themes from HORROR Movies Original 1959 CORAL records

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themes from HORROR Movies "Dick Jacobs & Orchestra"

Stereo high Fidelity CORAL  # CRL 757240 original 1959,Heavy weight vinyl. 

Bright,clean,play graded,no skips,excellent top condition,Vinyl looks near new,cover looks near new,with exception to the back cover with some small spots and "sample copy" written in ink .

  Vintage pressing's 1959 on Coral are DIFFICULT TO FIND . .

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Comments :

Expanding on an idea from older mono-drama LPs a few record producers introduced into the market several concept albums in the then-novel format of stereophonic sound.

Already present in feature films as another means to yank moviegoers away from their TV sets, by 1959, stereo recordings had already found a home with nascent audiophiles - via some superbly engineered jazz, classical, and pop/rock albums - so it seemed a bit odd that stereo would pop up in a gimmicky concept album.

Performing material by composers such as avant-guardist Paul Dessau may have seemed a stretch for band leader Dick Jacobs, but Themes from Horror Movies remained one of the few commercial albums that, for decades, contained vintage B-movie horror music.No surprise that a generation of kids, influenced by the ghoulish and bug-eyed classics scored by these composers, would be the ones re-issuing the LP  in 1978 (re-branded as Themes from Classic Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films), the original Coral LP - with sound effects and spooky dialogue ("In Ghoulish High Fidelity") has pretty much dropped into the abyss of obscurity.

Themes from Horror Movies is a dodo-like platter of kitschy ephemera,seared into the album mix from '59.

 Coral's album begins with a dopey vocal prologue on music's ability to 'soothe the savage beast with dulcet tones,' alternating from Boris Karloff to Bela Lugosi imitations. All of the falsettos were performed by Bob McFadden, better known as one of the key vocal artists for the Rankin/Bass productions, with text written by Mort Goode (who also penned the album's painfully unfunny liner notes). After a loud growl, Hans Salter's Son of Dracula really starts the album, peppered by a panning laugh effect at one point.

The veteran arranger's jazz sensibilities perhaps ensured the suites would have crisp brass performances, and possess an excellent balance between high and resonant bass frequencies.from The Incredible Shrinking Man which veers from a chamber orchestra arrangement to jazzy brass shrill, while a trumpet performs a soothing melodic solo of the main theme. The original film version is less assaultive, but while Jacobs' arrangement goes for a precise level of unease, the extreme shifts and mocking brass performances make for a pretty mordant little cue. On the Coral LP, the track has a Karloff intro, and some woo-woo effects pop up twice in the cue, with some ambient reverb echoing in both left & right tracks.

Herman Stein's "Shooting Stars" cue from This Island Earth, a short verbal intro muttering some silliness about 'zigging and zagging'. with sound effect of something scraping the sky before plummeting to Earth.

The Mole People also gets a verbal intro ("See the Mole People! You'll be pleasantly shocked! Feel their claws run up and down your spine! You'll dig it the most - They'll dig you, too!"), as does The House of Frankenstein with the latter getting a Karloff falsetto, and clinking chains that fade up at the head and tail of the selection.

The Horror of Dracula also gets a short Karloff intro courtesy of McFadden, and the delightfully grim Paul Dessau suite - with creepy organ - closes with a squeaky wooden door, and 'blood-curdling' female scream.

McFadden also does another Karloff intro for the Creature from the Black Lagoon which also gets overlaid with wolf howls. With each of the three Creature films getting a spot on the album, it's clear Universal (also owned by Coral's parent company, MCA) was mining the instant recognition qualities of its beloved monster flicks (although the sound effects here kinda go against the overall nature of the Creature, since he has GILLS, and lives UNDERWATER, where there are no WOLVES.)

It Came from Outer Space features a monster that, according to the British-styled, introductory verbiage, came "with love in its heart" (well, not really), and the cue is overlaid with subtle whispering 

Going for a more international flavour, a Bela Lugosi intro precedes the eerie music from The Creature Walks Among Us and although the bass-friendly cue manages to convey a delicate upsurge of unease, the Coral LP adds an overlaid bear and dog growls (which, again, kind of go against the WATER-BORNE Creature from the black LA-GOON).

The Deadly Mantis gets a vocal intro but is otherwise bereft of sound effects, while the abrasive music for Tarantulais preceded by a Peter Lorre intro, explaining how the tropical bug "was getting too big for his britches." An overlaid scream appears in the cue, with women screaming over the music from James Bernard's The Horror of Dracula after another Karloffian intro.

Bela Lugosi introduces the Revenge of the Creature  while a sick cow effect worms through the cue in spots. A weird 'space-squeal' closes the album, after the "Main Titles" from This Island Earth plays, with Bob McFadden's narration saying something about interplanetary good guys, bad guys, singing songs, and fighting.

The value of Jacobs' album is perhaps intangible; it's a work that may have been designed as an ephemeral gimmick for a weekend sleepover or birthday party, but because of a paucity of horror and sci-fi albums over a 20-year period, the Coral LP remained the only treasure big kids had to evoke the fun they enjoyed from their 'olde' favourites.

During the fifties and sixties, horror music may have been relegated to pieces of chopped up stock audio in B-movies and TV shows after the original theatrical exploitation, but albums like Themes from Horror Movies, through their longevity, were unintentionally among the first efforts that paved the way for commercial releases of full-blown (and complete) horror scores.

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