Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you have an affinity for Basil Poledouris' music for Conan the Barbarian and its sequel, for this live-action spin-off show allowed him to produce a refreshing and viable extension of the same general sound. Avoid it... if 16 minutes of score material just isn't enough to justify the price of the limited album. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
The Adventures of Conan: A Sword and Sorcery Spectacular: (Basil Poledouris) In the early 1980s, Americans were consumed by the need for adventures from the mythical age of sword and sorcery. With films such as Dragonslayer, Excalibur, and Beastmaster came audiences' desire to see even more of such fantasy epics. The most successful film of the genre was, of course, Conan the Barbarian, and not only did the 1982 film inspire a full-length motion picture sequel two years later in the form of the substandard Conan the Destroyer, but it also led to the creation of a live-action Conan stage show located at Universal Studios in 1983. The Landmark Entertainment Group show, formally titled "The Adventures of Conan: A Sword and Sorcery Spectacular," ran for ten successful years in Hollywood before being replaced by newer, more technically sophisticated attractions such as "Jurassic Park: The Ride." The Conan show was produced in between the two feature films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and it was therefore logical to ask the franchise's own Basil Poledouris to score the live-action version as well. The production wasn't all that long in its duration, lasting for about 20 minutes, but its intense Hyborean Age action required almost constant underscore of sufficient volume to give the audience a consistent rush of Conan-related fever. Poledouris tackled the assignment with the same seriousness as he had for the original film, employing orchestrator Greig McRitchie and the large London Studio Symphony Orchestra and Voices to duplicate the pounding depth of the music from Conan the Barbarian. The resulting quarter of an hour of music by Poledouris remained a difficult item to obtain on album for quite a while. A limited album from SuperTracks, the now-defunct soundtrack specialty label, was released in 2000 and is devoted to only the Conan show. It includes two tracks: the music alone and a selection of material with the original dialogue from the live action on stage. The suite which comprises the second track on this album had appeared on a few compilation bootlegs of Poledouris' work, some of which selling for hundreds of dollars at online auction houses. The music itself is a viable extension of Conan the Barbarian. While neither the title nor love themes from the motion picture score are directly translated into the show for lengthy statements, bits and pieces do appear in mutations throughout. For instance, a bar of the title theme from Conan the Barbarian is inserted at 6:50 and the finale in the second, score-only track, and the pulsating rhythm of Crom occurs at 8:30 in the same track. Avid fans of Poledouris and the Conan series will recognize many of the composer's woodwind and brass styles carrying over from the film as well. A strong presence of timpani and a few new thematic ideas keep the live-action score distinct enough to enjoy apart from Conan the Barbarian (unlike the "Back to the Future: The Ride" score, for which Alan Silvestri just took his original film themes and pieced them together into a suite for the ride). In fact, a lovely new theme of romance is introduced at about 4:20 into the score-only track that translates into a couple of extremely attractive performances throughout the piece. The evil dragon receives an appropriately hypnotic theme heard at 2:30 and 5:10 into the same track. Poledouris' music is typically heavy with choir, chimes, and brass in a dramatic environment, with only the wildly shrill scoring for the slaying of the dragon at the end providing a dissonant weakness in its musical content. Taken from analog originals for digital mastering onto this CD, there is a noticeable tinniness to the sound of the music in general, but that's to be expected from a 1983 recording. The first track features select portions of the dialogue and music together, while the second track includes only the expanded score of 16+ minutes by itself. The digital transfer has caused a few notes of interest for those of you running your audio through larger stereo systems. On a smaller setup, the CD sounds much more uniform, but audiophiles will notice that the music is of slightly poorer quality on the track with the dialogue, with a greater amount of treble hiss. Making this artifact more apparent is the comparatively booming, superior quality of the dialogue. On the whole, however, the album is a grand addition to the collection of any Poledouris collector. It's like traveling back in time to the early 1980's and living in the age of Conan mania all over again, with a fresh new Poledouris score to enjoy. It's hard not to keep coming back to the dialogue version, with a rumbling, majestic narrator and wildly animated and equally deep vocal performance by the villain, both of whom will be certain to awaken your neighbors at any hour of the night. The death screams of the villain in particular are the kind of material that any sound effects collector will desire. The man portraying Conan needs to work on his Austrian accent, though. **** Track Listings:
Total Time: 24:36
All artwork and sound clips from The Adventures of Conan: A Sword and Sorcery Spectacular are Copyright © 2000, Super Tracks Music Group. 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 10/1/00, updated 10/1/08. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 2000-2005, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
