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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you appreciate engaging and intelligent horror scores that slowly and brilliantly transform attractive harmony into frightfully atonal terror. Avoid it... if the famous "Carol Anne's Theme" is too sweet for your palette and the secondary religious motifs in the score are too infrequently utilized to salvage the entirety for your non-horror preferences. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Outside of the context of the film, the Poltergeist score's memorability is most often created by the softer elements representing the Freeling family. As the concepts in the story evolve from the blissful suburban lifestyle to the turmoil of "the other side," the score turns progressively more frightful, first in a suspenseful, religious fashion, and eventually in a seemingly unorganized bombast of atonal orchestral strikes representing "the beast." The outstanding results from Goldsmith's most strident horror material in Poltergeist are difficult to diminish simply due to the fact that they're challenging to enjoy on album. But Goldsmith's route to those depths of fright are what matter, and the gems within the Poltergeist score exist halfway through that journey. The score's title theme could deceive the naive in the audience, though "Carol Anne's Theme" is such an invariably good-natured representation of a 5-year-old girl's lullaby that anyone can clearly see that Goldsmith was only using this theme as a control for the contrasting horrors to come. In concert performances of Poltergeist, listeners are treated to this lovely piece, but in retrospect, it borders on being contrived when seated next to the remainder of the score. This title theme would be very well integrated into the rest of the work, especially in fragments, though the score's only other truly organized theme is its highlight. For the more wondrous and mysterious element of the religious concept involving the souls caught in between worlds in the Freeling's sub-development, Goldsmith coins a longing string theme of curious elegance. First heard during the description of "the other side" in "The Light," this theme would accompany the psychic Tangina in "It Knows What Scares You." The floating atmosphere of this melodic string theme causes Poltergeist's frequent comparison to similar parts of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. This theme would play a larger role in the film than on album, for it is a rare circumstance when early conversational scenes are provided with a substantial piece of score. In its fragments over the course of the film's frantic finale, this theme would mostly be unrecognizable due to its violent shift in tempo and instrumentation. As the film and score progress even further into the realm of the unknown, Goldsmith conjures two more ideas that successively become less organized. One of these is the transformation of the religious theme into a tumultuous rhythmic motif for low strings and brass that first erupts at 2:20 into "Contacting the Other Side." This motif steams into full action throughout "Rebirth," first accompanied by whimsical female choir and eventually achieving remarkable weight in the fourth minute of that cue. As the battle to retrieve Carol Anne from the next world ensues, this "battle rhythm" is often interrupted by full ensemble hits. Its merging with the religious theme by the fifth minute of "Rebirth" is a highlight of the entire score. Hints of this rhythmic material would be rearranged by Goldsmith for the climax of The Haunting in 1999, a neat tribute to the earlier score. Finally, the "beast" itself is given an identity, but by the time the score addresses it, the motif is mostly represented by jagged blasts in the lowest registers of the ensemble. A preview of this idea would be provided in the latter half of "It Knows What Scares You" and occupies the first minute of "Night of the Beast." The larger representations of this concept are mostly atmospheric in a blasting, staggered, rhythmic sense. By "Escape from Suburbia," the score has lost all of its melodic cohesion and exists as only a series of sharp jabs over groaning, atonal strains. After the Freeling family escapes to a motel, the end credits returns to a full statement of the innocent "Carol Anne's Theme" provided at the start, though Goldsmith throws a kink into the conclusion with a really psychotic mix of laughing girls' voices overtaking the end of the thematic performance. While showing a bit of a sense of humor from Goldsmith (or Spielberg; the two collaborated so closely on the music for the project that it could be attributed to one or both), the laughing voices at the end are an extremely effective method of ending the score on a sour note without resorting to typical surprise tactics. The subsequent sequel score by Goldsmith a few years later would only carry over "Carol Anne's Theme" and explore a more menacing, male-chorus variant on the representation of evil. Other singular elements in the score deserve mentioning. Throughout the recording, and most evident in the latter half of "Rebirth," Goldsmith utilizes the dry slashing of a cymbal in a fashion that almost resembles the passing of an electric shock. Goldsmith makes very little use of synthesizers in Poltergeist, but two distinct aspects of their contribution make themselves known immediately. In the first ten seconds of the score, Goldsmith offers the descending, low range effect that appears throughout the score for the sake of mystery, as well as the tingling, extremely high range keyboarded accent that usually accompanies it. As source material, Goldsmith also recorded the Star Spangled Banner to accompany the television stations' conclusion of broadcasting for the night, an integral aspect of the film. Overall, Goldsmith's score is horror in its most classic and intelligent form. Whether or not you can enjoy its latter half depends on your ability to appreciate the short bursts of harmony amongst the demonic blasts of fright. The original LP release of Poltergeist heavily favored the action material, with 38 minutes of music rearranged wildly out of film order. In 1997, Rhino and Turner finally gave Poltergeist a CD release, and it's one of those rare occasions when a label treats an unreleased score so well that no subsequent release has been necessary. Rhino expanded the running time to 68 minutes, placing the music in film order and presenting much of the softer music from earlier in the film. Interestingly, most of this material, including an expanded rendition of "Carol Anne's Theme" in "The Tree," was removed from the film by Spielberg. Given how closely the composer and producer worked on Poltergeist, these outtakes' displacement from the film was a collaborative decision, and some of the problems related to the recordings' applicability to the film related to the fact that Goldsmith had to record the music before the special effects sequences were shot. As such, the composer was sometimes left approximating the synchronization points of the film. Still, any fan of Goldsmith will want to seek the Poltergeist album for his or her collection, though even the mass-produced Rhino release has fallen out of print after ten years on the market. ****
* previously unreleased (compared to the LP record) ** contains previously unreleased material (compared to the LP record) *** public domain/previously unreleased (compared to the LP record) # outtakes/previously unreleased (compared to the LP record)
The insert contains notes about the film and score that are in great depth, including the standard statement from Spielberg. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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