Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you need a refreshing change of pace from the vast plethora of lesser-inspired scores in the decades since Basil Poledouris' engaging and entertaining fusion of electronics and orchestra for a strikingly unique parody Western. Avoid it... if the idea of hearing electric guitars and synthetic rhythms with your bold Western brass themes makes you cringe, though both the 2004 and 2011 albums supplement this rowdy listening experience with a different companion Poledouris score from the 1980's. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Cherry 2000: (Basil Poledouris) Despite sinking $10 million into Cherry 2000 in 1985, Orion Pictures had no idea what to do with the film, delaying it two years before finally giving up on a theatrical release and sending it directly to video. The tongue-in-cheek, B-rate science-fiction/action flick stars the counter-intuitively squeaky Melanie Griffith as a female mercenary in the post-apocalyptic world of robot infiltration and societal disorder in California and Nevada. With flashy cars, atrociously dumb dialogue, and futuristic sexuality on the line, the film holds no punches in its lighthearted Mad Max depiction of future societal brutality. But then again, the film is laughably horrible, perhaps in a semi-intentional way, sending Griffith and her vintage Ford Mustang on a mission with a misguided young man on a hunt for another copy of a specific sex robot (the titular "Cherry 2000") after the male lead's original one is accidentally electrocuted by a washing machine. They run into nasty degenerates in the deserts on the way to a sunken Las Vegas, where they do find their target sex toy but predictably fall in love with each other instead. Every once in a while, you get the impression that crew members "above" this variety of trash take the job anyway as some kind of humorous diversion, and Cherry 2000 represented that type of situation for composer Basil Poledouris. At the time, he was best known for his grand, thematically complex scores for sword and sorcery films like Conan the Barbarian and Flesh + Blood. Released at roughly the same time as RoboCop, Cherry 2000 was the kind of project that allowed the composer to use the opportunity as his own testing grounds for his budding instrumental ideas (especially involving synthesizer techniques) and have unhindered fun in the process of venturing into the realm of futuristic Western. By this time, Poledouris was beginning to really get the knack of combining massive orchestral performances with trademark electronic rhythms and synthesized instruments, setting the framework for a variety of subsequent hybrid scores (culminating, interestingly enough, in Free Willy). While Robocop was initially the more popular expression of this experimentation, Cherry 2000 would eventually reveal itself to be the dark horse winner in these endeavors. If you walk into Cherry 2000 expected a serious score, you may be disappointed and wonder why you spent the time and/or money on one of its several semi-rare to rare albums. Instead, it's a collection of positive, if not silly parody ideas on a very large scale, poking obvious fun at Spaghetti Western and European romance music all the while enunciating itself strictly though Poledouris' distinctive musical voice. So infectious is the composer's entertaining stance for Cherry 2000 that it's hard not get drawn into the bizarrely eclectic nature of the music for this film and recognize that it truly is the production's only redeeming element. Despite its attention to thematic harmony and tonal rhythms at almost every turn, the score is neither robust nor awe-inspiring. Instead, Cherry 2000 makes its name with personality alone, tackling the futuristic Western genre by expressing itself with backwards-looking themes against a backdrop of synthetic rhythms and electric guitars. The Hungarian orchestral performances highlight several well-developed themes, and as usual for Poledouris, these motifs weave in and out of each other in every cue and change their guises as the score progresses. The film opens with Poledouris' sappy love theme, a wishy-washy and overly sensitive representation of the male lead's obsession with his Cherry 2000 sex robot. Intriguingly, while this idea is conveyed by strings and solo woodwinds throughout these early scenes and the many flashbacks to his love affair with the machine, Poledouris shifts it to the electronic realm for the romantic interactions between the man and Griffith's mercenary. It swells into an action theme during the plane sequence in "End of Lester" and explodes with banging chimes and full symphonic glory at the outset of "The End" with almost ridiculous pomposity. In many ways, the love theme is the core of the score's narrative, the only idea to truly evolve throughout its length. The nutty villain, Lester, is treated to a quirky keyboarded idea starting in "Moving" and dominating the second half of the score; in "Truck Fight" and "Lester on the Move," Poledouris combines the strangely light-footed celesta-like tone of the synthetic keyboarding for this motif with muscular orchestral backing, an odd but effective approach to the character. In both "Truck Fight" and "Lights On" (among