Just watched "Terror In The Aisles" on the Halloween 2 Blu-Ray, and noticed the music scores in some segments were replaced. Does anyone know if the theatrical version featured the original compositions? Were they replaced for home video, as was the practice in the early 80s?
That's exactly the way it was in the movie theater... I was there. I was also a collector of vinyl soundtracks at that time. It was glaringly obvious that they did not pay John Carpenter or the producers of the Halloween franchise to license the music for Terror in the Aisles. It's night and day compared to the actual Halloween score and it stood out like a sore thumb. I remember sitting in the theater being very disappointed about that. The dull piano "thuds" gave it away instantly... but that is indeed how it played theatrically in '84. Universal did not change anything in their transfer to home video and eventually, Blu-ray. You're seeing and hearing it exactly as it was released way back when. Those particular music segments sucked then and suck now, but it's otherwise a great documentary.
shareThanks for your response.
shareIn order to edit all the different film clips together, they needed to compose original music for continuity...
there is a limited edition Soundtrack CD available with liner notes that explain the process...
The editing is great but some of the clips do seem odd without their iconic original music.
"This is the 80's, nobody likes reality anymore!"
Yep, other poster is right and that's how it always was. They DID license music from 'Halloween II' and possibly 'Halloween' (you can't re-perform it unless you do) but performed it anew instead of using the original recordings, which is less expensive. The music from 'Jaws' they seem to have just gotten the original recordings for, I guess because some things shouldn't be touched (also because it's a Universal picture and so was this, so maybe it was easier.) Otherwise it's all new music. Personally I always liked the score; I would have expected it to be a lot chintzier, but they got a real orchestra and everything. And the composition is really pretty good.*
*That song near the end is NOT included in this assessment, LOL
Good point about licensing... they still have to pay for it even if they "re-perform" it from scratch. I still would have preferred that they use the original score where is was possible... especially for Halloween I & II. But hey, it's a great doc still and all.
shareIt didn't bug me too much just because the performance wasn't bad at all; they didn't seem to cheap out on orchestration (if it had all been on a Casio keyboard or something that would have been different). Plus it was sorta fun to see the same scenes scored differently.
One thing I could never figure out: why the movie cuts redubs the dialogue of certain actors, not to change any lines but seemingly just to give them different voices. Avoiding Audrey Hepburn in the 'Wait Until Dark' scenes makes sense at least, as she was a huge star not usually associated with this kind of stuff (and really got burned when she agreed to star in 'Bloodline' a few years earlier, then found out there was all kinds of graphic stuff happening in scenes she wasn't around for). But the people who are only dubbed and still totally visible never made sense to me. Like the bicycle messenger in 'Alone in the Dark,' in that "I want the hat" scene—no footage of him is removed, he just has a different voice. Makes me wonder if they did it just for fun or to give someone on the crew a cameo or something.