Intrada Soundtrack Forum

INTRADA Announces:



LITTLE MONSTERS

Composed and Conducted by DAVID NEWMAN
INTRADA Special Collection Volume 82

In the 1989 film Little Monsters, Fred Savage (The Wonder Years) stars as Brian Stevenson, a kid who reluctantly moves to the suburbs with his feuding parents Holly and Glen (Margaret Whitton and Wonder Years’ narrator Daniel Stern) and his younger brother Eric (Savage’s real-life sibling Ben). But inexplicable mischief starts right away and Eric blames a monster that emerges from under his bed. Challenged by the adults disbelief, Brian decides to spend a night alone in Eric's bedroom. Ingeniously armed with a booby-trapped bed and a flashlight, Brian ends up revealing the culprit as Maurice (Howie Mandel), an 11-year-old boogeyman who’s been “wreaking hell on an entire nation of kids” for 200 years.

While Little Monsters clearly features frenetic humor, it also has an imaginative style all its own, with unexpected scenes of real menace and poignancy. It was the latter that David Newman’s music emphasizes since Maurice makes the mistake, as he puts it, of getting emotionally involved with his victim. In fact, throughout the scoring the director continually reminded Newman to emphasize the bond between Maurice and Brian. The director chose a leisurely and restrained tone for the opening of the movie, allowing Newman to give the music plenty "air" to breathe.

As Newman describes his score: "I was so partial to ‘golden era’ string scores like Elmer Bernstein’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Jerry Goldsmith’s A Patch of Blue. So there’s a lot of oboe in Little Monsters, which I doubled with a flute and strings. Nobody makes movies like Little Monsters anymore,” Newman says. “It had a lot of intellectual things that didn’t play for the audience expecting a typical ‘kid’s movie.’ And that made it a tricky musical tightrope to walk, to change emotions on a dime so the music could be funny, light and dark at the same time. And of all the movies I did at the time, Little Monsters is probably the weirdest and most interesting.”

Intrada presents the complete score from the original stereo session elements on this premiere limited release in the Intrada Special Collection and is limited to 1000 copies.

INTRADA Special Collection - Volume 82
Retail Price: 19.99
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For track listing and sound samples, please visit
http://store.intrada.com/s.nl/it.A/id.5975/.f

I guessed it right (ahahah), so I'm the first one to say: THANK YOU INTRADA!

Cool and at 1000 copies this one should fly.

When Intrada released Bruce Broughton`s Monster Squad I had just seen Little Monsters (on TV, for the first time) so I then thought why not (also) release David Newman`s Little Monsters and now they have done it.

You got me ! the "Mockingbird" reference... and the music : gentle piano, child tale terror... ... made me want to know more !

I like it !

Well, I was trying to hold off on any more score purchases right now, but with the low quantities, I had to grab this one along with Silvestri's Judgment Night. Looking forward to it!

Listened to Little Monsters yesterday after pulling it from my mailbox. I have never seen the movie. Sure enjoyed the music though. I will have to grab the other Newman cds while I can. I am thinking of having a Newman family cd playing session after I get them. Scores by Alfred, Randy, David, Thomas, and Joey. I can't recall did Lionel ever write scores?

Gary

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Jerry Goldsmith conducting the Detroit Symphony and nearly knocking me through the back wall with Air Force One....priceless.