others), this motif is overtaken by the primary Western-styled theme for the female mercenary. Almost the entirety of Poledouris' tribute material to Ennio Morricone in Cherry 2000 is dedicated specifically to Griffith's character, though the stylish solo electric guitar in "Drive to Gloryhole" is an early exception. Several different phrases within this theme clearly address this parody element, none with fuller development than in the latter stages of "Thrashing of Sky Ranch." The light treatment of this idea early in "'E' Flips Sam" is notable in that it represents practically the only soft statement of the identity. Few dull moments are to be found in Cherry 2000, for Poledouris is almost constantly heard exploring one of his amusing parody themes. There are even a few secondary ideas for specific scenes, a notable one of harmonically pleasing rising figures at the end of "Magneto" and, with synthetic choir, during the entirety of "Pipeline." The mock Western rhythms by themselves are a subset of the heroine's theme, often including deep brass minor-third progressions and standard percussion appropriate to the genre but usually accompanied by futuristic waves of electronic mastery foreshadowing the tones of Wind (especially at the outset of "End of Lester"). In cues like "The Barricades" and "Photograb," these cute but very palatable rhythms carry passages often about a minute long. The highlight of these rhythmic loops and their synthetic effects is arguably "Lights On," a cue accompanying the start of the climactic fight in a Las Vegas casino but opening with twenty seconds of futuristic wonder that most sci-fi movie-makers would probably love to steal for the opening frames of their own projects. The last 80 seconds of "Thrashing of Sky Ranch," however, is a more sustained singular highlight that employs some challenging rhythmic meter changes that brilliantly express the composer's knack for playing to stereotypes in the genre. On the whole, what Poledouris accomplishes with this charming combination of future and past is a remarkably effective score with a very distinct personality. Nothing remotely like Cherry 2000 has been written by Poledouris (or any other composer) before or after, making it a very refreshing glimpse at an untapped sub-genre of parody. There is a touch of Jerry Goldsmith to be heard in the meandering, light electronics at times (especially in the sensitive woodwind and keyboarded statement of the love theme in "Ambush in the Cave"), the vigorous pace of its chase cues offering familiar deep and pulsating synthetic rhythms with pounding timpani on every measure. The Hungarian ensemble utilized for Cherry 2000 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 soundscape is written right into Poledouris' composition, 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 (the bass strings will cause your floor to vibrate) that allows the electronic instruments to echo along with the organic elements; this effect also enhances the futuristic feeling of the score. In sum, Cherry 2000 is a comedic Western parody with electric guitars that never sounds hokey, and how Poledouris managed to pull it off so well is a mystery. It's a perfect match between synthesizers and orchestral traditions, with neither element allowed to overshadow the other. It stands alongside Goldsmith's Hoosiers as one of those great electronically rooted scores that sucks you into its themes and emotions to such an extent that even ardent detractors of such hybrid music may cease to notice the synths. If Cherry 2000 has a significant weakness, it extends from the film's lack of a truly cohesive narrative, occasionally forcing Poledouris to be sidetracked with source-like material. So much of the "downtime" in the score is handled with soft and fuzzy statements of the love theme that truly satisfying development of the main theme is lacking. Some listeners won't care for the prancing attitude inherent in the silliness of certain scenes either, even when the emotion Poledouris is trying to convey is one with more serious connotations, like the love theme). The lack of ensemble depth at times may also bother those expecting to hear the composer's beefier orchestral mannerisms from the era. That said, if you allow the score to creep into your list of favorite all-time guilty pleasures, which could easily happen to those of you who have heard thousands of scores and ache for originality, then Cherry 2000 could very well be a five-star score. It is a reliably refreshing change of pace that you may find yourself returning to often for a respite from the plethora of otherwise less-than-inspiring film music to come from the software generation of composers in subsequent decades. This fact is in part why the score has remained one of the most notable on album in the history of soundtrack CDs, fetching thousands of dollars for a single copy and eventually afforded limited treatment by no less than three separate specialty labels. The original album for Cherry 2000 was Varèse Sarabande's very first Club title in 1989, limited to 1,500 copies and plagued by a number of issues. It's hard to imagine that demand for the $12 CD at its initial mail-order offering was so tepid, because it would eventually join Goldsmith's The 'Burbs to become the cornerstones of Varèse's original Club series. A horribly erroneous arrangement of tracks out of chronological order is accompanied by completely mangled track listings (albeit with welcome sexual overtones) on the packaging, omitting two tracks and shuffling others. Several typographical errors are also to be found on the packaging. Still, an original Cherry 2000 copy once sold once for $2,500 in auction (though Filmtracks sold its #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 as the bootleg CDr market began to flourish. 