Great Movie, Terrible Soundtrack — In Space No One Can Hear This Record

This is a switcheroo from my usual post where I highlight terrible movies that have great soundtracks or musical scores. Today, I am looking at a great movie that has a less than memorable soundtrack album.

Alien (1979) directed by Ridley Scott is one of my all time favorite movies. It’s a simple story of seven working stiffs and a cat toiling away at crappy jobs aboard a filthy commercial space vessel that is tugging a refinery through the depths of outer space. Along the way, they pick up an unwanted passenger — the alien of the title — who kills off the crew one by one until there is only one left. It is an unofficial remake of It! The Terror from Beyond Space which was made as matinee fodder back in 1958. Alien although similar has a much more lavishly mounted production than that low budget effort with a great cast that takes the proceedings very seriously and the finest production design I have ever seen. Thanks to Ron Cobb, Moebius and H.R. Giger, the movie felt very real and I remember being ground down in my theater seat with sheer terror. It was a beautifully realized nightmare.

What doesn’t work is the soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith. He was a great composer and has delivered many great musical scores for movies including Planet of the Apes, Patton, The Omen and L.A. Confidential to name a few, but for some reason the melodies he wrote for Alien are barely there. None of it is all that memorable. I bought the soundtrack album back then and listened to it a lot as I did with the handful of LP’s I owned, and I would be hard-pressed to hum a few bars from any of the tracks. It never stuck with me. I’m not sure whether that this minimalist approach was a conscious decision in order not to compete with the movie’s stunning visuals, but it doesn’t make for much of a listening experience to a soundtrack fan such as myself. I remember listening to the record on my Sears branded turntable back when I was in high school. I was barely aware that anything was playing as I was usually doing homework, reading comics or drawing. I had to look at the stereo to see if the record was still spinning.

Why did I get the soundtrack album? I was 16 going on 17, and I loved the movie so much that I bought anything connected to it. In addition to the record, I had the novelization, a comic adaptation from Heavy Metal magazine, dozens of sci-fi magazines covering the film, The Book of Alien and an iron-on tee-shirt or two. The record was part of the collection and I didn’t realize how dull it was until I gave it a spin.

Ultimately, I’m not sure whether another soundtrack would have done anything. Although Goldsmith’s score is the equivalent of audial wallpaper, you don’t mess with perfection. The movie still holds up. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Still, it would have been interesting to hear what Bernard Herrmann might have done.

Not Mister Jones, but Plywood with a patch for the commercial space vessel Nostromo