Imprisoned By Their Evil Step-Fathers: Good Soundtracks From Terrible Movies

2001? Well everyone has their own interpretation of bad. I love Kubrick though.

Alien 3 is another good one.

 

Let's be careful about not turning this thread into "what films are bad or not", that's not the point, is it? Everyone's opinion of what a bad movie is varies quite a lot. Let's stick to pointing out great soundtracks to movies that either yourself or some blurry general consesus consider bad.

 

Holy cow, somebody gets the point of the thread.


Alien 3 is a quite exceptional soundtrack; I understand there's a fan-made complete soundtrack somewhere, but I've never run across it.

Adagio in particular is a favorite. It's quite incredible.

 

Well if it is merely the general consensus than there are several films I have in mind for contention. Batman Forever has a strong score but the film it's self is hated by many

 

I'm not a huge fan of Goldenthal's Batman scores. In particular, those abrasive rolling horn blasts drive me nuts (IIRC he uses them in a lot of his scores, Alien3 included).

But it's still a much better score than the movie it accompanies.

 

This is another pair of scores I'm not particularly familiar with. I saw the films years and years ago and never went back to them.


Uma sure was hot as Poison Ivy, though.

 

Okay...X-Men 3: The Last Stand!


I think that the Jean/Phoenix Theme is really, really memorable; it's awesome in it's power, but also heartbreakingly sad-not to offend anyone, but it's as if God has come to Earth and found himself hated and feared and looked on as a thing to be destroyed.

At least, that's what the theme brings to mind for me. The rest of the score is really high-energy action music that follows on from the previous two films quite well, I think, although (iirc) none of Ottman or Kamen's themes made a re-appearance, which is probably a good thing, I think. See the lackluster Superman Returns score for proof.

Anyway.

This is really excellent and I suggest finding it, even if the movie it's attached to is clumsy at best and mortifyingly bad at worst.

 

I disagree. It works well with the film, and I suppose that should mean it's good because that's what film scores are supposed to do, but I don't think it is. For me it's the difference between film music and background music. It's very good background music, but nothing special as music to listen to. The Pheonix theme appears effective, but it's little more than a substitude for typical choral trailer music.
I've long told iTunes to skip the damn thing. Didn't like it when I first saw the movie and soon found it very annoying.

 

Well, now that the totally-loved-it and totally-hated-it posts are taken care of-anyone else want to post?

 

One of my favorite soundtracks to a crappy film was Hans Zimmer's The Thin Red Line.

 

Never seen the film or heard the score, personally.

 

You've heard pieces of the score in various trailers, especially Journey to the Line. Remember the Pearl Harbor trailer? It was in there, for example.

 

This?

 

edit: double post. My bad.

 

How about John Barry's score for "A View to a Kill"?
His scores for OO7 are always better than the film, but this was the only OO7 film I would classify as terrible.

I also nominate Leonard Roseman's score for Bakshi's animated LOTR soundtrack.

 

Good call. Well, I think some of the other Bond movies are terrible, too, but good call on this being a great score.

Two bits in particular stand out. The first is "Snow Job", in which Barry brings back the bass line from On Her Majesty's Secret Service during a snowy chase reminiscent of those in OHMSS. It's a great call-back to one of his best scores.

The second is a cue that is I believe shamefully missing from the movie soundtrack, but available on the compilation album "Bond: Back in Action Volume 2". It's called "Fanfare", and it's the music that plays as Bond rescues Tanya Roberts from a burning building. It's a surprisingly sweeping rendition of the Duran Duran title melody, and probably the boldest flat-out 'heroic' music to ever feature in a Bond film. There's also a great pun, as the unheard lyrics to the choral melody are "Dance into the fire".

 

Give my Regards to Broad Street