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, and several reproductions of that bootleg followed. In 2004, however, Prometheus Records attained the rights to both Cherry 2000 and Poledouris' No Man's Land (also an early CD release by Varèse and certainly out of print and as difficult to find as its Club title companion) and pressed them together as a non-limited album. The inclusion of No Man's Land is an unexpected but logical bonus. The two 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, but 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 period in 1986-1987 (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, its style is now extremely dated. The only notable aspect of No Man's Land is that the droning, ambient "Payoff" cue would be tracked in the "Crazy Ivan" sequence in The Hunt for Red October. The treatment of Cherry 2000 on the Prometheus album is substantially better than what you get on the Varèse collectible, with the cues presented mostly in film order, additional material sprinkled throughout, and a correct track listing on the 2004 offering. The additional cues aren't terribly exciting or important, with the exception of a rousing rendition of the Lester theme late in "Lights Out" (in fact, much of the added music on the later albums is related to that theme). Other additional cues are largely redundant and short in length, the overall time padded by three alternate mixes (only two of which are labeled as such; "Lester on the Move" is simply an alternate version of "Moving," though both are entertaining). The same musical contents and master source were accessed by Intrada Records in 2011 for yet another re-release of the score on CD, this time switching the track titles and their order once again (mainly moving the three alternate mixes to the end and inserting the seemingly sparse and synthetic source material, including the rather irritating "Movietone" and "Jake's Jukebox," into proper order). The 1,500-copy product did accomplish two purposes, however, primarily meeting continued demand for the score since the 2004 album had gone out of print. Secondly, the 2011 album also provides 17+ minutes of music from Poledouris' 1984 score for the medical drama The House of God. In this previously unreleased work, a chamber orchestra of 40 players alternates between bright, propulsive baroque rhythms under pleasant themes for various soloists (including hearty material that foreshadows the main theme of Kimberly, especially considering the solo role for trumpet) and somber, weighty background drama for strings, all of it cleanly harmonious and easy on the ears. For those seeking the best album on which to enjoy Cherry 2000, the Intrada combination with The House of God is superior to the Prometheus pairing with No Man's Land, if only because of a better arrangement of tracks and more palatable secondary score on the product. If you already own the Prometheus album, however, The House of God is likely not substantial enough to merit purchasing the Intrada album unless you are a Poledouris completist. Despite its storied history, the original Varèse album serves no continued purpose other than to complete fans' collections of the label's Club titles. On any album, Cherry 2000 is a fantastically overachieving score representing a composer at arguably the prime of his career, one that very closely skirts five-star territory. If you could never get a hold of Cherry 2000 in its previous forms, now is definitely the time to do so.
Score as Heard on the 1989 Varèse Album: *** Score as Heard on the 2004 Prometheus and 2011 Intrada Albums: **** Overall: **** Track Listings (1989 Varèse Sarabande Album):
Total Time: 39:05
(The packaging's track listings are missing tracks #17 and #20, however the times after the tracks are correct up until #18. Track #18 is actually #19, and #19 and #20 are indeed the final two tracks as #21 and #22. Both missing tracks are under a minute in length. Other published accounts that the listings are missing only one track, #17, are incorrect.) Track Listings (2004 Prometheus Album):
Total Time: 76:43
* Previously unreleased + Appeared but not credited on original CD release Track Listings (2011 Intrada Album):
Total Time: 65:48
All artwork and sound clips from Cherry 2000 are Copyright © 1989, 2004, 2011, Varèse Sarabande, Prometheus Records, Intrada Records. The reviews and notes contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Filmtracks Publications. Audio clips can be heard using RealPlayer but cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 7/1/97, updated 6/29/11. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 1997-2013, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
1989 Varèse
