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| Horner |
Battle Beyond the Stars: (James Horner) The New
World Pictures studio headed by Roger Corman was at the height of its
ambitions in 1980, determined to not just fill the screen with B-rate
science fiction and horror schlock but actually compete with the major
blockbuster franchises already established in cinema at the time.
Undoubtedly,
Battle Beyond the Stars was a response to the space
opera phenomenon caused by
Star Wars, and its plot involves a
colorful band of mercenaries hired to protect a distant farming colony
from nasty aliens. The character-driven picture features a dose of
Corman's usual flesh on display, of course, though the special effects
of starship combat were akin to television's
Battlestar Galactica
in their general design. Most of the movies that came out of Corman's
troop were undeniably trashy, but that group did include several big
names that would go on to mainstream greatness, including Ron Howard and
James Cameron. Both directors eventually used the services of composer
James Horner, who himself was a Corman regular during the initial years
of his career during which he had to write personal checks to his
musicians. Horner was fresh out of his doctorate education in music
composition and theory when he landed the position with Corman, making
his story initially very similar to Cliff Eidelman's, especially with
their overlapping involvement with the "Star Trek" franchise. His score
for
Battle Beyond the Stars was among the later in the rather
impersonal collaboration, and it had far more of a lasting impact on the
direction of the composer's career than other Corman entries. For
Horner's collectors, it's a bit strange to go back and revisit
Battle
Beyond the Stars, if only because it came at a time during which not
one listener could compare the style of the music to a previous Horner
score. Ironically, though, being the first entry in an illustrious
career doesn't automatically mean there isn't some borrowing to be
heard.
Horner's writing has always been a hotbed of controversy
regarding his tendency to gain inspiration from himself and multitudes
of others, though
Battle Beyond the Stars was a case of temp
track emulation of the highest order. Despite this obvious reality, the
score directly caused Horner's employment on
Star Trek II: The Wrath
of Khan, and an acquaintance with
Battle Beyond the Stars art
director James Cameron that may have likely led to his troublesome
assignment on
Aliens. Being the young, impressionable composer at
the age of 26 in 1980, Horner freely admits that he was strongly
influenced by the works of other writers when assembling
Battle
Beyond the Stars. In interviews conducted early in the decade,
Horner went so far as to admit that Jerry Goldsmith was an enormous
influence for him in the earliest days (not to mention some unsavory
rumors about Horner's involvement with Goldsmith's daughter), explaining
some of the overlaps in electronic experimentation with the orchestra
and other various rhythmic similarities. He could also provide several
names of classical composers whose motifs were interesting to him then
(and for many years to come). Thus, at a time when Horner was too young
to rip off his own material, he took the opportunity to quote some
recent favorites. In the case of
Battle Beyond the Stars, Corman
was looking for music similar if not identical to Jerry Goldsmith's
Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and it was ironically Horner's
ability to so well incorporate that material into his own that he got
noticed. As one must recall, the early 1980's were the time when space
fantasies and sword and sorcery films were at their height, with
Goldsmith and John Williams re-establishing the power of the full
orchestra in film music. Corman wanted to take advantage of that sound
but on a fraction of the budget. Thus, Horner was given only 62
orchestral players with which to simulate the adventurous sound of the
London Symphony Orchestra. What surprised everyone is the plain fact
that, with performer exuberance and a bevy of wonderfully liberal reverb
on the album mix, he succeeded.
For
Battle Beyond the Stars, Horner composed a
spirited main theme, a longing interlude for romance, a Western-styled
character subtheme, and a variety of other minor motifs, all of which
already exhibiting traits of the composer's style that would dominate
his work in the first half of the 1980's. In the end, though, what
Horner wrote for the film was simply too complex for the musicians to
perform. The composition is superb, but the performance, while inspiring
in the enthusiasm drawn from the players by David Newman's conducting,
is sometimes badly lacking in the brass section. An entire series of
brass performances at 3:40 into "Epilogue/End Title," for instance, is
badly mangled. And yet, there's something about the performance mistakes
that enhance the Corman B-rate film atmosphere; it fits snugly with the
cheesy costumes and sets, and it is no coincidence that the director
used Horner's music for the film in countless of his other similarly
poor flicks. In retrospect, the music for
Battle Beyond the Stars
is a riot, one of nearly smirk-inducing fun many decades later. To a
distracting extent, the references to Goldsmith's
Star Trek: The
Motion Picture are aplenty in
Battle Beyond the Stars, with
the distinctive Blaster Beam in the two scores performed by the same
musician. The uniquely crisp, metallic edge that no modern synthesizer
can imitate is unmistakably joined by familiar rhythms and counterpoint
techniques taken directly from the Goldsmith classic. The entire cue
"The Battle Begins" (and "Gelt's Kill") pays tribute to the opening
Klingon sequence in Goldsmith's score, with whole motifs from the
Blaster Beam and other percussion providing a cheap and light-hearted
but entertaining imitation. You'll easily recognize the brass Klingon
theme altered for use here, as well as the propulsive rhythmic crescendo
that exists late in the equivalent battle cues for both scores. The
start of "Love Theme" is an even more shameless rip, using woodwinds and
piano to affectionately reflect Goldsmith's score with no alteration.
