> Intro:
> Well, after finishing my James Horner journey of exploring his lesser
> discussed works last year... I'm finally getting around to tackling Basil
> Poledouris like I promised, many... many, months ago.  As I'm sure
> others on the Scoreboard can sympathize with, I've mostly only heard The
> Big Titles from Poledouris (Conan 1 & 2, Starship
> Troopers, Robocop, The Hunt for Red October, Flesh +
> Blood, Les Miserables (1998, The Blue Lagoon) ) which
> I've been meaning to expand upon for years but either never put aside the
> time or couldn't find many on YouTube. Thankfully, there's now several
> titles on YouTube legitimately (and some not... which I still used. Shhh!)
> so the timing seemed right to finally dig into the mans larger catalogue
> of works.
> A few housekeeping things to address first, though. Poledouris did a lot
> of work for intentional films and TV before gaining mainstream Hollywood
> attention, of which I will not be covering any of those earliest
> endeavors. Instead this journey will start with Big Wednesday
> (1978) and continue til his final scores. I did listen to a Jaws
> knockoff he scored, Tintorora (1977), and it's nigh unlistenable
> for most of the runtime. Likewise I'll be skipping over scores I've
> already heard on this quest which mostly means the Big Names I mentioned
> earlier. That said, there's some sequel scores to films I've already
> seen/heard that will be covered so... there's that. Oh, and finally...
> there is no set schedule for this. I'm *hoping* to get a new installment
> out each week (3 scores covered in each), but I make no promises. This
> will be finished by the end of the year, though!!
> Alright, now with all of that out of the way how about we begin, shall we?
> -------------------
> Big Wednesday (1978)
> A “coming of age buddy sports comedy-drama” (according to Wikipedia) about
> a trio of friends dealing with life and the Vietnam War in the 1960’s
> while also connecting through their love of surfing, Big Wednesday
> was a massive passion project for director/co-writer John Milius (The
> Wind and the Lion, Conan the Barbarian, Red Dawn) that
> proved to be a box office disaster. Rather savagely torn apart by critics
> at the time, the film seems to have been largely forgotten by most outside
> of a minor footnote in Milius’ career… and also the mainstream jumping off
> point for a young composer friend of the director named Basil
> Poledouris.
> Musically Big Wednesday is a drama score very much in the style of
> Jerry Goldsmith or John Barry from the time with two central themes
> anchoring everything (both presented in the opening track) with the
> primary theme turned into the wistful folk song “Only Good Times”
> for the end credits. Within Poledouris’s career, this is less overtly
> romantic than The Blue Lagoon yet at times not too far away from
> what he would write a decade later for Lonesome Dove… minus the
> more overt Western mannerisms. The end result is a highly amiable score
> that is occasionally interrupted by more intense passages, particularly in
> the final third for the “big wave” sequences including a sub-theme fanfare
> in “The Challenge/Big Wednesday Montage” that is apparently lifted
> from whatever Classical piece Horner used for the Main theme in
> Krull (1983). On a slightly less positive note is a few cues that
> feel jarringly out of place on the album though probably fit whatever
> scene within the film just fine, namely the militaristic percussion cue
> “Preparation March”, the funky Rock infused “Liquid Dreams”
> and the darkly comedic song “Crumpled Car”.
> Despite the above mentioned issues, Big Wednesday largely works as
> a wistful character drama score that contains plenty of small moments that
> foreshadow Poledouris’s future scoring triumphs. Apparently the only album
> available is an early FSM release, which is what I used on YouTube, that
> contains the whole score plus songs and several alternate takes. The sound
> quality is decent though very “vintage”, so listener beware. Overall I’d
> recommend giving Big Wednesday a listen if one is a fan of the
> composer and would like to hear his first Hollywood effort… though I’m not
> sure it’s good enough to warrant tracking down the OOP CD on the
> secondhand market.
> SCORE:
> 3 1/2 out of 5
>
———————
> Fire on the Mountain (1981)
>
And here’s the first entry in this journey that has a
> pathetically minimal Wikipedia entry. Fire on the Mountain (not to
> be confused with the 90’s Sci-Fi/psychological thriller Fire in the
> Sky) is a TV film that’s based on the 1962 novel of the same name by
> Edward Abbey about a New Mexico rancher who fights back against the United
> States Air Force when his land is going to be seized for making a new
> bombing range. Directed by Donald Wrye (who made a career out of TV movies
> and apparently a feature film about ice skating called Ice Castles)
> and starring Buddy Ebsen and Ron (Ronny) Howard, the film aired on NBC in
> Nov. 1981 and was apparently nominated (but did not win) an Emmy for
> “Outstanding Sound Editing”.
