Finally caught up with the remastered and expanded "Complete Novel" of Francis Ford Coppola's THE OUTSIDERS on DVD tonight.

The new footage is excellent and helps the movie, but sadly, some of it is totally negated by Coppola essentially tossing out all of his father Carmine's original orchestral score.

Coppola replaced most of his dad's intentionally-melodramatic cues with blaring period rock tracks for the new DVD cut, some of which ruin scenes altogether (such as the burning church sequence). Carmine's score was heavily criticized since it tried to evoke Max Steiner-like swells of emotion, but I felt it made the movie's message clear and helped the glossy visual sheen of the picture. Either way it's infinitely better than the non-stop assembly of rock tracks Coppola utilized here.

I'm puzzled, confused and frustrated by this DVD set. The movie flows better in this version by far and the new material helps, but the soundtrack is so awful in places that I truly miss his father's score.

Why couldn't he give us 2 SOUNDTRACKS to choose from for his new edit??? What a disappointment...