Most underrated soundtrack?

Rachel Portmans score for Harts War. It really gives the film a sense of melancholy and is very different from the usual war movie score.

Also "The Great Escape". Most people only remember the main title but there are several themes that add tension, hope and excitemnet to the film. I particularly like the tracks for the bike chase which were way ahead of their time and a huge influence on action scores that were written 20-30 years later.





"SOmetimes a man can meet his destiny on the road he took to avoid it"

I actually thought the John Williams music for "War Of The Worlds" (2005) was very good and am surprised few people mention this. Or do they mention this?

If you want an under-rated soundtrack: "Edge Of Sanity" (1989) is the one.

I agree with the above poster about "The Great Escape" music.

Alan Silvestri's soundtrack for Flight of the Navigator

--Alien Dude: Need two tickets to Pearl Jam--

My go-to recommendation for underrated soundtracks is John Williams "Hook"
however you feel about the film, the scores/motifs and suites written are gorgeous.

originally i think there ended up being over 4 hours worth of material recorded, which is over twice as long as the film, (a lot of things re-used though) but i think they can still be found on the net somewhere.

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Your suffering will be legendary... even in Hell.

I think you'll find the Hook score is generally much more highly regarded than the movie, though.

There are indeed too many, but here are some that spring immediately to mind -

- The Witches by Stanley Myers. Underappreciated, not widely heard or reviewed. But it's a great score with some brilliant themes.
- The Edge by Jerry Goldsmith. Fantastic theme, and some of the most brilliant suspense cues ever conceived. As good as his best, but is seldom mentioned alongside them.
- Jude (1996) by Adrian Johnston. Very sensitive score, emotional and evocative compositions. Has a haunting, folksy tune at its centre which conveys joy and bleakness at once.
- Wilde (1997) by Debbie Wiseman. I thought there was no match for John Barry as far as writing deep, rich string textures was concerned - until I heard some of the pieces of music written by Wiseman for this film. Maybe this one isn't underrated per se because it's garnered very favourable reviews, but it's nevertheless not widely heard, and might be obscure to some.
- The Tenant by Philippe Sarde. Possibly the most underrated horror-thriller soundtrack. Great title theme, and brilliantly unnerving and eerie cues. Like a subtler version of Bernard Herrmann.
- Eyes Wide Shut. The original music by Jocelyn Pook was more effective than that plonking piano theme (from one of Ligeti's works) that Kubrick used so heavy-handedly. The "Masked Ball" piece is well-known, but the other compositions by Pook were excellent too.

John Williams' Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The movie is more than a bit of a stinker, but the music is fantastically, sumptuously genius, from the spot-on, perfectly-synced, complex action cues to the dark, sinister, evil choral chants and feverish strings inside the Temple of Doom itself. It's a masterwork of film scoring!

James Horner's 48 Hrs. It kicks ass! It's rough, raucous and raw, just like the rest of the Walter Hill film, with great drum, bass guitar, sax and percussion work, a completely modern urban departure from Horner's more grand, traditionally classical score to Star Trek II-The Wrath of Khan that he did the same year. It also introduces the colorfully tonal steel drum into the world of movie scoring.

Jerry Goldsmith's Outland. It lends gritty new-tech atmosphere to this bleak space thriller about mine workers on the Jupiter moon of Io being poisoned by hallucinogenic drugs for profit that increase their productivity and give them more time to play but cause them to go buggo and kill themselves in the most spectacularly horrifying ways.

Alan Silvestri's Romancing the Stone. It has a great techno-synth Latin sizzle rythm with a magical love theme that perfectly complements the exploits of Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as they search for a priceless emerald and fall in love in this 1984 romantic comedy adventure.

Lee Holdridge's Splash, the 1984 romantic comedy starring Tom Hanks as a produce distributor who falls in love with the beautiful Daryl Hannah who just so happens to be a Mermaid! The score is so tender and touching it'll break your heart, make you cry.

John Williams' 1979 Dracula. It's both gothically scary and beguilingly erotic!

The Witches of Eastwick, another beguiling John Williams masterwork.

Phillippe Sarde's Ghost Story. It has its scary shock moments and it also has a sad theme that captures the tragedy of Eva Galli, an independent-minded woman in the 1920s who was accidentally killed by a bunch of barely-legal young men after one of the boys fails to achieve an erection with her and she threatens to reveal this secret to the other guys. The men keep her death a secret for decades, until in their twilight golden years in the 1980s, one by one, she is literally scaring them to death as a ghost!

Jerry Goldsmith - "The Wind and the Lion" - so rousing, romantic, and beautiful that it will sweep you away

Ennio Morricone - "Guns for San Sebastion" - a fairly decent Euro Western, but a painfully underrated soundtrack; it is so moving and haunting that it actually brings me to tears