Category: Best Music

Traveling businessman Dana Andrews is asked to escort his best friend’s fiancé Susan Hayward from Portland to Jacksonville, Oregon. Along the way, they visit his own girlfriend Patricia Roc who lives on the frontier with her adopted family. The best friend, played by Brian Donlevy, is a compulsive gambler, stealing from the miners who leave their gold in his safekeeping, and regularly propositioning the wife of a fellow gambler. There’s a lot going on in this film. Along with the love triangles that form, there’s an assailant stalking Andrews, a local love interest for Roc, Indian attacks, multiple killings, no canyon to be seen, and Hoagy Carmichael incessantly singing every time he appears on screen. It somehow manages to wrap it all up in a fairly short runtime through convenient coincidences. It offers pretty Technicolor vistas of Oregon forests, but I’m not sure I’ll remember much about this months from now.  

Oscar Nomination: Best Music, Original Song

The first sequel to The Magnificent Seven, this wasn’t as bad as I had expected. It’s mostly a rehash of the original story. Set in the same town the Seven saved in the original, a new enemy has appeared to kidnap all the male villagers to build a church and sanctuary to his dead sons. Yul Brynner is called on by the wife of Chico, one of the original Seven and also one of the kidnapped, to find the men. Unfortunately Brynner is the only one to return from the original cast and the few replacement cast members do not live up to the quality of those original members. Even the score is a re-recording of the classic original.  

Oscar Nomination: Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment

Dudley Moore is in a relationship with Julie Andrews, but upon seeing the beautiful Bo Derek in her wedding gown he wants her instead. It’s another late film in the Blake Edwards’s catalog where the main character is a middle-aged male having a midlife crisis and treats women solely as objects for his own desire. He’s unable to deal with the fact that the woman herself has no issue with having sexual flings. I guess we’re supposed to ignore the reasons why Edwards is writing films about a husband cheating on his actual wife. The braids on Derek are iconic though and made me miss the days when I would braid my own hair in tiny braids.

Oscar Nominations: Best Music, Original Song; Best Music, Original Score

A lost British Army patrol, counting Boris Karloff and Victor McLaglen amongst its members, is stranded in an oasis in the Cradle of Civilization; their last orders lost in the mind of a now-deceased officer. They are surrounded by the enemy with little chance of survival. The tension is strong and it’s a dark, psychological battle for each of the soldiers, where few if any will survive. I do enjoy the story telling in this era of John Ford films (fairly short run times with compelling stories told in tight locales) over his sweeping westerns. 

Oscar Nomination: Best Music, Score

Even as someone who isn’t much of a horror fan, I had hoped this would be a bit scarier than it is. After newlyweds James Brolin and Margot Kidder move with her young children into a home where a mass murder had occurred a year earlier, unexplainable things begin to happen. Disembodied voices are heard, people start feeling strangely, doors and windows act as if on their own will. One positive from the film is that they did a great job casting the kids; the three of them look like siblings. The score has the nice repetitive eerie quality that is necessary for the tension to build. The house has a menacing look to it, particularly with the two upper windows light up like glowing eyes. The fact that it is based on an actual story also adds to the scare factor, but it remains just somewhat creepy than an actual scare fest.    

Oscar Nomination: Best Music, Original Score