoulies, Ghosties, and Long-Leggedy Beasties, page 51

Up from the Depths (1979) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - September 1, 1979One of an innumerable number of ads that were better (much, much better, in fact) than the film being advertised. Considering some of the broad performances, goofy dialog, and whatnot, it came as no surprise to learn that director Charles B. Griffith intended, or wanted, Up from the Depths to be much more of a broad comedy than producer Roger Corman "allowed" it to be.
Or, maybe, the comedy just was not all that funny to begin with? No idea. I just know that the movie itself, while it does have some goofy so bad it's good charm to it, is best consumed by seasoned b-movie aficionados only. 

The Amityville Horror (1979) - Soundtrack Collection

Even though I had been gravitating towards entertainments of the scary and spooky kind for as long as I could remember, it was more of an instinctual thing than a conscious act or decision on my part. Until 1979, that is. That was the year I turned twelve. It would also be the year when something unlocked and opened a door somewhere deep inside my brain. 
As I have shared elsewhere on this blog, 1979 is when I began to pay closer attention and started to contextualize all this weird, monstrous, and macabre stuff that fascinated me so. The year I became a fan of William Goldman, of Stephen King, of John Carpenter.
But what, if anything, does that have to do with The Amityville Horror? Nothing... and yet everything.
1979, for me, was when I began to transition out of childhood and into adolescence. When I began to question and study things with something akin to a critical eye, but an eye that was still suffused with a child's sense of wonder and its mercurial perceptions of art and reality. When the real and the unreal could still mingle and combine in a way that seemed to be, well, really real.
Nowadays that mingling can only be embodied and replicated in the books I read, the movies I watch, and music I listen to, but not in the way that I perceive reality. That door has closed.
Which brings me, albeit in the most circuitous of ways, to The Amityville Horror. This "true story" was quite the cultural phenomenon in 1979. A phenomenon that would itself transition into an exploitation cottage industry of ever more lurid and ludicrous books and movies and documentaries and mythical-god knows what else.
But in 1979 I thought it was real. While I did not see the film itself until 1980, or so. The word of mouth I heard around school was that the movie was nothing like the book and not all that scary. Nonetheless I did buy the soundtrack, despite my having not seen the picture, and enjoyed some of what I heard.
Like every other soundtrack album at that time, the music was a re-recording of select portions of the score. It also contained a disco version of the main title that, I will admit without any embarrassment or shame, got me dancing around my bedroom. There was also a jazz selection, titled Juke Box, that, while I liked it, I did not recognize it. Also included on the album was an aggressive (as described in Jeff Bond's liner notes for this release) arrangement of Bach's Concerto No. 5 for Harpsichord and Strings that composer Lalo Schifrin created for use in the film.
As much as I liked what little of the score there was on the album, and as much as it helped me acquire an appreciation for the use of human voices in film scores, I felt there was room for improvement. Something that did not happen until Quartet Records released this expanded edition of Schifrin's complete score in 2015. A delightful upgrade from the lackluster re-recording that Schifrin's own label had released. A re-recording which changed the tempo and timbre into something that sounded like an off-brand knock-off of his Oscar-nominated score.
While my feelings about the movie, its source material, and their questionable legacy remain ambivalent. There is one thing I have no doubt about, at all. Lalo Schifrin's score for The Amityville Horror is far more impressive and chilling than the film itself was ever capable of being.

Alien (1979) - Trading Card #5

On the bridge of "Nostromo", two sophisticated star helmets begin exchanging data as the long-silent spaceship slowly stirs to life. What is up with these so-called Star Helmets? They were just props on the set. Nobody wore them or mentioned them or even used them. I guess the order to whoever was tasked with writing the titles and text was, "Just come up with something that sounds like Star Wars, okay? Kids are going to buy these things because of Star Wars, so make a connection somehow, somewhere."

The Crawling Eye (1958) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - March 3, 1959Any afternoon that The Crawling Eye (aka The Trollenberg Terror) would air on either KTVU's Chiller Diller or KBHK's Monstrous Movie was a good one. Despite its being mocked and ridiculed on the very first episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, that fact is eclipsed by my fond memories of it scaring the daylights out of me, back in the day.
There is also the acknowledgment John Carpenter has given the film as a seminal influence on his own cult classic shocker, The Fog. I think the influence is quite obvious, too. Something that only makes me love both movies all the more. 

