tells us the
story of four women who aren't necessary bad, but badly
underappreciated. This group of four prostitutes in the unsavory town of
Echo City, Colorado is forced to band together to escape local religious
fanatics and a hangman's noose after one of them justifiably shoots an
unreasonable customer. Cody, Anita, Eileen, and Lilly traverse the
plains to the Mexican border in Texas, where their uncanny knowledge of
shooting and explosives comes in handy when it comes time to retrieve
money and honor stolen from them by other outlaws. They also seem to
have the knack for riding horses without upsetting their nicely arranged
hair, putting the film into perspective for any confused soul who might
have happened across this amusing spectacle. The babes in the tale are
portrayed by a well-known lot of actresses who seem at home in more
urban settings (Madeleine Stowe, Mary Stuart Masterson, Drew Barrymore,
and Andie MacDowell), perhaps adding to the film's charm but also
dooming any serious intent it may have had. The problem with
turned out to be the attempt by the filmmakers to actually
make a serious film of the script, a point of contention that led to the
original director being fired three weeks into filming and extensive
re-writes to the story shortly thereafter. One area in which
authenticity was thrown out the window in favor of grandiose fun can be
heard in composer Jerry Goldsmith's score for the film. Replacement
director Jonathan Kaplan had just worked with the composer on the
relatively unknown segregation drama
, a score that was
partially removed from the final film and replaced with the piano music
of keyboardist and comparative novice Bill Payne. The same problem would
not plague
, however, with Goldsmith's score bursting to
the forefront in many parts of the movie's final mix.
Instead of treating the project like one of the numerous
ridiculous comedies that Goldsmith became involved with in the early
1990's, he seems to have taken a very serious approach to
Bad
Girls, infusing just a pinch of his more contemporary comedy writing
with a revised version of his 1960's Western mode. If a lighthearted
interpretation of the
Extreme Prejudice score could exist, then
Bad Girls would be its best evidence. Despite its resurgence as a
guilty pleasure for the composer's collectors many years after its
release,
Bad Girls was not greeted with that level of enthusiasm
at the time, even though it was one of few sidesteps into the Western
genre for Goldsmith in his last two decades of writing (and ultimately
proved to be his final venture into that genre). Among a few mainstream
critics' problems with the film in 1994 (and the reviews were indeed
scathing, almost to a humiliating degree) was Goldsmith's arguably
overdone score, stretching the drama to unmanageable levels while the
dialogue and acting was tugging from the opposite emotional direction.
Some film music critics mentioned that the score lacked enough of a
feminine element. Indeed, Goldsmith tackled the project with
straight-laced action in mind, although he does temper the otherwise
masculine effort with emotionally heartening, keyboarded and soft guitar
performances of the title theme. That theme, despite seemingly a little
clumsy in its movements at times, is clearly the main attraction in
Bad Girls, its progressions and rollicking supporting rhythms
often recalling
Rio Conchos and referencing the composer's many
trademark Western techniques from an era long gone. The shorter rips of
the theme seem to share unintentional similarities with John Barry's
Zulu, though the fuller, more tender moments of the theme's
performances have a more unique structure (led by the usual touching
bridge sequence heard in many Goldsmith works of the early 1990's)
played with the woodwind sensibilities of
Rudy's equivalent
moments.
The rhythmic motif introduced early in "The Hanging" is
the most engaging idea in
Bad Girls, often prefacing the major
action sequences with a vintage sense of momentum. While some Goldsmith
fans may rejoice in this bouncing rhythm and the retro-Western theme in
full brass that is heard at least half a dozen times in the film, the
reflective and enjoyable acoustic guitar and keyboard performances of
that theme which occupy a far greater portion of the score are closer to
the heart of the picture. A growling six-note phrase represents the evil
outlaws that kidnap, rape, steal from, and otherwise harass the women
until their predictable demise, and in this representation, Goldsmith
mostly maintains the identity with percussive and electronic techniques
that are a bit over-utilized, underdeveloped, and tedious after a while.
The minimal comedy writing is held to "Jail Break," a cue that rolls
with a honky-tonk style piano, wood blocks, and triangle renditions of
the main action rhythm. Instrumentally, the score is more diverse than
it may initially seem. Marimbas and bongo drums for the Mexican locale
join percussion typical to the genre, though it's Goldsmith's
application of electronics as part of the orchestral ensemble that
really gives the score its contemporary connections. Goldsmith's usual
synthetic keyboarding is evident throughout
Bad Girls, the
rhythmic base-thumping effects of the villains (heard first in "Bank
Job") developed from
Extreme Prejudice and a clear foreshadowing
of the later
Star Trek films. Orchestrally, the percussion
section rips off some wild drum sequences that hark back to the days of
The Wind and the Lion, though the instrumentation sounds
consistent (along with a motif or two in "Bank Job") to his concurrent
music for
The Shadow. Overall,
Bad Girls is an airy and
enjoyable, if not misplaced score, and its reception has softened
considerably with fans over the years. When it revealed itself as
Goldsmith's final Western score, it became a bittersweet bridge between
his classics of the genre and his typical, pleasantly inoffensive
character scores of the early 1990's.
For die-hard Goldsmith collectors, an easy case could
be made that
Bad Girls is a four-star score, though when heard in
its full duration, you get the sense that it's also a highly redundant
one that compartmentalizes its representations far too distinctly for it
to be considered for very long from an intellectual standpoint. On
album, it was long out of print after its commercial Fox Records CD of
1994 disappeared, though as part of its rewarding series of Goldsmith
releases in 2011, La-La Land Records expanded and remastered it for a
3,000-copy run. The sound quality of the latter product does more
clearly reveal the performances by the acoustic guitar and harp when
they provide quiet ostinatos in support of the "character theme"
renditions of the main identity. The extra 21 minutes of music confirms
the score's somewhat redundant and predictable applications of its main
ideas, but with a few notable exceptions. For enthusiasts of the score,
there are two full Western-styled primary theme statements over tingling
percussive rhythms that are definitely worth your time ("Which Way?" and
"Keep Moving"). Shorter but perhaps of equal interest is the brief
opening to "River Crossing." The most lengthy cues added to the
presentation are "Return to the Fold," a conversation piece that very
quietly rotates between the softest variants of the themes, and
"Rescued," which opens with a promising crescendo but fades into several
minutes of uninteresting exploration of the villains' material. Far more
intriguing treatment of these ideas explodes for the duration of "The
Gang/The Posse." A waltz-rhythm version of the main theme in "The
Pleasure of Your Company" is cute but inconsequential, while "Welcome to
My Home" largely reprises the tender opening cue, "The John." For those
who maintain great affection for
Bad Girls, the 2011 expanded
album will provide more than enough short nuggets and improvement in
sound quality to merit a purchase, though if you've always considered
the score to be mundane outside of its full ensemble action highlights,
then don't expect the longer presentation to move your opinion of the
music far in either direction. In the end,
Bad Girls is a likable
collection of Goldsmith trademarks with no really worthy fresh
developments.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.22
(in 138 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.25
(in 154,606 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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