Score Sample - 80s Forgotten Gems - Return to Oz

Here is a little mini series of posts about movie music. Because I love it, and I love sharing it. The 1980s were a great time for fantasy and adventure film scores. The decade was dominated by some of the biggest names in film scores with John Williams giving us the amazing Indiana Jones trilogy as well was two Star Wars films. You had James Horner cranking out both Krull and Willow not to mention two Star Trek scores. And speaking of Star Trek Jerry Goldsmith knocked it out of the park with Star Trek V as well as his immense and amazing score to Legend. At the end of the decade you had Danny Elfman really coming into his own with fantastic scores to Scrooged and Batman.

But I'm not going to talk about any of those, I'm going to focus on the forgotten ones. Scores to movies that most people don't talk about any more, but had amazing scores. First up is David Shire's wonderful work with Return to Oz. Shire did some amazing work with various themes for nearly all the characters and weaving them into one powerful score. Listening to the full album is a treat with a new memorable theme popping up in each track. It is nearly impossible to pick one to sample here. But I think his most charming music is the rag time triumphal march that plays near the end of the film. Using the rag time style fits perfectly with the setting of the film, and gives the score a unique identity among the very much orchestral bombast scores (nothing wrong with that) we got in the decade.

So here is Rag March from Return to Oz by David Shire.