Ironically, when Horner was actually hired to work in the "Star Trek"
franchise and tasked with writing his own Klingon music, he
disappointingly never produced anything as similar to Goldsmith's famous
Klingon material as what you hear in this work.
In a general sense, it's also intriguing to hear, even
beyond all of these obvious influences, the process of Horner testing
out the original motifs and ideas in
Battle Beyond the Stars that
would later become staples of his career. In and around all the obvious
borrowings from Goldsmith's
Star Trek: The Motion Picture,
Alien, and even
A Patch of Blue are the fledgling ideas
that would later be fleshed out in
Star Trek II: The Wrath of
Khan,
Aliens,
Cocoon, and even
Willow. Horner's
own eventual Klingon theme in
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
is foreshadowed wholesale here. The raw enthusiasm written into this
score is something that slowly tapered off as Horner matured, however,
leaving more classically complex compositions that rarely matched the
brutish excitement heard in this 1980 work. This unique character is in
part why listeners held on to their LP records of
Battle Beyond the
Stars for two decades. It's an extremely engaging score, even with
all of its performance and recording flaws. Aside from the fanfares,
look for highlights in the softer cues like "Nanelia and Shad," which
features some alluring translations of the score's themes by an oboe
over harp and strings. In 2001, the score finally made the transition to
CD courtesy of the science-fiction schlock label GNP Crescendo, which
combined its contents with the composer's concurrent
Humanoids from
the Deep on one product, another Horner collaboration with Corman.
While
Humanoids from the Deep offers an intellectually intriguing
glimpse at the composer's horror methodology, it obviously lacks the
spunk and personality of
Battle Beyond the Stars. The performance
is significantly better in the lesser work, but the horror genre was not
as exciting for Horner as the realm of space. Despite slashing about for
a film with massive, evil, mutated fish pursuing barely clothed women
with giant boobs, the music for
Humanoids from the Deep just
couldn't compete. It is a score of function rather than inspiration, and
it remains nothing more than a footnote in Horner's career. Sound
quality was always a problem with these scores, and while
Humanoids
from the Deep initially had better clarity than
Battle Beyond the
Stars, both were afforded superior sound on the 2001 release than
either the LPs or the bootlegs that had represented them in the
1990's.
The long awaited and readily available 2001 GNP
Crescendo product made the bootlegs of these early Horner scores
completely obsolete, though the folding of the label shortly thereafter
didn't help collectors' prospects. The sound quality in the
Battle
Beyond the Stars section varies greatly from cue to cue, with some
sequences muffled considerably while others are vibrant and impressive.
It largely depends on the volume of the individual cues. A 1,000-copy
2011 CD from BSX Records, essentially the GNP Crescendo label rebranded,
then presented
Battle Beyond the Stars alone with slightly
remastered sound. (The same label also pressed
Humanoids from the
Deep alone that year as well). Even here, there are brass artifacts
that distract in the later cues. That quickly sold-out CD did append
Alan Howarth's source music and extensive sound effects, as well as the
decent but not overwhelming City of Prague Philharmonic performance of
the main theme from many years prior and long released by Silva Screen.
The re-recording sometimes suffers from performance flubs itself, again
in the brass section, and its gain levels seem to have been pushed too
high for this release, yielding frustrating distortion and a tinny
sound. Those who already owned the 2001 album really had no need for the
2011 expansion, especially as Howarth's material is impossible to
reconcile out of context. In 2023, Intrada Records expanded the
presentation to a 2-CD set with the discovery of new and superior source
tapes. The additional material provided isn't particularly stellar, as
it tends to only more greatly expose the connections between this work
and those of Goldsmith, but it does provide a better chronological
narrative. The presence of low brass and Goldsmith-inspired echoplex
trumpet effects are improved on the film presentation, though Intrada
opted not to apply the LP mix's compensating reverb levels to the full
score. Listeners can still appreciate that fuller though slightly muted
sound, however, on a remastered LP emulation after the primary program
on that set. Some performance flubs, mainly on trumpets, were carefully
edited to diminish them. On any product, the exciting personality of
Battle Beyond the Stars can easily make the listener forget about
its age and subsequent performance and sound issues. For enthusiasts of
both Horner and Goldsmith, the score will be an enjoyable listening
experience as long as it isn't taken too seriously. You have to
appreciate it for what it is, an exhibition of Horner's youth and a
testing ground for ideas to be littered throughout his better-known
scores for a decade to come.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.15
(in 108 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.23
(in 203,383 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The inserts of all the albums include extensive notes about the film and
its music, often featuring excerpts from an old CinemaScore interview with Horner.
The track listing on the packaging of the 2011 BSX Records album erroneously adds
a 53rd track.
