Journey to the Center of Earth was the movie that introduced many older baby boomers to
Bernard Herrmann's music for the first time, and many of us haven't been the same since. If ever a movie begged for a soundtrack release, this was it, yet somehow it never happened, possibly because
Herrmann wasn't a long-term Fox employee, or his score was considered just a little too unusual. It took until 1997, 38 years later, to get a soundtrack out on this movie, and producer
Nick Redman might have spared us the three
Pat Boone numbers in the score, but they can be skipped, and overall he's done an excellent job.
Herrmann's music is characterized by huge masses of sound, outsized brass sections rising up like glaciers, sinister organ cadenzas booming like a churchgoer's worst nightmare, and delicate parts for massed (or solo) harp. As with most of
Herrmann's scores, the music has a life of its own separate from the film, although it did make the movie -- a surprisingly cold and bloodless work apart from James Mason's performance -- seem bigger than life; bigger and more imposing, in fact, than any movie audiences had ever seen.
Herrmann later re-recorded some of the key parts of this score in the '70s, but the original performances (released here in stereo) have a special power and immediacy lacking in the re-recordings. ~ Bruce Eder