Saturn Thrice

By: Randall D. Larson
Date: Thursday, September 28, 2006

THIS WEEK'S RECOMMENDATION

Latest effort in Intrada's limited Special Collection series is the world premiere release of Elmer Bernstein's avant-garde opus, SATURN 3. The score is one of a handful of true sci-fi films scored by Bernstein, who began his career scoring just this type of film, with the lovingly terribly ROBOT MONSTER and CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON in 1953. After nearly three decades scoring Westerns (MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, et al.) and dramas (TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, etc.), with fantasy films a rarity (1971's SEE NO EVIL, 1974'S THE AMAZING MR. BLINDEN the unremarkable exceptions), the 1980s saw Bernstein in fine form scoring a number of quasi- and pure-sci-fi films, including AIRPLANE! HEAVY METAL, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, MICHAEL JACKSON'S THRILLER SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE, and GHOSTBUSTERS. The first of these, in 1980, was SATURN 3, riding the wave first crested by STAR WARS three years earlier. A fairly routine futuristic potboiler with Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett starring as an unlikely set of lovers living at a scientific outpost on a moon of Saturn, whose life together is threatened by the arrival of a maniac (Harvey Keitel, his lines allegedly dubbed by Roy Dotrice) and his murderous robot companion. Bernstein overdubbed a symphonic performance of his score with various electronics, which gives the score both an effective dramatic/melodic sensibility while also giving it a slightly quirky edge through the added electronic textures.

At more than 9 minutes long, the first track, "Space Murder," serves as an effective overture for the score's primary elements and thrust. The cue opens with an overpowering 2001-like crescendo, whose massive and powerful chords become a monolithic beacon of space grandeur and supremacy. The cue morphs into a catchy, almost discoesque tune for electric guitar, bass, and cymbal that is at first totally at adds with where we'd been going, but establishes what was, in 1980, a rather trendy groove. It then dissolves into a quiet, high-register Herrmannesque arrangement of tentative chord progressions, that in turn manipulate themselves into a rhythmic pulsation of recurrent chords for strings doubled by timpani, with Bernstein's heraldic 4-note main theme resounding gloriously at the end. Bernstein then crafts a lyrically gorgeous love theme, given a slightly artificial flavor through its electronic tonality accentuated by solo voice, brought to a breathtaking live around the 8-minute mark for full orchestra. The love theme and various other components of the score, were deleted from the finished film by director Stanley Donen, who apparently found it too bold and innovative for these early post-STAR WARS space-opera days. Bernstein then re-used the love theme as his theme for Taarna in his score for HEAVY METAL the following year.

Bernstein accomplishes an effectively suspenseful ostinato for the deadly robot through recurring pulses of low bass ("Meet Hector"), while atonal assemblages of percussion, xylophone, and an onrushing intonation from the full orchestra, resounding like a moment from warm-up practice, make for mysterious incidental music aboard the Saturnian moon station. The robot's ostinato becomes a huge, monstrous and unrelenting onslaught in "Training Hector," with all manner of instruments piping in to take their turn in the furious and flurryous musical attack, as if each instrument were a wire, pulsing with increasingly sentient awareness, and compressed robotic rage. The robot becomes much more humanized in "A Head for Hector," when Bernstein plays against the gruesomeness of the scene by merging the love theme with his wicked robot motif. The contrast between the disco-esque rhythms (All "Blue Dreamers" needed was a Bee Gees chorus and it'd been a hit single) and the more dramatic, orchestral and hybrid synthesis make for an interesting and provocative composition which is beautifully captured in another fine and significant release from Intrada.

The disc features the complete SATURN 3 score mastered from the composer's own recently discovered two-track stereo tapes. A filled-to-the-brim 16-page CD booklet contains illuminatingly explanatory notes about the film and its score by Jeff Bond. This release is said to be the definitive presentation of the powerhouse score in stereo, complete with all soprano overdubs, percussion overlays, cues deleted from film, and more. The release is limited to 2,500 copies.

www.intrada.com


FILM MUSIC NEWS


British Composer Sir Malcolm Arnold has died in hospital after a brief illness at the age of 84. While renowned as a classical composer, Arnold is most famous for his 132 film scores, including BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND, and HOBSON'S CHOICE. Arnold composed films on almost every genre, including some notable works for Hammer Films and director Terence Fisher, including THE STOLEN FACE (1952), about a plastic surgeon who changes the face of a woman fugitive to replicate his former lover, WINGS OF DANGER (1952), aka DEAD ON COURSE, a seafaring action drama about smugglers, and THE FOUR SIDED TRIANGLE (1953), about a man who "duplicates" the woman he loves after she marries another. He also scored Michael Anderson's 1956 film of George Orwell's 1984. Much of Arnold's film music has been compiled on a newly-recorded release from the British Chandos label.

