Buy it... if you need a refreshing change of pace from the vast plethora of lesser-inspired scores and want a perfect match between electronics and orchestral traditions.

Avoid it... if the idea of hearing electric guitars and synthetic rhythms with your bold, Western brass themes makes you cringe at the prospect of trying to even find this rare score.

Poledouris

Cherry 2000: (Basil Poledouris) What a blast! Every once in a while, you get the impression that composer knows that he's taking a scoring assignment for a horrible film, but doesn't care. One prefect example of this is Cherry 2000, a sci-fi/action B-flick starring Melanie Griffith as a female mercenary in the post-apocalyptic world of robot infiltration and societal disorder. With flashy cars, atrociously dumb dialogue, and futuristic sexuality on the line, the film holds no punches in its sort of Mad Max depiction of future societal brutality. But then again, the film was laughably horrible, perhaps in a semi-intentional way. Its release was limited to begin with, and yet, budding composer Basil Poledouris decided to use the project as his own testing grounds for ideas and unhindered fun. Poledouris, at the time, was best known for his grand, thematically complex scores for sword and sorcery films, from Conan the Barbarian to Flesh + Blood, and Cherry 2000 would be released concurrently with Robocop. By 1987, Poledouris was beginning to get the knack of combining massive orchestral performances with electronic rhythms and synthesized instruments. Robocop would be the popular expression of this experimentation, but Cherry 2000 would be the darkhorse winner in these endeavors. If you walk into Cherry 2000 expected a serious score, you'll be disappointed and wonder why you spent the time and/or money on its rare album. Instead, it's a release of positive, if not silly ideas on a large scale, proving that any composer can truly have fun with his or her work when the right project comes around. The light-hearted action in this score is infectious if you set aside your expectations and allow yourself to get sucked into the bizarre, eclectic music for this film.

It is the style of Poledouris all the way, with attention to thematic harmony and tonal rhythms at every turn, but it's neither robust nor awe-inspiring. Instead, the score for Cherry 2000 is a futuristic Western, expressing Western themes on a backdrop of synthetic rhythms and electric guitars. The orchestral performances accentuate several well-developed themes, and as usual for Poledouris, these themes weave in and out of each other in every cue. Not a dull moment is to be found, for you'll either hear a whopping Western theme, or electronic keyboarding (foreshadowing the same use in Wind) to represent the love theme of the film. Mock Western rhythms include orchestral percussion appropriate to the genre, but are accompanied by futuristic waves of electronic mastery. What Poledouris accomplishes with this charming combination of old and new is a remarkably effective score with a very distinct personality. Nothing like Cherry 2000 has been written by Poledouris --or any other composer-- before or after 1987, making it a very refreshing glimpse at an untapped new genre. There is a touch of Goldsmith to be heard in the meandering, light electronics at times, but just when you begin wandering off course, Poledouris pulls you back with one of his typical, bold expressions of theme. A vigorous pace for its chase cues offer deep, pulsating electronic rhythms with pounding timpani on every measure. The ensemble doesn't seem to be that large, but their lack of depth is fully compensated for by a driving enthusiasm in their performance. Some of that creative, flashy performance is written right into Poledouris score, but sharp performances by every section of the orchestra highlight cues throughout the score. The ensemble is enlarged by a 'wet' mixing sound and deep bass (those bass strings will cause your floor to vibrate), allowing the electronic instruments to echo along with the traditional elements; this effect also enhances the futuristic feeling of the score.

Overall, Cherry 2000 is a Western with electric guitars, and how Poledouris managed to pull it off so well is a mystery. It's a perfect match between electronics and orchestral traditions, with neither element allowed to overshadow the other. It stands along-side Hoosiers as one of those great electronically rooted scores that sucks you into its themes and emotions to such an extent that synth-haters cease to notice them. If Cherry 2000 has a weakness, it extends from the lack of depth in the performances of the score. It thus resorts to silliness at times, even when the emotion Poledouris is trying to convey is one with more serious connotations. Only the fluffy nature of some of the renderings of thematic material restrain this score, but if you allow it to creep into list of favorite all-time guilty pleasure --which could easily happen to those of you who have heard a lot of scores and ache for originality-- then Cherry 2000 could very well be a five-star score. It can be a refreshing change of pace that you return to often for a respite from otherwise less-than-inspiring film music. The original album was Varèse Sarabande's very first Club title in 1989, limited to 1,500 copies, and it's hard to imagine that demand for the $12 CD at its initial mail-order offering was so tepid. It would eventually join Goldsmith's The 'Burbs to become the cornerstones of Varèse's original Club series. Sexual overtones litter the track listings ("Drive to Gloryhole" has a great guitar performance), but an unrelated question remains about Varèse Sarabande's horribly erroneous packaging; they managed to completely mangle the track listings on the packaging, omitting two tracks and shuffling others. Still, an original Cherry 2000 copy once sold once for over $2,000 (though Filmtracks sold it's #26/1,500 for a more reasonable $300 in 1999), making it one of the most storied CD collectibles ever to exist. When considering the unique personality of the score, the mystique of the CD was nearly unparalleled for over a decade.

As the 2000's dawned, however, that mystique began to fade. An inconsequential limited-run bootleg of Cherry 2000 (together with Poledouris' Flesh + Blood, another Varèse Club title) circulated in a supposed pressing of 500 copies for collectors to satisfy themselves with. Further reproductions of that bootleg followed. In 2004, Prometheus Records attained the rights to both Cherry 2000 and Poledouris' No Man's Land (also an early CD release by Varèse Sarabande, and certainly out of print and as difficult to find as its Club title companion) from Varèse and pressed them as a non-limited album. The inclusion of No Man's Land is an unexpected, but logical bonus. Both scores came from Poledouris during a distinct and specific point in his career, and both were out of print. The music is presented here in the full length of the original 30-minute album, although the "Porsche Power" and "Drive My Car?" cues have been combined into one track. No Man's Land is a cop thriller long forgotten, and the score was Poledouris' first chance to produce an entirely synthetic pop and drama effort for the big screen. After such a hectic 1987 (including the incredibly long score for the TV series Amerika), Poledouris perhaps should have passed on No Man's Land. The score suffers from the same uninspiring characteristics that would surface once again in Love and Treason, and beyond all his other works, the score is extremely dated. The only notable aspect of No Man's Land is that the "Payoff" cue would be used in the 'Crazy Ivan' sequence in The Hunt for Red October. The treatment of Cherry 2000 by Prometheus is, however, substantially better than that of Varèse, with the cues presented in order, additional material sprinkled throughout, and a better description of the project in the packaging (which, indeed, is correctly titled for the tracks). The additional cues aren't terribly exciting, with the exception of a rousing rendition of the title theme in "Lights Out." Other additional cues are largely redundant and short in length. On the whole, however, Prometheus once again presents yet more Poledouris work from the 1980's in its continuing quest to offer CDs of the composer's material from what was arguably the prime of his career. If you never could get a hold of Cherry 2000 in its previous forms, now is definitely the time to do so.

Score as Heard in Film: ****
Score as Heard on 1989 Varèse Sarabande Album: ***
Score as Heard on 2004 Prometheus Album: ****
Overall: ****

Bias Check:

For Basil Poledouris reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.46 (in 29 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.42 (in 27,397 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.