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Dragonslayer: (Alex North) When you look back at
the sword and sorcery age in Hollywood (otherwise known as the early to
mid-1980's), it's hard to figure out exactly what drew so many people to
that particular fascination with fantasy all in one short term. The
special effects advancements of George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic
were the obvious reason, though escapism in general was a logical
reaction to the grittier fare of the early 1970's. Director Matthew
Robbins' take on the Dark Ages was more realistic than all of its
contemporary peers, and the film was aided by early efforts by ILM to
create the most stunning dragon ever seen on screen at that time. The
fact that it was a Walt Disney production was one of its most deceptive
aspects; parents expecting their children to see a whimsical tale of
swords and sorcery were treated to a grim, gory, and depressing
reflection of American socio-political disillusionment in the context of
the Dark Ages. Even within its genre, the acting and the plot were also
significant problems. Imagine the fallacy of logic here: one young
female virgin has to be sacrificed every year to a nasty dragon up on a
hill neighboring the local village, and a lottery is conducted to see
who will be fed to the beast. The lottery is rigged, of course, but why
doesn't anybody in the village figure out the obvious and easier way to
disqualify all the young women? Such things don't get addressed in
Dragonslayer, along with magic amulets, a resurrected sorcerer,
and an eclipse, none of which are convincingly established in such a way
as to make much sense (unless, perhaps, you want to make comparisons to
the Richard Nixon administration). Luckily for all of them, the
completely defocused score doesn't make much sense either. For film
music collectors, the era was marked with a series of large-scale,
ethnically diverse epics, leading to its pinnacle with James Horner's
Willow in 1988 before a monumentally embraced renaissance in 2001
with Howard Shore's
The Lord of the Rings trilogy. But even
before then, scores by Basil Poledouris, Trevor Jones, and Horner
captured our attention with their bold themes and robust orchestral
employment for the genre, extensions of the Wagnerian adaptation by John
Williams to epic fantasies in the late 1970's.
The name you often don't associate with the others is Alex
North, a man seemingly out of place among all the young, rising stars of
the digital age. North was in the latter stages of his career by 1980's,
but still a favorite of film score collectors and the Academy, which
honored the composer with an Oscar nomination for
Dragonslayer
opposite
Chariots of Fire and
Raiders of the Lost Ark in
1982. He was long removed from his great epics of decades prior,
seemingly content concluding his career with small-scale dramas that did
not require the monumental orchestral prowess of
Spartacus and
Cleopatra. Compared to its contemporaries in the genre, North's
music easily stands out as a continuation of his trademark, unorthodox
styles rather than a consistent entry along the other scores that, for
the most part, have garnered much more long-standing praise. So was
North mis-assigned to
Dragonslayer? Not necessarily. His
capabilities with a large ensemble have never been questioned. His
knowledge of ethnic and historical variety was considerable. His
instrumentation was often extremely creative, especially in the
percussion section. His popularity in the industry ranked him among
legends. The production sought a more challenging environment than other
sorcery epics, begging for a less linear musical identity. Unfortunately
for
Dragonslayer, North's music tended to intellectualize a
subject to death (specialty instruments include three log drums, two
parade drums, two grand pianos, a tack piano, a clavitimbre, a
harpsichord, bell trees, a large organ, a thunder sheet, and a wind
machine), and what the sword and sorcery films of the 1980's required
was a simplistic transparency of construct to balance the otherwise
awkward worlds and plots displayed on screen. North's score for
Dragonslayer is highly layered, complex, and intelligent, but so
much so in every regard that he completely loses all the primordial
excitement and magic inherent in the genre. As Trevor Jones has often
remarked, the job of a composer in this kind of genre is to balance the
alienating fantasy elements on screen that audiences cannot relate to in
their own set of experiences with music that is rooted in a palette that
those audiences can indeed understand.
By challenging audiences with such a difficult and
unconventional score for
Dragonslayer, North was simply driving a
wedge further into the divide between those who didn't appreciate the
film's downbeat, cold demeanor and those who found it to be a refreshing
change. Disappointing box office numbers eventually proved that the
latter crowd wasn't enough to justify the experiment. For a myriad of
reasons,
Dragonslayer is a nearly impossible score to review
because of precisely that divide between mainstream expectations and
intellectual deviation. On top of that, you have a circumstance in which
North's fluffier material (upbeat scherzos and whining string romance)
was dialed out of the film or replaced with his avant garde material
from other scenes. Either way you look at it, there's little doubt that
the audience for
Dragonslayer (and especially its score) is very
confined, and whether you fall in the "love" or "hate" categories in
response to North's approach, it's hard not to recognize that the score
was, outside of the context of intellectual appreciation, a conceptual
misfire to match that of the film. First and foremost among the arguable
detriments of
Dragonslayer is North's set of themes, which is
never stated with the kind of clarity necessary to define locations or
characters. As in many of his other scores, he takes the harmonious
melody and masks it behind a layer of dissonance meant, perhaps, to make
it sound scary or foggy, as it always appeared to be outside in the Dark
Ages. Don't expect a harmonious result from the merging of his bass and
treble lines. Thus, it takes two or three listens to the score separated
from the film before you can actually identify each of North's five
distinct thematic ideas. And they are certainly there, despite their
shrouded nature in the picture. Because of its tone, the brass theme for
the dragon, heard immediately at the outset, is perhaps the most
effective, though the tepid love theme for the two leads offers some
brief moments of standard woodwind beauty. Even in these themes, both in
the film and on album, North's score plays like a mass of orchestral
noise, often with several different sections performing different
"polyphonic" tangents, sometimes mimicking an ensemble warming up, with
action sequences that bludgeon the listener rather than entertain.
