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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Bad Girls (Jerry Goldsmith)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you wish to hear Jerry Goldsmith's last venture into
the Western genre, a pleasantly inoffensive merging of his 1960's style
for the frontier with his contemporary light keyboarding for character
dramas of the early 1990's.
Avoid it... if the score's fluffy, tender heart doesn't allow its rousing, rhythmically rollicking brass theme to maintain the level of grit and substance that you'd expect in this mostly non-comedic setting.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Bad Girls: (Jerry Goldsmith) From the dusty
streets of a stereotypical Old West town, Bad Girls 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 Bad
Girls 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 Love Field, 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 Bad Girls, 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. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
1994 Fox Album:
Total Time: 39:12
2011 La-La Land Album: Total Time: 60:13
* previously unreleased ** contains previously unreleased music
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert of the 1994 Fox album includes no extra information
at all; in fact, the interior of that insert is quite literally blank.
The 2011 La-La Land album's insert includes notes about the film and score.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Bad Girls are Copyright © 1994, 2011, Fox Records, La-La Land Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 6/1/98 and last updated 7/11/11. |
