I suppose a lot of prog listeners also pay attention to movie music too. Which ones are your favourites?

Mine

Interstellar - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3zvVGJrTP8

Terminator - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpMg1upld0w

Lord of the rings - https://youtu.be/ZgJYNveHOYU?t=270 (timestamp)

Morricone and Goblin soundtracks, Tangerine Dream (Thief), Vangelis (Blade Runner)

There's a late 70s thriller called Coma which has a brilliant soundtrack, but I forgot who did it, i'll have to look it up.

Probably a list too long, since this is one of the main things I tend to appreciate. It is likely I misse 5 or 10 others ... but what the heck! I did not list those using classical music ...

PERFORMANCE (1970) ... and what should be thought of as the first music video ever done!

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT (1964) ... that one!

THE SHELTERING SKY (1990) ... Ryuichi Sakamoto

HELP (1965) ... The Beatles again

PURPLE RAIN (1984) ... Prince

SHAFT (1971) ... Isaac Hayes

SORCERER (1984) ... Tangerine Dream ... although the best of it all was done by TD themselves in Australia just before Edgar Froese passed away ... I think it was his goodbye to the music.

THE MISSION (1986) ... Ennio Morricone

THE SEVEN SAMURAI (1954) ... Fumio Hayasaka

VERTIGO (1958) ... Bernard Herrman

THE GODFATHER (Trilogy) ... Nino Rota

DR. ZHIVAGO (1965) ... Maurice Jarre, the father of Jean Michel

BLADE RUNNER (1982) ... Vangelis (... don't forget he won an OSCAR for "Chariots of Fire" also a great soundtrack!)

THE PINK PANTHER (1963) ... Henry Mancini

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962) ... Maurice Jarre (... and possibly one of the hardest films to create music to ... since you had so many long open shots ... and the best known, does not even have any music!)

CASABLANCA (1942) ... Max Steiner

THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE (1991) ... Zbigniew Preisner

... just for starters ... I left behind some of the films that just used songs, for identity, because the film itself had none ... so a lot of the well known and liked films I have left behind, because the music was not originally done for it, to help enhance the film ... instead, you just about go to the film because of the song you liked. Some folks that have done this a lot, would be Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Leonard Cohen, and others ... and while it ADDED to the film a lot, in the end, TODAY, I remember their music a lot more than I do the film!

Honorable Mention:

Bernard Herrman, not as well known for his SCI-FI soundtracks, but if you can find those two CD's of music from them ... GET THEM! He was better known for his work with Hitchcock, who liked the idea that Bernard was messing with an orchestra and only using 3 instruments, or 4, which added to Alfred's maniacal taste for filming his stories.

There are others I remember fondly ... the music for the cartoon PEANUTS was magnificent, and NEVER EVER GOT ANY MENTIONS anywhere, and is totally ignored by everyone, and then the almost amazing insanity that helped things like FAUST and many other "noise" bands come alive, the one and only CARL STALLING in the Warner Brothers cartoons ... see if you can handle listening to this stuff on his 2 CD's! Awesome craziness! And you have to create your own visual to it because the "cartoon" is not there! ... that is an insane experience that most experienced listeners will NEVER EVER consider, or try!

Try to get your ears around all of this stuff ... it's 60+ years of enjoyment of music in film!

Not much for soundtracks, but scores, on the other hand, I love.

- Alien 3   haunting one from Elliot Goldenthal

- Nixon   John Williams at his most effective

- The Taking of Pelham 123 (original 1974)   pumping score by David Shire that builds upon itself and mimics the sounds of a subway

- The Owl and the Pussycat   sizzling one from Blood,Sweat & Tears, just recently available on disc without the film dialog track

- Fantastic Voyage   Leonard Rosenman penned this atonal, Schoenberg-inspired set

- Escape from New York   John Carpenter & Alan Howarth's brooding electronic sequences add to this film's post-apocalyptic atmosphere perfectly

- Mysterious Island   the great Bernard Herrmann...'nuff said

Vangelis has some of my favourites

Antarctica

Bladerunner

L'Apocalypse des animaux

1492 Conquest of Paradise

Keith Emerson also did a couple of great ones that I love

Inferno (Dario Argento)

Nighthawks (Sly Stallone)

Others

Monster's ball (film with Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry) . Great ambient soundtrack by Asche and Spencer that I made a point of buying.

Horror wise the soundtrack for Alien (Jerry Goldsmith) is hard to beat and has been copied so many times.

The Long Good Friday , one of my favourite films and a great soundtrack by 'progger' Francis Monkman

A Few Good Men - great Mark Isham Marc Shaiman score for this one*

Risky Business - Tangerine Dream (check out the scene with Rebecca Du Mornay on the stairs!)

