Mars Attacks!

I'm a huge fan of Tim Burton and the music of Danny Elfman, whose working relationship has been nothing short of symbiotic over the last couple of decades since their collaboration on Burton's first movie Pee-wee's Big Adventure. Whilst critics and public in the US didn't warm to Burton and Elfman's 1996 outing Mars Attacks! - possibly because it was coincidentally released very close to the similar yet irony-lacking Independence Day, which conversely, was heavily criticised outside the US for its nationalistic overtones – it's always been rather popular in Europe and still plays regularly on TV channels here.

Mars Attacks! is a marvellous blend of black comedy and Burton's trademark surreal humour. It is also heavy on the political satire, but most importantly it is also a parody of the science-fiction B movie genre. Inspired by a popular line of bubblegum trading cards released by Topps in 1962, as well as Martians and alien invasions from 1950s movies, the use of a theremin in Elfman's work on this film must have surely been inevitable, and the influence of Bernard Herrmann's ground-breaking theremin score for The Day The Earth Stood Still is apparent to all.

Curiously, Mars Attacks! was the film which also re-united Burton and Elfman professionally after a major falling-out – it was Howard Shore, not Elfman, who scored the music for Ed Wood another wonderful theremin soundtrack!

The soundtrack release of Mars Attacks! has also been the subject of some controversy amongst Danny Elfman fans. Unfortunately, when it became apparent that the first original Atlantic Records version was an abridged score it left the door wide open for bootleggers to rip the muisc off the DVD version and create a CD, which was then released under the "Red Planet Records," label.