Outer Limits (Original Series) - Why Rereleased? (1 Viewer)

[Hollywoodaholic]

A great episode that holds up beautifully. True, "Tourist Attraction" was a cheesy, poor episode. I'm not a big fan of "Behold Eck!" either. But even "The Human Factor" played better than I remembered. And it's fun to note that Joseph Stefano lobbied for Sally Kellerman, and that role got her an agent and more work, and eventually tailored an episode for her in "The Bellero Shield" (another great episode). He was her "Alfred Hitchcock" according to Schow book excerpt on the show.

My The Invaders DVD took 19 days from Deep Discount, but the show holds up well (except for the ghastly orange faces in the first few episodes). And you will no doubt be identifying much more TOL cues when you hear that "Beachhead" pilot. They're all over the place.

 

[michael_ks]

So it's really that bad, huh? Must look as though every cast member needed to revisit the "regeneration tubes".

 

[Ockeghem]

Hollywoodaholic,

Yes, the TOL cues have decreased substantially once you get beyond the pilot for The Invaders. I haven't watched the entire series yet, but I'm getting there.

 

[Ockeghem]

I don't think you're going to be disappointed with that one. It's easily one of my favorites, and very chilling in parts.

 

[michael_ks]

Oh I've seen it a number of times, Scott. One of my favorites too--great score and nicely lit by Connie Hall. I'm re-watching the dvds, this time viewing the episodes in production order.

 

[michael_ks]

My shipment from LaLaLand Records arrived over the weekend and I've been enraptured by the many many sumptuous cues penned by Mr. Frontiere. The audio fidelity and recording levels are top notch--to the point that I often found myself visualizing the instruments played. It's very nearly all here and it is entrancing, haunting and just plain incredible music. Many of the cues seemed new to me, minus the sound effects and I listened with rapt attention to some of my favorite scores such as "Don't Open till Doomsday", "The Human Factor" and "The Man Who Was Never Born" (which exceeds the GNP Crescendo tracks for sound quality by a country mile--I played them both and the difference was very stark indeed!). I did notice that for "ZZZZZ", the track times are way off, and in fact around 3 minutes of music is represented, as opposed to nearly 8.

Man, the minimalist cues, the harp glissandi, which I'm such a sucker for...all here in their ethereal glory. Wow!

The other set, which features "The Forms of Things Unknown" is great as well, if perhaps a bit less stellar sounding than the 3 CD set. I have a feeling that some music is still missing but am unsure exactly what. At any rate, "Andre's theme" and the music for the twirling figurine are wonderfully dreamy and a delight to hear. One of my favorite bits of music is included as well--the gypsy funeral precession as imagined by Leonora (Barbara Rush).

I sent a letter to LaLaland Records to extend my heartfelt congratulations and thanks for making this OL fan ecstatically happy. Also implored them to please release "Stoney Burke" and "Invaders" in the near future.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

I thought the liner notes were well done, also. They could've just included a cardboard slip card and most of us would have been happy, but we got 14 pages. And it just came out of nowhere. I didn't even read anything about it on a couple OL sites I check. Thanks again to Harry-N for bringing it up on the thread here.

 

[todd s]

Any news about the Showtime version of this show?

 

[Harry-N]

Happy to be of service.

I passed the info on to a small Outer Limits board (Outer Limits Cafe) and even they didn't seem to know anything about it, and are today reporting on their receipt of the discs.

Just to give proper credit, it was this forum's JeffT from whom I got the word. He mentioned it on our Yahoo Time Tunnel Fan Forum group's message board which deals with all manner of classic sci-fi.

Harry

 

[michael_ks]

If I had been following filmscoremonthly.com with the usual zeal displayed in years past I probably would have been fortunate enough to purchase on the day of the announcement, thereby getting a copy autographed by Mr. Frontiere.

What I discovered to be rather interesting as I was listening to the three discs is that the imagery conjured up in my mind for various cues were often for episodes in which the music was tracked, e.g. for the "Monster Appears" cue from "Human Factor", I envisioned the scene where Lomax chokes the O.B.I.T. operator, for "The Big Finish" I thought of the climactic scenes in "Corpus Earthling" and "The Special One" and for "Alien on the Loose" in "Architects of Fear" the image that came to mind was that of correspondant Grave driving the jeep in "Zanti Misfits".

It's remarkable how many of the cues worked well in so many different episodes. Of all the S1 scores, it appears that "Nightmare" and "100 Days of the Dragon" are indelibly tied to the episodes for which they were composed (though, as we know much of "The Mice" was recycled "Nightmare" material). I can only think of one cue from "100 Days" that was recycled ("Washington, D.C.) which I always took to be a "Stoney Burke" cue, actually.

