Jerry Goldsmith
Who else liked his score?
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MovieChat Forums > Psycho II (1983) Discussion > Jerry Goldsmith
This film's score helped to influence me to become a huge fan of his!!!
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"I don't like white people. I hate red necks!" (Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours)
Goldsmith rates second only to Bernard Herrmann: his PSYCHO II score was all at once somber, dramatic, relevant and operatic! I love the suspenseful strings building up as Norman was speaking to Mother on the telephone (did Mrs. Spool have a direct line to the Bates house because Norman was obviously talking to someone even after Dr. Raymond and Lila's previous calls)...the look on Mary's face when he started talking about killing her as per Mother's orders (as the crane shot captured the polarized comedic horror/suspense of the scene) accompanied by the music which was building up to a crescendo...CLASSIC! This is by far the best slasher sequel ever!
shareHis score is excellent as usual and one of the best things
about the film imo.
Not me, The score is derivative and lazy and cannot compare to Herrmann's. Its saccharine sentimentality, plus its overused "Omen-type" rhythms are downright distracting. Maybe Goldsmith was tired or too busy with other projects to produce a truly great and distinctive score.
shareIt has to be derivative, it's a sequel? But it wasn't in any way an homage to Bernard Herrmann which it probably needed to be really (for me anyway). I felt the score was completely forgettable. I hardly noticed it at all. They phoned this one in
shareAre you high? This was his bread and butter, and Goldsmith's top 10 best efforts.
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"I don't like white people. I hate red necks!" (Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours)
Not at all one of his best efforts - a lazy, predictable, sad-sounding little Main/Love theme for Norman's tragedy and some nostalgia, plus some Omen-type pulsed rhythms for suspense scenes. No surprises, no shocks, no typically "Goldsmithian" innovations. Had I been Perkins, I might even have turned to the already then-waning, duplicative talents of the late James Horner - or insisted that Goldsmith perk up his somnolent score a bit. Sadly, it's kind of typical that people rave about Goldsmith's weak efforts on this film - just as they valorize his unremarkable score for Islands in the Stream.
shareI love Goldsmith's work (e.g. "Capricorn One"), but this sounded like quickly-written TV trash to me. Four violins, some percussion and a cheap synth, plus lots of reverb.
It was produced direct to cable when that was a new thing. They didn't expect there to be a theater following for this film.
I think you're thinking of the wrong Psycho movie. Psycho 2 was not a direct to cable movie but a theatrical release that was a modest hit in '83. You might be thinking of Psycho: The Beginning with Olivia Hussey and Henry Thomas as a young Norman. That was not a theatrical release but a pay cable original.
shareDefinitely a stand out part of the movie, also loved perkins playing the piano in the 2 scenes
shareI liked it enough to buy two different editions on cd.
share(aka ecarle.)
I think that Jerry Goldsmith is one of the greatest composers of music for movies in movie history. In the seventies, he was right behind John Williams for giving movies a certain "big and thunderous" excitement -- his scores for Capricorn One and The Boys From Brazil are thrillers unto themselves. And he won the Oscar for The Omen(over TWO posthumous nominations for Bernard Herrmann!) His score for Chinatown(added at the last minute after another score was thrown out) nails the movie as sad and nostalgic beneath its detective story surface.
In the 60s, Goldsmith gave Elmer "The Magnificent Seven" Bernstein a run for his money as a purveyor of WESTERN scores: Lonely are the Brave, Rio Conchos, Bandolero and 100 Rifles are all muscular and rich -- with Lonely are the Brave sporting some tear-jerking sadness.
The Sand Pebbles was epic and sad. The Man From UNCLE TV theme -- in its first season version -- was "movie level excitement." Our Man Flint was great too.
Yep, Jerry Goldsmith was one of my favorite composers and -- I hold no regard for his Psycho II score at all. I have a big problem with it -- but the problem is NOT the score. Except for one thing, which I'll explain.
Here is my big problem with Goldsmith's score for Psycho II:
It is not by Bernard Herrmann.
Of course, Herrmann was long dead when Psycho II was made in 1982 for 1983 release. But among ALL movies in movie history, Psycho was MADE by its music..the music is an ORGANIC part of the mood and atmosphere and FEELING of Psycho.
Start with the famous "screeching violins" for the murders. There are murders in Psycho II, too -- but NONE of them have the accompanying screeching violins so we IMMEDIATELY no longer feel that we are in "the world of Psycho." (Oh, the movie opens with the 1960 shower scene and the screeching violins, but the NEW murders have DIFFRENT, rather low key and electronic sounding music to them.)
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Psycho had OTHER classic musical motifs from Herrmann. The "three notes of madness" which conclude the movie in the cell at the end ended up concluding "Taxi Driver," too, and were heard in "Star Wars." Not to mention, the "three notes of madness" recur earlier in the film -- when Norman talks to Marion in the parlor and when Arbogast climbs the hill to the house.
Psycho II does NOT have "the three notes of madness."
Nor does Psycho II open with the Psycho credit music -- that jarring, jagged back-and-forth violin rhythm that accompanies Marion on her drive -- and disappears after she dies.
Jerry Goldsmith couldn't match that with his Psycho II score...so it doesn't FEEL like the Psycho universe at all. In Psycho III, a lesser known newbie named Carter Burwell couldn't match the Psycho score either(Burwell would become the Coens composer -- ten years after Psycho III in 1986, Burwell scored Fargo in 1996 and THAT was great.)
No, it was only with Psycho IV: The Begininng that the makers "got it" and reorchestrated Herrmann's score over the new movie. At least it SOUNDED like Psycho -- but unfortunately, if you knew the Psycho score by heart, you heard OLD scenes over the NEW scenes.
One might say: so this was "no win" for Jerry Goldsmith..and for Carter Burwell. And I say "yes, that's right and that's why the sequels could not come close to the original. Bernard Herrmann MADE Psycho just as much as Alfred Hitchcock did. Consider: Nino Rota scored BOTH The Godfather and Godfather II; the two films are one. Psycho never got that chance with Psycho II.
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But there's more trouble with Goldsmith's Psycho II score and it begins with his opening credit music(played over a shot of the Bates mansion aging from 1960 to 1983 via morph photography.)
Whereas Psycho began with the nerve-jangling violin-driven paranoia of a thriller or horror movie...Psycho II begins with sweet, sad, aching, nostalgic music (rather ala To Kill a Mockingbird) designed to make a statement: "Norman Bates is a sad, poor, sweet, innocent young man and still a boy even if now in his fifties."
No he ISN'T. No he WASN'T. This decision to invoke audience SYMPATHY for Norman Bates in Psycho II is at odds with what Psycho ultimately told us about him: he was an insane, cruel, merciless homicidal maniac. Mother was HIM.
Much of the problem with the score for Psycho II wasn't Jerry Goldsmith's fault at all. He wasn't Bernard Herrmann so he could not duplicate Herrmann's score(as both Psycho IV and Danny Elfman's reorchestration of the score for Van Sant's remake COULD.)
But the other problem with the Psycho II score WAS Goldsmith's fault: he "hijacked" the icy terror of the original and tried to replace it with touchy-feely sweetness that didn't really apply to Norman Bates at all.
No matter. Pretty much all of Goldsmith's other scores are great, and my favorites of all time.