"Worst Movie Theme Song ever!" Topic

I went back and watched the 1968 movie Anzio yesterday which I hadn't seen in 30 years. I clearly forgot the theme song during the opening credits. In what universe is this the intro to a war movie? It's like the theme to Love Boat. You be the judge.

YouTube link

Honestly, the movie wasn't as good as I remember.

Make this a Poll?
How about Burning Brudges from Kelly's Hetoes?

Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head, from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Both have no connection whatsoever to the plot of the movie.

Have you ever heard the Mitch Miller Songs for The Longest day and Guns of Naverone?

Burning Bridges is great!

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
YouTube link

On theme, but flung like a misthrown lawn dart. Although in its favour, this is the song inspired Mel Brooks to hire Frankie Laine to write and sing the theme for Blazing Saddles. Mel didn't tell Frankie it was going to be a parody, he just wrote it straight !

Strange Love from Lust for a Vampire.
Even the cast was horrified and embarassed when they heard this during the first screening!
YouTube link

Sink the Bismarck
YouTube link

An entertaining enough song, but way to spoil the entire plot, Johnny Horton!

Exactly the point. 😄
It's like Bob Dylan singing "Hurricane" as "The Sound of Music" Trapp family is traipsing across the Alps.

Burning Bridges IS great.

Burning Bridges would be one of my favorite songs from a movie. Fit perfectly with Kelly's Heroes.

Hmm. Dwelling briefly on "IP' or "Franchise" themes. Really, I'd give Trek points for simply dull. I did every Trek until it retreated behind a paywall, and I think the only one I'd recognize is the Classic Trek theme they only used for opening and closing. Lucasfilm may only have one John Williams score per franchise, and they work it to death, but it's always good music.

Otherwise, "dull" covers a lot. I watched every episode of B5, and I have no memory of what the music sounded like. I watched the pilot of Paywall Galactica, and the only music which stuck was about 30 seconds when they went to the classic Galactica theme.

There isn't much Schwarzenegger I haven't seen, but only the original Terminator theme sticks.

But there's a ton of old Westerns, TV westerns and cop shows where the music sticks even if I haven't seen the program in 50+ years. Everyone remembers Dmitri Tiomkin's theme for the Wild Wild West TV show. Does anyone remember Elmer Bernstein's theme for the movie? But Bernstein's a first-rate composer. What went wrong?

What's going wrong?

Yes, it matters. In some ways, the wrong music is better than "there was music?"

As Kellys boys motor into the sunset with their stolen gold, I rather think Burning Bridges is entirely appropriate. It's a beautiful tank, Morarity.

My first thought for worst was Burning Bridges. My second thought was how much it fit.

Burning Bridges fit the movie nicely in so many ways

I always thought the anachronistic Alan Parsons music was the only blemish on the otherwise perfect "Ladyhawke". Not that the music was bad per se, but its modernity was entirely too jarring.

Thank you, Captain Sensible, for letting me know there is something worse than "Burning Bridges".

I'll have to ask one of my film historian contacts why studios in that era found it necessary to shoehorn a Top 40 friendly pop song into practically every movie.

While I love the movie, especially the original theatrical version, Major Dundee.

Ok OFM. That was hilarious.

I'd hedge on that one, Exeter. Not the Mitch Miller Gang's finest hour--that was "The Bowery Grenadiers"--But the original score as an instrumental version was good work, and used to be a marching band standard. Still irks me that I can't find any of the instrumental recordings on YouTube.

Eumelus is quite right, of course. There's a movie where I'd pay for a DVD with a new soundtrack.

That song WAS bad. Plus, to be Mr. Negative, I've never seen Anzio, and I never cared for Robert Mitchum.

I'm with Perris on that one. Not bad music, but it should have been the score of a very different movie. Also, I have CD's of the "Third Man" radio drama. Very nice plot, character and dialogue--but imagine two half-hour programs per CD, both of them beginning and ending with it, commercial breaks with it and used for background noise. Play two CD's, and you'll never want to zither again.

The music/theme for "The Third Man" annoys the crap out of me. Just something about it. I almost couldn't watch the movie because of the soundtrack.

YouTube link

Heresy! The zither score for The Third Man is considered one of the many master elements of the film.
(On the other hand, a little bit of zither goes a long way. I once wrote a paper on the use of light and shadow in the film, which necessitated me watching it over and over… and yeah, by the time it was done I didn't even want to hear so much as the word "zither" ever again…)

Although not a movie, the theme song to Enterprise, the Star Trek "prequel" is vomit-makingly awful.

I had read "The Third Man" first. I already knew that the movie was superb, and the music awesome. Or do o had read in a "prestigious magazine".
Then I watched the movie. 😱
The music was super obtrusive, to the extent that I couldn't even pay attention to the plot.
Yeah. I hope The Third Man makes it to the future Poll.

If there ever is a TMP Poll for "Most Pretentious and Overrated Cinema" person, Orson Wells is a sure winner. "Rosebud!"

"If there ever is a TMP Poll for "Most Pretentious and Overrated Cinema" person, Orson Wells is a sure winner."

Maybe so, OFM--but the competition for second place will be fierce. Cimino? Coppola? deMille? Stroheim?

I treasure the Heston quote. "Wells deserved more from Hollywood than he ever got--but Hollywood deserved more from Wells."

Back to music. May I suggest a game I play some evenings? Put on a CD full of some Hollywood composer, and imagine where else the music would fit. You could score the entire Star Wars trilogy using Steiner and Korngold music for instance--usually written to go with Errol Flynn. Given a time machine, the reverse is also true.

MiniMo, just in case you were serious, it's just a coincidence of name and timing. Clifton Parker did the score for "Sink the Bismark." Anyway, you'd have had a hard time telling a 1960 British audience that "in May of 1941, the war had just begun."

Speaking of Bazouki…

YouTube link

I like all these songs – they are just attached to the wrong movies.