Buy it... if even a bland combination of Jerry Goldsmith's trademark
instrumentation choices, recognizable motifs, and synthesized rhythms can
sustain your interest.
Avoid it... if you expect Goldsmith to raise a little hell when a
warlock is trying to hasten the end of the world.
Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Goldsmith
Warlock: (Jerry Goldsmith) Movies about the son of
Satan traveling through time to spur the end of the world can't be all that
bad, although Warlock certainly tried. From the makers of the
Friday the 13th series, Warlock also spawned a couple of
sequels, but not ones that anybody would really want to remember. In this
original, actor Julian Sands is the perverse warlock pursued by a
supernatural hunter played by B-film equal Richard E. Grant, and the journey
towards the doom of mankind begins in 17th Boston and eventually plagues
modern-day Los Angeles. Typical horror cliches, including finger chopping,
tongue biting, and a certain flair for sexual deviation, occupy a rather
lousy script that pulls elements without much adaptation from The
Terminator and Highlander. Everything about Warlock is
saturated with 1980's slapstick style, including its cheesy special effects
and its original score. Composer Jerry Goldsmith spent the late 1980's
wandering between hopelessly failing projects, including a rejected work.
His experimentation with electronic textures in the decade had led him along
a path to both his strongest and weakest works of the modern era, and
Warlock came at the same time as his least interesting electronic
effort, Criminal Law. But as heard in the also concurrent
Leviathan and Star Trek V, Goldsmith was still utilizing
electronics in his scores to great ends when he built the scores on a solid
orchestral base. On the surface, Warlock would seem like a project
for which Goldsmith could pull out some of his cheesy, over-the-top fun.
Such music in The 'Burbs and Gremlins 2 has proven to stand
very well against the test of time, at least in the composer's creativity
department. Even the Warlock sequel score by Mark McKenzie would
exhibit some of that kind of unabashed fun. Goldsmith, however, chose
instead to write a very uninspired and ultimately bland score for the
original film.
Your ability to enjoy Warlock will depend on how
much you can sustain your interest on secondary "Goldsmith-isms"...
instrumentation choices, recognizable motifs, and rhythms that carry over
from the weaker sections of the composer's previous works. Goldsmith
introduces a flimsy, though easily adaptable theme in the opening cue and
works it well into both his suspenseful conversation cues as well as the
action, but the construct is so similar to a combination of motifs from
Under Fire and Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend that its end
result is to simply remind you of better renditions of that theme in other
scores. Sound effects from Legend, pipe-like sounds from Under
Fire, keyboarded synth from Leviathan and harsh brass tones from
Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend are all employed in Warlock,
along with heavy roles for the xylophone and drum machine. Some Goldsmith
collectors will point to the four or five later cues in the score as
evidence of worthy action material for the composer, and yet the rhythmic
presentation of the action was so much better realized in Rambo III
at the time (with a compelling theme as well) that Warlock remains a
collection of washed up sounds even in its most active moments. The opening
and closing cues are the most disappointing on the score, with Goldsmith's
electronics clunky in execution as they regurgitate ideas from Under
Fire at frustratingly slow and awkward tempos. It's hard to figure what
Goldsmith was thinking for these performances, because the theme as
performed doesn't serve to enhance any terror, science fiction, biblical
importance, or even the romantic element involved with the sophistication of
language used between the two main characters (a highlight of the film). No
secondary theme for the artificially-rapidly aging female star of the film
is provided either. Overall, it's difficult to sense that Goldsmith had any
enthusiasm for this score at all. As collectors of the composer know, he has
written monumental music for films about the devil and the end of the world,
and Warlock, even more so than the others, deserved a score that
could shake the walls with impending doom. Muted sound quality on the
identical Intrada and Silva releases (lengthy ones for the time) is also a
detraction. **