*EDIT - apparently Mark Isham didn't do the score for A Few Good Men (It was Marc Shaiman who also has a very long list of movie credits including Misery , Sleepless in Seattle). I must have confused it with another film although looking at his very long list of soundtracks I'm struggling to pinpoint it.

Some great things here ... I like that old RH film ... and even its music, although its use in it is very conventional compared to many of the things you end up listing.

AMADEUS needs no comment. But I did not want to get into a lot of the classical music ones, since the French Film stuff has so many of these and they are all magnificent ... although they are not a film that shows off its humor and fun along with it!

VANGELIS needs no introdution, and BR is probably my number 1 film all time. Next to a Kieslowski film that many folks missed with Preissner music (Veronique), that has the music integrated into the story beautifully!

DR ZHIVAGO ... one should really have that CD nowadays ... its great music. And Maurice Jarre is the only composer that won an OSCAR with classical (regular) music and later with Electronic Music! Try that son ... see if you can best me!

JACK NITZSCHE ... his mark was made in the film PERFORMANCE, although the pieces we remember are always the one with Randy Newman and the one with Mick, and maybe the one with Merry Clayton. But his organization of music and material with Nicolas Roeg, made the film spectacular ... and one even gets so see some RAP ... and incendiary RAP at that ... play that today, and everyone will call you a racist!

LAST OF THE MOHICANS ... outstanding music and well used ... however, I think that too much of it was used to simply augment the visuals and show a juxtaposition between the beauty of the panoramic views of the pristine country at the time, and its savagery right in front of it. It was done tastefully and not "over done", but for me it was quite obvious a comment that was wanted to be made and fit the film and its romantic notions.

Of all of these composers, BERNARD HERRMAN is the one that deserves the greatest of all accolades ... his music in many films, FORCED the director to pay attention ... and a lot of the Sci-Fi films gladly allow the music to live and give you more monster moments that are really far out with some really neat and bombastic music! In Hitchcock film, I don't think that Bernard could do this as easily, but he would come up to Alfred and say ... listen to this and 3 odd instruments together would end up having a scene or two filmed around it a bit! And, of course, it helped the films be really scary because the work was so odd and different!

From the top of my head, and maybe not in that order.

Peter Gabriel - The Last Temptation of Christ

Pink Floyd - More

Babs and Kris.. what more could you want...

The funny thing is that I can not tell you of any of those films, and where their music was used other than in the opening and closing of the film ... I probably don't remember as I did not think that many of those films were worth watching, and I was having too much fun watching other things that were completely different and much more interesting.

For me, GOBLIN is best on the albums ... not the films. Forget the films ... many of them are hard to find anyway and some places rip you off on them ... but the CD's, used can be found cheap!

28 Weeks Later  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Weeks_Later:_Original_Motion_Picture_Soundtrack" rel="nofollow - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Weeks_Later:_Original_Motion_Picture_Soundtrack

Both John Murphy

That album, btw, was one that literally came out with a higher price tag than all the other LP's ... it started the "greed" factory, if it can be said as if it was not there before.

I think all albums at the time were like $4.98 or something like that and from that album on, it became $5.98 ... and the 20% increase was, supposedly, on account of their stars and their percentages, and the champagne that they collected off it!

The movie? 

Sorry ... didn't bother! I was already involved with imports and music from Europe at the time, to enjoy something that literally hurt ... EVEN MORE ... a lot of music coming out of Europe! And then, some folks say that "prog died ... ".

My current favorite is from LUCIFER RISING (1972)

It's kind of like Koyaanisqatsi where it's visuals mixed with music.

Check out the flick. It's only 28 minutes long and trippy AF

Totally takes the 60s psychedelic / occult fascinations to the logical conclusion

Other than that, too many to mention: Star Wars, Help, A Hard Day's Night, Koyaanisqatsi, Lord of the Rings, The Mission, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Suspiria, The Mission, The Pink Panther, Profondo Rosso, Grease, Little Shop of Horrors, Xanadu!!!!! many more

Uncle Meat from Frank Zappa, even though the movie was never officially released.  Any other movie soundtracks that were attempted by Zappa also qualify.

 

I just have to add "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" just because it was one that I grew up with in my latter teen years.  It's always had the nostalgia factor, and who can beat Joe Walsh singing "The Waffle Stomp"?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y4f7LL338o" rel="nofollow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y4f7LL338o

I just looked it up and if it's the same one I found on wikipedia then it is by Jerry Goldsmith(who of course is a name every movie person should know). 

John Carpenter would be another one even though he's more known for making movies but he has done some soundtrack work too(as a side note his son is a prog fusion musician actually and has an entry on this website).