Press Release from Dragon's Domain:
Dragon’s Domain Records presents THE ALBERT GLASSER COLLECTION, VOLUME 5: SCIENCE FICTION ATOMIC MUTATION II. With this fifth collection of the composer’s music, we are pleased to explore two more films that he scored for director Bert I. Gordon in 1957 and 1958. Most of Gordon’s celebrated work was in the idiom of giant monster films. Albert Glasser consistently made musical magic out of limited resources and onrushing deadlines as one of Hollywood’s most prolific B-movie composers. THE ALBERT GLASSER COLLECTION, VOLUME 5 features expanded releases of Glasser’s music for THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN and WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST.
The years 1957-58 were Albert Glasser’s busiest as a film composer, having scored fifteen B-movies that saw release in 1957, and ten in 1958. The films included Glasser’s celebrated science fiction/monster films MONSTER FROM GREEN HELL, THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN in ’57, and GIANT FROM THE UNKNOWN, ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE, WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST, and THE SPIDER from the following year, as well as a slew of Westerns, adventure sagas, crime, and juvenile gang movies.
Released in 1957, THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN was something of a reversal of the same year’s INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN in which a man survives a plutonium explosion and grows 8 to 10 feet a day, finally reaching 60 feet tall. Both films tried to give their main characters an aura of tragic sympathy. Composer Hans Salter accomplished this in SHRINKING MAN through the use of a rhythmic melody, while Glasser uses a soft violin solo to provide a degree of pathos for the film’s unfortunate protagonist.
THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN spawned a sequel, WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST releeased the following year, in which the Colossal Man is revealed to have survived falling off the Hoover Dam but is left disfigured and nearly mindless by the trauma of his fall as he runs amok again. Glasser’s score follows the pattern of the first film, merging pathos for the man’s condition while evoking terror for his violence.
Dragon’s Domain Records presents THE ALBERT GLASSER COLLECTION VOLUME 5: SCIENCE FICTION ATOMIC MUTATION II, featuring original music composed by Albert Glasser for THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN and WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST, mastered by James Nelson at Digital Outland. The booklet contains liner notes written by noted film music journalist and author Randall D. Larson.
