Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue.
Today we're going to be listening to 7m2 New The Hatch Opens.
This cue is 42 bars long and was orchestrated by Herbert Spencer.
Continuing the trend of the last few weeks, this cue was originally 7m1 but got rebalanced to 7m2, and a "New" was added to the end to signify the rebalance.
I actually have scans of it both before and after rebalancing. As far as I can tell no musical changes were made so this doesn't qualify as a revision.
But here's the top of the first page of both scans:
Now let's listen to the cue together:
At 0:00 the cue begins with a statement of Bernard Herrmann's 3-note madness theme from the film Psycho. Editor Paul Hirsch has said in interviews that a cue from the Psycho score was used in the temp track here, and Williams decided to pay homage to it in his cue for the scene. It is also worth nothing that Williams was good friends with Herrmann, and saw him as a mentor.
Unfortunately the original recordings for Psycho have never been properly released in high quality, but you can hear the theme in its original context at the very start of the Joel McNeely rerecording of the cue "The Madhouse" here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCY0CqzbHLI
Anyway, back to the star wars cue, the Psycho reference provides some tension as the heroes open the hatch. The tension releases when the reference ends at 0:06, as they see that it's safe and the coast is clear. The strings play a soft but still hesitant form of Ben's theme as Ben says he'll take care of the tractor beam.
Then at 0:26 the music changes gears, giving us some Imperial theme as the technicians bring over the scanning equipment. This leads into some ascending material at 0:40 as they climb the ramp and enter the Falcon.
Then some hesitant figures as Han calls for help, leading to a loud brass and percussion statement at 1:05 as you hear a couple muffled blaster shots.
Some quiet tension building from 1:10-1:19, and then the return of the Imperial theme as you see Luke descend the Falcon ramp in a stormtrooper suit pretending he has a bad communicator. There aren't any full statements of the theme here, but lots of repeating fragments.
Then at 1:32 there's some loud action-y brass for Chewbacca and Han attacking the imperials in the control room, followed by a happy statement of Luke's theme as the rest of the heroes enter the control roon. Thus, the cue ends...
This cue was recorded on March 11, 1977, the fifth day of the recording sessions. Five takes were recorded, numbered 110-114. According to the 1997 take log, the performance edit used just take 114.
This cue has been officially released on just one album:
3) In 1997 on RCA Victor's 2-CD Special Edition set
More specifically, 7m2 New The Hatch Opens can be heard:
From 1:39-end of disc 2 track 4 "The Death Star/The Stormtroopers" on the 1997 album.
The 1997 set has both a clean opening and ending, and the takes are correct to the film, however it is unfortunately brickwalled in some areas. The video above just uses the 1997 set.
That's all I have for today, thanks for reading! Feel free to leave any comments or questions.
Next week we'll be discussing 8m1 The Mouse Robot. See you then!