> That’s nice and all… but what about the score?
> Well, the score is very short at about 20 minutes or so with Poledouris
> largely taking an introspective drama approach with minor Western
> trappings, most notably in the opening track “The Ride” which also
> introduces the Main Theme. As one might imagine, Fire… plays out
> like an early run for the composer’s later Lonesome Dove with a
> dash of the tonal melancholy of Big Wednesday thrown in for good
> measure. This is a largely “theme and variation” endeavor which Poledouris
> does what he can with but it ultimately comes off as frustratingly
> repetitive. There’s only so much a man can do with a melancholic theme in
> an intrinsically melancholic film.
That said, Poledouris’
> orchestrations are rather nice mixing a (very) small ensemble with
> woodwind, violin, harp and acoustic guitar solos that gives the work a bit
> more body and sonic variety.
> That said, this is probably a one-off for most people though I’d still
> give it a minor recommendation simply for the lovely theme and hearing
> Poledouris toying with styles he’d perfect in later projects.
>
> SCORE:
>
2 1/2 out of 5
>
———————
>
A Whale for the Killing (1981)
>
With a title like that, it’s either based on a book (probably
> Hemingway) or some real-life event. In this case, it’s a bit of
> both.
> Loosely based on a true story told by environmentalist Farley Mowat in a
> 1972 book of the same name, the film tells the tale of a female humpback
> whale that is stranded, hunted and tortured by a fisherman off the coast
> of Newfoundland while a visitor tries to save the marine mammals life.
> Partly shot on location and featuring a top tier production including
> director Richard T. Heffron (The Rockford Files, North &
> South (1985 only), Futureworld), screenwriter Lionel Chetwynd
> (The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz) and starring Peter Strauss,
> Dee Wallace and Richard Widmark (guess who plays the fisherman?), the film
> received two Emmy nominations and was apparently well received. I must
> admit out of the production credits the one thing that caught my attention
> and that I find probably far too funny is that this whole endeavor was
> funded by… Hugh Hefner under his Playboy Productions label.
>
Musically, this is far more inline with Poledouris’ feature
> film work combining orchestra and synthesizers to craft a romantically
> charged adventure-drama score. The opening track (“Main Title”)
> immediately sets the stage with a rolling primary theme on strings with a
> pulsing synth motif as counterpoint which is given a far more intense and
> darker variation in the following “The Whalers” with tolling chimes
> for added dramatic emphasis and a brief minor key four-note motif at the
> end. The rest of the score follows these two themes while Poledouris
> crafts a far more nuanced soundscape mixing the romanticism of Blue
> Lagoon with the weightier dramatic writing that would come to define
> Conan and Flesh + Blood including the Medieval-esque chord
> progressions (look no further than “Cease Fire Shanty” which could
> easily be from F+B). While the ensemble Poledouris is working with is
> clearly still limited in size (some of the percussion is trying their
> best, but woefully inadequate), the sheer scope of what the composer is
> attempting to get across is far beyond the small scale Fire on the
> Mountain and feels truly “cinematic”.
>
Outside of the limited abilities of the ensemble and some
> dated synth effects, A Whale for the Killing is a surprisingly good
> offering from Poledouris that I feel more people should experience.
> Admittedly this is coming from someone who is just now starting to dig
> into the mans catalogue outside of the “big titles”, but this really is a
> great score that clearly has early murmurings of Conan in its DNA.
> If the idea of “seafaring music that combines Conan with Blue
> Lagoon” doesn’t get your blood up, I honestly don’t know what to say
> to you. As I write this I also realize maybe this actually a much loved
> Poledouris score amongst fans that’s considered a “deep cut”… heck, I
> apparently misspoke in my James Horner Journey about Red Heat being
> a forgotten film.
>
Anyway, the score for Whale for a Killing is attached as a
> “bonus” to the album featuring the score to the 1992 film Wind
> (which I’ll get to later in this series) and is well worth checking out.
> Seems to be available on all major streaming platforms, so there’s no
> reason not to.
>
SCORE:
>
4/5
Awesome. A couple years back I decided to digger deeper into some of Poledouris' music, since Like you I was primarily familiar with only his bigger assignments. Although not as extensive as your journey, it was enough to bump him into my top 10 favorite film score composers. I certainly discovered a lot of jems during that period, and I look forward to reading your thoughts on some of them later on in this journey.
I can't say I'm familiar with the 3 scores above, but I enjoyed reading your reviews about them.
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