Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you're extremely devoted to Basil Poledouris' music for Conan the Barbarian and are willing to overlook poor performance execution and recording quality on the original album for an expansion of the same sound. Avoid it... in its original form and instead seek the 2011 re-recording of the complete score if you hold Conan the Barbarian with such high regard that you can't tolerate hearing inadequate players mangle parts of its lesser sequel. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Conan the Destroyer: (Basil Poledouris) With the stunning success of John Milius' Conan the Barbarian two years earlier, a sequel featuring Conan once again in Robert E. Howard's Hyborean age was inevitable. Not returning for the successor, though, was the same brutally classic vision of the fictional age that Milius and Oliver Stone and had created in the first film. Some will argue that follow-up director Richard Fleischer, a veteran filmmaker in his own right, built a spin-off of the Hyborean age in the sequel film, exploring a different avenue that developed other aspects of Conan's character and his surroundings. Others will argue that Conan the Destroyer was a monumental failure simply because it lost the classic realism and solitude that made the first film so enticing. The majority of audiences agreed with the latter opinion, tired of Conan and exhausted by the 1980's bombardment of fantasy adventure films set in ancient times. Substantial difficulties finalizing a script for Conan the Destroyer caused immense dissatisfaction across the board, including with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who consequently refused to return to the franchise for a planned third entry. Other than the executive production team, only three elements returned for the sequel: actors Schwarzenegger and Mako and composer Basil Poledouris. Despite early ideas of utilizing a pop/rock score for the first film, Poledouris had beaten the odds and produced one of the finest pre-historic orchestral scores in the history of cinema. Decades later, Conan the Barbarian still stands as perhaps the most outstanding achievement of Poledouris' career, and a concert of music from that score would represent the composer's final public appearance shortly before his death in 2006. Thus, the return of his musical tone for Conan the Destroyer was an immediate necessity. In the interim, he had written less ballsy, more traditionally fantasy-oriented concept music for Universal Studios' live action production, "The Adventures of Conan: A Sword and Sorcery Spectacular," in 1983, a preview of the path away from the weight of Conan the Barbarian in its lesser cinematic sibling. Poledouris was put at a tremendous disadvantage with Conan the Destroyer, contending with not only the abandonment of the attitude that made the first score a classic but also forced to write for a smaller, inferior orchestra with no chorus. Despite these circumstances, his resulting score suffered from some of the same exhaustion that hindered the film, even though the composer once again attempted to recreate a sound for ancient times that did not follow any of the rhythmic or lyrical rules of modern music. His work reflected the director's lighter, more humorous take on the series and offered a sound that is far less weighty in its dramatic gravity. Because of this shifted emphasis, the score for Conan the Destroyer moves with greater agility on its feet while also utilizing a less domineering thematic presence. Most of the major themes from the first film do make cameo appearances in the sequel, though Poledouris usually alters their structures or only states them in fragments. Thus, listeners hoping for straight forward and lengthy recapitulations of the previously established themes will be disappointed. Likewise, Poledouris' three or four new motifs for the score are not as singularly memorable and are often manipulations of previous ideas in their foundations. Returning is the opening Crom theme from the first film (though its primary statement at the outset of the sequel is absent from the 1992 album release), representing the universe of Conan, as well as portions of the underlying rhythms and secondary phrases of the "Riders of Doom" cue that often accompanies movement on horseback (as heard in "Elite Guard Attacks" and "Dream Quest," among others). Conan's own theme (originally from "Riddle of Steel") is less utilized, unfortunately, though a mutation of its more lyrical progressions does give the character a somewhat fresh identity for the sequel. The "Valeria Remembered" cue does offer a hearty performance of the love theme from Conan the Barbarian, but much of this material was cut from the film. The slow, pounding theme for the religious mass at Thulsa Doom's mountain in the first film makes an oddly out of place, ill-advised appearance in "Approach to Shadizaar." Sorely missing is the vivacious civilization theme, which is odd given Conan's return to the same locations (and meeting the same camel of punching fame) in the sequel. The two most prominent new themes in Conan the Destroyer are adequately summarized in "Elite Guard Attacks" and "Crystal Palace." Especially of note is the Western-styled idea foreshadowing Cherry 2000 at 4:00 into the latter cue. The