- via musicfromthemovies.com

Official web site: www.malcolmarnold.co.uk

The Malcolm Arnold Music Society: www.musicweb.uk.net/arnold/arnold.htm

Soundtrack.net posted this week the first part of a multi-part interview with Hans Zimmer, interspersing soundbytes from the scores the composer discusses including PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST, BATMAN BEGINS, and THE DA VINCI CODE. For example, Zimmer describes the origin of his PIRATES score: "Where the first film was very collaborative and a great panic, because it was a last-minute rescore, in theory we had a bit more time on this one. However, it actually felt tighter than the first in its own peculiar way. Having written the tunes for the first film in a real hurry, all I wanted to do was sit down and sort of play with them for myself a little bit. So last August, before starting on THE DA VINCI CODE properly, I sat down and went over the Jack Sparrow tune, and figured out how I really wanted it to sound, where I really wanted it to go, and where I wanted the character to go. And I just spent a whole month doing that. It's a darker movie." Soundtrack.net's splendid presentation of this significant interview can be found at:

www.soundtrack.net/features/article/?id=205

Another very worthwhile online interview is ScoreMagacine's talk with Elia Cmiral about the composer's latest horror score, PULSE, an Americanized version of the Japanese horror film KAIRO (we reviewed the PULSE cd in Soundtrax on August 10th). "Pulse preserves the original Kairo concept but the tools are different," Cmiral tells ScoreMagacine. "The idea behind "Kairo" made a deep impression on me when I saw it. It inspired me. My score is an interpretation of Jim vision, and both scores are very different. While Kairo score stays as a haunting complement to the restrained movie, my score is reflecting Jim more violent and paranoid vision; the paradox in our communication technology, resulting humans isolation and losing natural human interaction."

Read the complete interview in English at: www.scoremagacine.com/Entrevistas_eng_det.php?Codigo=32

ALIEN VS. PREDATOR 2 will be scored by Brian Tyler, who has been hired to provide the musical accompaniment to the 20th Century Fox sequel to the 2004 sci-fi horror picture scored by Harald Kloser. The second film is directed by Coling and Greg Strause, two special effects wizards who make their feature film helming debut with AVP 2. The film is scheduled to premiere in December 2007. Tyler's other upcoming films include ROGUE starring Jet Li and Time to Kill starring Nicolas Cage. Among his recently completed scores are BUG for director William Friedkin and PARTITION for Vic Sarin.

Composer Tim Jones has been hired to score the action thriller THE DEATH AND LIFE OF BOBBY Z starring Laurence Fishburne and Paul Walker. The film is directed by John Herzfeld (15 MINUTES and 2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY). Tim Jones, a composer with films such as 8 MM 2, ALIEN HUNTER and KARLA on his resume, has also been signed by Nu-Image Films to score their upcoming horror film THE CHILDREN, directed by J.S. Cardone, whose most recent credit is the screenplay for Renny Harlin's THE COVENANT" Cardone and Jones have worked together on many films, including VAMPIRES: THE TURNING and SNIPER 3.

Cinevox Records of Italy will soon be releasing a double-CD, 35th anniversary of Ennio Morricone's classic Sergio Leone Western score to GIU' LA TESTA (aka DUCK YOU SUCKER, aka A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE, aka ONCE UPON A TIME, THE REVOLUTION). The 1971 movie starred James Coburn and Rod Steiger, and has reached the status of Cult among legions of fans in every corner of this globe. The original master tapes, containing the recording session that took place during April and August/September 1971, were recently found in excellent condition in the Cinevox Records vaults, and included a number of lost gems of music tracks that were recorded but weren't included in the final cut of the movie. Disc 1 contains the eleven stereo tracks in the same sequence appeared on the vinyl album in 1971 (Cinevox MDF 33/50) and its international reissues in a digitally restored and improved version. Disc 2 contains the film versions and alternate takes which see the light here for the first absolute time in full stereo (track 13 appeared as bonus track on the 1998 CD re-issue MDF 301 but at that time only in a mono mix, while now it is presented in full stereo). Tracks n.14 and 15 were the rare alternate versions issued only on a French compilation. Leone and Morricone's fans will discover great alternate takes of the album tracks such as "Mesa Verde," reprised with a more pop tone and also with an epic trumpet, a totally different take of "Invenzione per John," the stunning variations of "Marcia degli accattoni" and the reprises of the main themes in an atonal context.

Speaking of restored Western scores, FSM has released the 1972 Maurice Jarre Western score for THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN, an offbeat oater starring Paul Newman as a small-time hustler who makes himself into the administrator of law and order in Texas toward the end of the 19th century. Written by John Milius and directed by John Huston, the film fell halfway between Milius's attempts at dramatic mythmaking and a more comic take on the American "tall tale." Jarre had scored several westerns by the time of JUDGE ROY BEAN among them THE PROFESSIONALS, VILLA RIDES, EL CONDOR, and RED SUN and here provides a type of quasi-western effort showcasing his own inimitable romantic style. "Jarre solidly evokes the romantic core behind the Judge's gruff exterior, and surrounds this central melody with eclectic set pieces, running the gamut from action to comedy to period," writes FSM about this score. The score was released by Columbia Records on LP at the time of the film; FSM's premiere CD release doubles the playing time (with previously unreleased music courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc.) and is remixed and remastered from the original stereo tapes. This Maurice Jarre classic is presented in its definitive edition. Liner notes are by Lukas Kendall, with new commentary from Maurice Jarre as interviewed by Jeff Bond. www.screenarchives.com



Former editor/publisher of CinemaScore magazine, Randall Larson was for many years senior editor for Soundtrack Magazine and a film music columnist for Cinefantastique magazine. He is the author of Musique Fantastique: A Survey of Film Music in the Fantastic Cinema (Scarecrow, 1984) and Music from the House of Hammer (Scarecrow, 1995). In addition to Soundtrax and Music News for Cinescape.com, Randall reviews soundtracks Music from the Movies, writes for Film Music Magazine, and in many other fields.

Recommended Soundtrack sources:

www.buysoundtrax.com
www.intrada.com
www.screenarchives.com
www.footlight.com
www.arksquare.com/index_main.html (Japan)
www.intermezzomedia.com/ (Italy)
www.moviegrooves.com
www.moviemusic.com

For questions or comments, contact the author at Soundtrax@cinescape.com