Buy it... if you want to know where it all essentially started for James Horner, not to mention the fact that Battle Beyond the Stars is an impressive and engaging score by any standard.

Avoid it... if hearing the inspiration for Horner's eventual self-ripoffs is as disturbing to you as hearing the composer blatantly pull material from Jerry Goldsmith's Star Trek: The Motion Picture for this score.

Horner

Battle Beyond the Stars/Humanoids from the Deep: (James Horner) The New World Pictures studio headed by Roger Corman was at the height of its ambitions in 1980, determined to not just fill the screen with B-rate sci-fi and horror trash but actually compete with the major blockbuster franchises already established on screen at the time. Most of the movies that came out of Corman's troop were still trashy, but that troop did include several big names that would go on to mainstream greatness, including Ron Howard and James Cameron. Both directors eventually used the services of composer James Horner, who himself was a Corman regular during the initial years of his career. Horner was fresh out of his doctorate education in music composition and theory when he landed the position with Corman, making his story very similar to Cliff Eidelman's, especially with their overlapping involvement with the Star Trek franchise. His scores for the space opera fantasy venture Battle Beyond the Stars and the fleshy horror flick Humanoids from the Deep were two entries in this collaboration, though most longtime collectors of Horner's music will only credit Battle Beyond the Stars as having significance on the direction of the composer's career. For those collectors, it's still a bit strange to go back and hear Battle Beyond the Stars, if only because it was a time during which not one listener could compare the music to a previous Horner score. Ironically, though, being the first entry in an illustrious career doesn't automatically mean there isn't some borrowing to be heard. Horner's career has always been a hotbed of controversy regarding his tendency to borrow material from himself and others. Pulling from the latter group is what's clearly evident in Battle Beyond the Stars. But even that hotbed has a storybook aspect to its beginning. It is Battle Beyond the Stars that directly caused Horner's employment on Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and an acquaintance with Battle Beyond the Stars art director James Cameron that may (or may not, depending on your sources) have led to his troublesome assignment on Aliens.

Being the young, impressionable composer that he was in 1980 (at a remarkably young age of 26), Horner freely admits that he was strongly influenced by other composers and their works. In interviews done early in the decade, Horner goes so far as to admit that Jerry Goldsmith was an enormous influence for him in the earliest days (not to mention some unsavory rumors about Horner's involvement with Goldsmith's daughter), explaining some of the overlaps in electronic experimentation with the orchestra and other various rhythmic similarities. He could also provide several names of classical composers whose motifs were inspiring to him. Thus, at a time when Horner was too young to rip off his own material, he took the opportunity to quote some old favorites. In the case of Battle Beyond the Stars, Corman was looking for music similar (if not identical) to Jerry Goldsmith's Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and it was ironically Horner's ability to so well incorporate that material into his own that he got noticed. As one must recall, the early 1980's were the time when space fantasies and sword and sorcery films were at their height, with John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith re-establishing the power of the full orchestra in film music. Corman wanted to take advantage of that sound, but on a fraction of the budget. Thus, the young Horner was given only 62 orchestral players with which to simulate the adventurous sound of the London Symphony Orchestra. What surprised everyone is the plain fact that he succeeded. He composed a spirited title theme, a longing interlude for romance, and a Western-styled character subtheme, all of which already exhibiting traits of the composer's style that would dominate his work in the first half of the 1980's. In the end, though, what Horner composed for Battle Beyond the Stars was simply too complex for the musicians to perform. The composition is superb, and there are unconfirmed reports that David Newman conducted the score. But the performance, while inspiring in its enthusiasm, is sometimes badly lacking in the brass section. An entire series of brass performances at 3:40 into "Epilogue/End Title" is badly mangled.

And yet, there's something about the performance mistakes that enhance the Corman B-rate film atmosphere; it fits snugly with the cheesy costumes and sets, and it is no coincidence that Corman used Horner's music for the film in countless of his other similarly poor flicks. Nevertheless, the score for Battle Beyond the Stars is a riot. The references to Goldsmith's Star Trek: The Motion Picture are aplenty, with rumors existing that the blaster beam in Battle Beyond the Stars was performed by the same musician. The same crisp, metallic edge that no modern synthesizer can imitate is unmistakably joined by rhythms and counterpoint techniques taken directly from the Goldsmith classic. The entire cue "The Battle Begins" pays tribute to the opening Klingon sequence in Goldsmith's score, with whole motifs with the blaster beam and other percussion providing a cheap, yet fun, imitation. You'll easily recognize the brass Klingon theme altered for use here, as well as the propulsive rhythmic crescendo that exists late in the equivalent cues for both scores. The start of "Love Theme" is an even more shameless rip. It's interesting to note that when Horner was actually hired to work in the Star Trek franchise and was tasked with writing his own Klingon music, he never produced anything as similar to Goldsmith's famous Klingon material as what you hear in Battle Beyond the Stars. In a general sense, it's also interesting to note that amongst all of these obvious influences is the process of Horner testing out original motifs and ideas that would later become staples of his career. In and around all the obvious borrowings from Goldsmith's Star Trek, Alien, and even A Patch of Blue in Battle Beyond the Stars are the fledgling ideas that would later be fleshed out in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Aliens. Even more ironic is that those Horner sequel scores would both come on the heels of Goldsmith originals, given that Goldsmith was Horner's inspiration before any of this ever started. It's rare that a composer is ever so lucky in his career, even in the days after free agency eliminated the studios' stranglehold on composers' careers.

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In short, people kept their LP records of Battle Beyond the Stars for two decades for a reason. It's an extremely engaging score, even with all of its compositional and recording flaws. While Humanoids from the Deep came after Horner had matured a little more, it lacks the spunk and personality of the previous score. The performance is significantly better in that work, but the horror genre was not as exciting for Horner as the realm space had been. Even for a film with massive, evil fish pursuing barely clothed women with giant boobs, the music for Humanoids from the Deep is substantially less interesting. Much of it lingers in the murky depths, and the moments of action are less complex. It is a score born of function rather than inspiration, and it remains nothing more than a small footnote in Horner's career. Sound quality was always a problem with these scores, and while Humanoids from the Deep has better clarity than Battle Beyond the Stars, both are afforded better sound on the eventual 2001 CD release than either the LPs or the CD bootlegs that had been drifting around the secondary market over the course of the late 1990's. The long awaited and readily available 2001 album from GNP Crescendo made the bootlegs completely obsolete, though the folding of the label shortly thereafter didn't help collectors' prospects. The sound quality in the Battle Beyond the Stars section varies greatly from cue to cue, with some sequences muffled considerably, while others are vibrant and impressive. It largely depends on the volume of the individual cues. In either case, the exciting personality of Battle Beyond the Stars can easily make the listener forget about its age. For fans of both Horner and Goldsmith, this album will be an enjoyable listening experience, as long as it isn't taken too seriously. It is what it is, and if you can't enjoy Battle Beyond the Stars in the context of both Corman's style and Horner's youth, then there might be some disdain or frustration to result. For Horner fans specifically, this is a must-have album exhibiting the score that arguably led to every project you've heard from the composer since.

Battle Beyond the Stars: ****
Humanoids from the Deep: **
Overall: ****

Bias Check:

For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.12 (in 89 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.34 (in 158,769 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.