The application of many of these troubling cues to the
film is an "in your face" saturation of the soundscape, causing North to
distract the viewer from some scenes rather than tastefully compliment
them. The "dissonance by default" method of scoring here simply wasn't
necessary to yield the kind of response sought by this production. For
those who defend
Dragonslayer to no end, it's difficult to
qualify North's theme for the amulet, which structurally is fine, but is
enunciated with such dainty, ridiculous instrumental tones that it's no
wonder the filmmakers were inclined to remove such material from the
film. From the scherzo in "Forest Romp" to the entirety of the finale
and end credits merging of the amulet theme with the primary love theme,
North writes material suitable for a 1960's backyard romantic comedy.
It's disgracefully out of place, with a plucky personality of
harpsichord, violins, metallic percussion, and high woodwinds that was
better suited for the composer's nature documentary assignments than a
swords and sorcery film. A few exceptions from the otherwise tiring,
abrasive, and awkward listening experience include "Landslide," with a
snippet of John Williams string rhythms at 2:00, and fantastic timpani
usage in "Tyrian and Galen Fight." While distractingly silly, the
spirited, upbeat, and rejected chase cue in "Galen's Escape" and more
lyrical presentation with fluttering woodwinds and cheery percussion in
the aforementioned finale are at least a break from the gloom and doom.
But moments like the terrible dissonance in "The Lottery," imitating the
shrieking of a female voice over tolling bell, cause
Dragonslayer
to annoy more often than not. In its addressing of synchronization
points, the score completely misses the mark, playing like an extended
classical concert piece rather than a film score. Distinct cue changes
are rare, thematic statements are often veiled, and inconsistent pacing
in the score fails to allow the action sequences to really stir up much
excitement. This final characteristic isn't surprising, given North's
history of composition outside of film scores. In the end, you don't
hear about
Dragonslayer discussed much, if at all, in debates
about the great sword and sorcery scores of the 1980's, and that's due
to the score's inability and/or refusal to fit into the basic parameters
of the genre (outside of orchestral employment).
On album,
Dragonslayer frustrated listeners for
three decades. It was originally released on an LP record with the
unbelievably ridiculous statement: "never to be re-released in any
medium." Well, in 1990, Soundtrack Collector's Special Editions (SCSE)
made fools of whoever wrote that statement by releasing the score on CD
as the third of their original five products of the early 1990's. While
purists in the soundtrack production industry have long lambasted the
SCSE releases for being nothing more than professionally pressed
bootlegs, collectors didn't really care. Limited originally to 2,000
copies, another 750 were pressed by SCSE shortly thereafter as a special
(but identical) "Gold Edition" of the product. All versions had badly
mislabeled tracks, with the listings on the CDs completely erroneous and
useless when matched to the music. These long expensive products were
eventually supplanted by La-La Land Records in 2010 on an expanded album
that the label made a fuss about being "the first official release" of
the score. Regardless of the SCSE/bootleg debate, the La-La Land
product, limited itself to 3,000 copies, is a fine presentation of the
score, offering very satisfying sound quality with a tasteful amount of
reverb that doesn't drown out the precise individual performances by the
London ensemble. A few alternate and source cues finish off a corrected
presentation of the score proper. One listen to North's disastrous,
alternate "Main Title" cue at the very end of that album, however, with
the obnoxiously bouncing amulet theme in the treble originally set to
open the film, is clear proof alone that North was lost in this genre.
Overall, this score is a stylistic mess that happens to enjoy a very
limited but highly devoted following of intellectual listeners, and
despite the genuine size and scope of North's music for
Dragonslayer, the veteran failed to grasp the necessary
connection points of the genre and wrote an inappropriate and
unsatisfying score for the picture. If you seek a timeless, avant garde
fantasy score that actually works, try Elliot Goldenthal's vastly
superior but equally intellectually stimulating
Final Fantasy: The
Spirits Within. That score has a balance of conventional, linear
gravity and unusual instrumental structures that exposes North's
Dragonslayer as both misguided and badly dated.
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Music as Written for the Film: *
Music as Heard on the 1990 Album: *
Music as Heard on the 2010 Album: **
Overall: *
The inserts of both the 1990 and 2010 albums include detailed information
about the score and film. All copies of the SCSE album were numbered.