 

[Ockeghem]

Michael,

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has had these images conjured up over the years. It also happens with TOS for me.

I think I could probably post for hours on the music of The Outer Limits (original series).

 

[Craig Beam]

Please do! I'm greatly enjoying the new soundtrack release, and I'd love something to read while I'm listening.

 

[Ockeghem]

Craig,

I may do this as time allows. I don't yet own the new 3-CD release, but I will one day. I'm very pleased there is interest in the topic.

 

[michael_ks]

Scott, I'd be very interested in learning about your impressions on this set in the near future as there is so much to comment on. One thing I determined after listening to the set and watching episodes like "The Zanti Misfits" over the weekend, is that there is a LOT of cues apparently that I took to be OL that actually was written for "Stoney Burke". It's odd how one still associates these cues with OL instead. There is some great non-OL music used in "Zanti" (the gate crashing scene, the despartate drive through the desert/spaceship descent, discussion in car/investigating the craft, etc.) which I now realize after digesting the 3 CD set was actually stock music derived.

By the way I sent a letter of appreciation to LaLaLand Records yesterday and got this short but interesting reply where potential releases are concerned:

"Glad you liked it. Hopefully Stoney Burke or Invaders next!"

All I can say is--awesome!

 

[Ockeghem]

Michael,

Yes, I would like to do this. But first I need to get the set. I am finding that I have so little time these days, what with projects (some four or five years in the making) taking up virtually my every waking moment! But I will get that set one day. The series means so much to me.

BTW, I love your usage of "non-OL music." That is such a keen observation.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Months later, I just received an email from the associate archivist at the American Heritage Center in Wyoming where Dominic Frontiere's music scores for The Outer Limits were donated. Apparently, he went through all the boxes in the collection to confirm that there are no audio materials, but just musical scores there. But he also passes along some information about where audio materials can be located through 19 libraries in the U.S. that contain such material.

I did send him a quick email back thanking him for the effort and telling him about the serendipitous release of more of Frontiere's music for TOL from La-La Land Records last month.

Anyway, here's the correspondence, for anyone interested ...

Dear Wayne:

I wanted to let you know that I have searched through the Dominic Frontiere Collection (Collection # 2962) that is held here at the American Heritage Center, the archive of the University of Wyoming, for audio of Outer Limits. I looked through the entire collection including the portions of the collection that are not formally or fully processed, and I was not able to locate such material. As a matter of fact, there is no a/v material at all. The collection is almost entirely comprised of hand-written music scores.

I did check the library database called WorldCat, and I do see that several libraries across the nation have Outer Limits audio recordings. So you might be in luck. I suggest going to your local library (public or university) and contact your inter-library loan office and have them do a WorldCat search. I typed in Frontiere, Dominic as the author and limited the search to sound recordings. That will bring up a list and one of the listings is Outer Limits. I believe 19 libraries in the U.S. have Outer Limits audio. Your library then should be able to do an inter-library loan for you. I wish you all the best with this, and I hope you are able to obtain the recording this way.

Sincerely,

John R. Waggener
Associate Archivist
American Heritage Center
University of Wyoming

 

[Ockeghem]

Hollywoodaholic,

Thanks for sharing that information. Much appreciated.

Incidentally, I use WorldCat everyday (as well as OCLC, as it provides some information not contained in the WorldCat records, even though bibliographic information from the latter is derived in most ways from the former). I can list those libraries one day if you wish. The 'holdings' info. may be displayed as one of the options.

 

[Craig Beam]

Here's a question: what format would the audio recordings be in? DAT tapes? Acetates? I'm kinda doubting they'd be CDs or cassettes....

 

[Charles Thaxton]

They could just be referring to libraries having copies of the old GNP Crescendo CD.
The La La Land guys have said that the new 3 CD set has EVERYTHING that survives (in audio form) The "Invisibles" and "Galaxy Being" scores would have to be re-recorded (apparently lost) from Frontiere's sheet music(an unlikely scenario at this point).

 

[Ockeghem]

Craig,

I will find out today, once I get to work and check the OCLC records. I will list the bib. records for the audio recordings mentioned in Hollywoodaholic's post (I will replicate the search performed by the archivist) and furnish the GMDs and SMDs for each of those I can find.

That being said, I do believe that these will be the recordings that are now commercially available; my hope is that some of these will be in formats other than what is 'normally' available, if only so my own curiosity is satisfied.

(From Hollywoodaholic's post)--

"I looked through the entire collection including the portions of the collection that are not formally or fully processed, and I was not able to locate such material. As a matter of fact, there is no a/v material at all. The collection is almost entirely comprised of hand-written music scores."

If only I had the time. I would love to examine these scores in great detail; it would be a wonderful exercise to form somewhat of a compositional and stylistic chronology.