Terrifying Donkey Music

I'm sure this has been featured elsewhere, but it's the first time I saw it: the transformation scene from Pinocchio with only the music, no sound effects or dialogue.

What we learn from the scene in this form is pretty much what we knew before: it's terrifying even without Lampwick's cries of "mama!" (though the dialogue and effects certainly do make the scene even scarier) and Leigh Harline was good at writing horror music, as he would prove when he moved to RKO and scored some of their horror and noir films (including Val Lewton's Isle of the Dead). I've always thought of him as one of the best of the "utility" composers in Hollywood, the guys who were not assigned to big projects and had to work -- sometimes uncredited -- on anything that wasn't handled by the department heads or the more in-demand composers (like Herrmann or Rosza or Waxman). At Fox, for example, he doesn't seem to have been first choice for anything, but on a modestly-budgeted movie like Pickup On South Street he turned out a score whose nervous energy matches the director's.