action-packed confrontation and battle music in these cues exists at nearly the same level as Poledouris' previous effort. He also transforms the overarching Crom theme for the series into an effective dueling motif that culminates into a major force in the massive "Conan & Bombaata Battle" (a cue that also makes strong use of the sequel score's rhythmic fighting motif). A rhythmic, rising minor-third motif in "Crystal Palace" is responsible for reflecting the lumbering movements of the story's main adversarial beast. The highly focused theme for the evil queen and her guards resides in "Elite Guard Attacks" and is a spin-off of the processional music from the prior score. While some listeners consider the primary theme of Conan the Destroyer to be the mutation of the titular character's more lyrical passages from the first score, there really isn't much unique identity to this idea in the sequel to qualify it as truly new (outside of its seldom applied interlude sequence). More intriguing is the use of Poleoduris' uplifting theme for Conan from the "The Adventures of Conan: A Sword and Sorcery Spectacular" soundtrack in one prominent place (heard in the 2011 re-recorded version of the score in the cue "Conan the Destroyer"). The composer assembled his major new ideas and sprinkled them into his "Main Title" and "End Credits" cues, but these were butchered in the film and were not provided on the original soundtrack album. The final insult to the Conan the Destroyer score was the incredibly poor quality of the Rome performance and the muffled recording that accompanied its execution, long a source of great disdain for the composer. The performances by the "Unione Musicisti di Roma" orchestra are truly hideous in parts, with the horns often missing key notes entirely during important sequences. Much of the brutality inherent in the original score's recording is lost in this flimsy entry, despite valiant efforts by some of the bass woodwind players to create the same depth. The light and festive percussion, limited already by budgetary reasons, offers tingling metallic sounds with equal effectiveness, but the remainder of the orchestra's sections seem incredibly unpolished. The troublesome issues relating to the severe performance and recording problems with Conan the Destroyer were in part related to the fact that the composer wrote the sequel score in the same demanding fashion (with even more rowdy, abnormal meters) as Conan the Barbarian, so the flaws stand out very obviously. Also frustrating is an extremely dated sound due to poor recording technology, with an even more archival, muted ambience exhibited in several key cues. So dry is the recording that the cymbal crashes sound as though they've been reduced to children's size. Thus, you have a strong composition nearly ruined by limited orchestrations due to budget and unqualified performers. The original album for Conan the Destroyer is just as out of print as the Varèse Sarabande companion for Conan the Barbarian, also released in 1992. This time, however, the album could be missed without much sense of loss for even an avid Poledouris collector. A good alternative for those unsatisfied with this score is the "The Adventures of Conan: A Sword and Sorcery Spectacular" recording from 1983, which foreshadows several ideas explored in Conan the Destroyer but with arguably superior performances. In 2011, Prometheus Records released the continued efforts of producer James Fitzpatrick to bring Poledouris' music from the Hyborean age, resulting in re-recordings of both Conan the Destroyer and "The Adventures of Conan: A Sword and Sorcery Spectacular" by the City of Prague Philharmonic in similar fashion to that team's successful presentation of Conan the Barbarian the prior year. While these sequel scores are not as essential for a casual collector, Conan the Destroyer has long suffered in its original form and the re-recording is surprisingly impressive. Hearing the complete score orchestrated as it was intended, with all live players instead of synthetic backing in places, and in superior digital sound (though unfortunately not as resounding as the Conan the Barbarian re-recording, with far less reverb) is certainly a pleasure, though it does expose the fact that Conan the Destroyer is still a composition heavily reliant upon passages from its predecessor. The re-recording of the 1983 live-action show's score is perhaps the best, hidden attraction on the product, though the absence of the immense narration present with the original recording is a detriment. No matter the album, however, neither of these follow-up works can compete with the mastery of the music for the original Conan the Barbarian, a qualified classic in the genre.
Music as Heard on the 1992 Varèse Album: *** Music as Heard on the 2011 Prometheus Album: **** Overall: *** Track Listings (1992 Varèse Album):
Total Time: 33:10
(some listed track times on the album are slightly incorrect) Track Listings (2011 Prometheus Album):
Total Time: 92:30
All artwork and sound clips from Conan the Destroyer are Copyright © 1992, 2011, Varèse Sarabande, Prometheus 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 6/18/03, updated 12/21/11. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 2003-2013, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
1992 Varèse