Ambition (1991) - Soundtrack Collection

Although I remember seeing the TV spots and newspaper ads for Ambition, I did not see the actual movie until it was available for rental on home video.
There was a great deal about the movie that I both liked and related to, seeing that I was a very young wannabe writer at the time. One who was losing a struggle with some crippling personal issues that all but choked the life out of my creativity for decades. So it goes.
As bad as that might seem, it was very small potatoes in comparison to what one Mitchell Osgood (star-screenwriter Lou Diamond Phillips) does in Ambition. There are numerous scenes and plot twists from the film that are still etched in my memory.
One thing about the film that did not stick with me was its score. When Caldera released this limited edition soundtrack in 2019, I was stunned to see that it was Leonard Rosenman who had composed this score that I had no memory of. Which is odd, because, by this time, I would pay very close attention to the music in any and every movie or television show that I watched.
The simple fact that Rosenman's stylistic approach here was progressive, rather than harmonic, provides the answer. His themes and motifs are atonal and unnerving, but not all that attention grabbing. What Ambition needed was music that helped to create a sense of unease and anxiety, which it did. Quite well, in fact.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) - Trading Card #7

November 1940 - May 1941. Starting with Emily Hollands, a total of seven children were abducted from the area surrounding Burkittsville. Seven months later, a hermit named Rustin Parr walked into a local market and announced that he was "finally finished." Police hiked to his secluded house in the woods and discovered the bodies of the seven missing children buried in his cellar. Front: Child murderer Rustin Parr is interrogated by the press shortly before his public execution.

Rustin ParrI do remember a clip from this "interview" being featured in one of the television specials that aired just before the release of The Blair Witch Project. Another unnerving addition to the chilling backstory weaved by the filmmakers.

It's Alive (1974) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - Sunday, April 10, 1977Larry Cohen's iconic monster baby opus It's Alive had a brief theatrical run in 1974, but was pulled and shelved by an unimpressed, or just plain embarrassed, distributor. 
Three years and a regime change later, the new boss had a far more favorable opinion of It's Alive than the old boss. So, in 1977, the movie was pulled off the shelf and re-released, with a snazzy new campaign that scared the living daylights out of nine-year-old me.
I was fascinated and petrified by the sight of that clawed hand draped over the side of an ever so slowly twirling basset, the thumping heartbeat that began as soon as it came into view, and the monstrous cry heard just after the narrator intones, "You see, there's only one thing wrong with the Davis baby... it's alive."
While not a huge hit by today's standards, the film did rake in a tidy profit for the studio. So a sequel was requested. More on that later.
I didn't see It's Alive until well into the 1980s. While it was not quite the traumatizing creature feature I had imagined as a child, it was nonetheless an intriguing and fascinating little nightmare scenario.

Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986) - Soundtrack Collection

Turns out there is a good reason for my not remembering the score Michael Linn composed for this sequel to 1985's King Solomon's Mines. It's not really a score.
Jerry Goldsmith had composed and conducted the excellent score for the first film and, to save on production costs, the decision was made to recycle most of it for Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold. Selections from Doc Seltzer's score for The Ambassador (1984) and George S. Clinton's score for Avenging Force (1986), also owned by The Cannon Group, were also recycled for use in the film.
Even with all that recycling there were still sections and snippets that needed music. Enter Michael Linn, who composed and conducted said filler, to create what amounts to a hint and a tease for what an actual original score might have sounded like. There is enough color and character on display to have me wish that Linn had been able and allowed to score the entire film.

Alien (1979) - Trading Card #4

Creature from Black Lake (1976) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - Wednesday, September 22, 1976Creature from Black Lake is one of a handful of films from my childhood that I deemed to be "far too scary" to see, because the ads were scary enough, thank you.
I finally caught up with this particular piece of regional filmmaking cheese when it played after an episode of Kolchak The Night Stalker on the CBS Late Night Movie. At least that is how I remember it.
Creature from Black Lake turned out to be an inoffensive little thing, about as scary as an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man featuring Bigfoot (Andre the Giant). My being a fan of Dennis Fimple, Jack Elam, and Dub Taylor no doubt helped keep my interest...