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| Poledouris |
Conan the Destroyer: (Basil Poledouris) With the
stunning success of John Milius'
Conan the Barbarian two years
earlier, a sequel featuring Conan once again in Robert E. Howard's
Hyborean age was inevitable. Not returning for the successor, though,
was the same brutally classic vision of the fictional age that Milius
and Oliver Stone and had created in the first film, seeking to replace
an "R" rating with a "PG" alternative. Some will argue that follow-up
director Richard Fleischer, a veteran filmmaker in his own right, built
a spin-off of the Hyborean age in the sequel film, exploring a different
avenue that developed other aspects of Conan's character and his
surroundings. Others insist that
Conan the Destroyer was a
monumental failure because it lost the classic realism, solitude, and
weight that made the first film so enticing. The majority of audiences
agreed with the latter opinion, tired of Conan and exhausted by the
1980's bombardment of fantasy adventure films set in ancient times.
Substantial difficulties finalizing a script for
Conan the
Destroyer caused immense dissatisfaction across the board, including
with the ascendant Arnold Schwarzenegger, who consequently refused to
return to the franchise for a planned third entry. Other than the
executive production team, only three elements returned for the sequel:
actors Schwarzenegger and Mako and composer Basil Poledouris. Despite
early ideas of utilizing a pop/rock score for the first film, Poledouris
had beaten the odds and produced one of the finest pre-historic
orchestral scores in the history of cinema. Decades later,
Conan the
Barbarian still stands as perhaps the most outstanding achievement
of Poledouris' career, and a concert of music from that score
represented the composer's final public appearance shortly before his
death in 2006. Thus, the return of his musical tone for
Conan the
Destroyer was an immediate necessity. In the interim, he had written
less ballsy, more traditionally fantasy-oriented concept music for
Universal Studios' live action production, "The Adventures of Conan: A
Sword and Sorcery Spectacular," in 1983, a preview of the path away from
the gravity of
Conan the Barbarian in its lesser cinematic
sibling.
Poledouris was put at a tremendous disadvantage with
Conan the Destroyer, contending with not only the abandonment of
the scope and attitude that made the first score a classic but also
forced to write for a smaller, inferior orchestra with no chorus. His
resulting score, relying at times upon synthetic sweeteners, suffers
from some of the same exhaustion that hindered the film even though the
composer once again attempted to recreate a sound for ancient times that
did not follow any of the rhythmic or lyrical rules of modern music. His
work reflects the director's lighter, more humorous take on the series
and offers a sound that is far less weighty in its dramatic appeal.
Because of this shifted emphasis, the score for
Conan the
Destroyer moves with greater agility on its feet while also
utilizing a less domineering thematic presence. Most of the major themes
from the first film do make cameo appearances in the sequel, though
Poledouris usually alters their structures or only states them in
fragments. Thus, listeners hoping for straight forward and lengthy
recapitulations of the previously established themes will be
disappointed. Likewise, Poledouris' three or four new motifs for the
score are not as singularly memorable and are often manipulations of
previous ideas in their foundations. Returning is the opening Crom theme
from the first film, though its primary statement at the outset of the
sequel was absent from the 1992 album release. Also representing the
universe of Conan are portions of the underlying rhythms and secondary
phrases of the "Riders of Doom" cue that often accompanies movement on
horseback, as heard in "Elite Guard Attacks" and "Dream Quest," among
others. Conan's own theme, originally from "Riddle of Steel," is less
utilized, unfortunately, though a mutation of its more lyrical
progressions does give the character a somewhat fresh identity for the
sequel. The "Valeria is Hot" and "Valeria Remembered" cues do offer
hearty performances of the love theme from
Conan the Barbarian,
but much of this material was cut from the film. The slow, pounding
theme for the religious mass at Thulsa Doom's mountain in the first film
makes an oddly out of place, ill-advised appearance in "Approach to
Shadizaar" (also known as just "Shadizaar"). The rollicking rhythms from
"The Orgy" return awkwardly in "Dagoth Ceremony" while the "Wheel of
Pain" cue is reworked rather nicely with new percussive layering in
"Door Lift."
Poledouris had originally intended to score
Conan the
Destroyer with a fair amount of material from the prior movie, and
despite realizing that this approach was untenable due to the shifted
personality of the second film, he still managed to fill time with these
existing themes. Sorely missing from the sequel, however, is the
vivacious civilization theme, which is odd given Conan's return to the
same locations (and meeting the same camel of punching fame) in the
sequel. The two most prominent new themes in
Conan the Destroyer
are adequately summarized in "Elite Guard Attacks" and "Crystal Palace."
Especially of note is the Western-styled idea foreshadowing
Cherry
2000 at 4:00 into the latter cue. The action-packed confrontation
and battle music in these cues exists at nearly the same level as
Poledouris' previous effort. He also transforms the overarching Crom
theme for the franchise into an effective dueling motif that culminates
into a major force in the massive "Conan & Bombaata Battle," a cue that
also makes strong use of the sequel score's rhythmic fighting motif. A
rhythmic, rising minor-third motif in "Crystal Palace" is responsible
for reflecting the lumbering movements of the story's main, adversarial
beast. The highly focused theme for the evil queen and her guards
resides in "Elite Guard Attacks" and is a spin-off of the processional
music from the prior score. While some listeners consider the primary
theme of
Conan the Destroyer to be the mutation of the titular
character's more lyrical passages from the first score, there really
isn't much unique identity to this idea in the sequel to qualify it as
truly new outside of its seldom applied interlude sequence. More
intriguing is the use of Poleoduris' uplifting theme for Conan from the
1983 "The Adventures of Conan: A Sword and Sorcery Spectacular"
soundtrack in "Conan the Destroyer," a cue also showcasing this score's
use of harpsichord tones. The composer assembled his major new ideas and
sprinkled them into his "Main Title" and "End Credits" cues, but these
moments were butchered in the film and not provided on the original
soundtrack album. Because these cues and several other major sequences
were rearranged, layered with source material, or simply left unscored
in the final cut of the movie, the narrative of this score suffers
significantly. If not for associations with themes from the prior work,
in fact, this one would have no functioning narrative whatsoever. Its
highlights thus serve mostly as a fragmented addendum to the preceding
classic.
The final insult to the
Conan the Destroyer
score is the incredibly poor quality of the Rome performance and the
muffled recording that accompanied its execution, long a source of great
disdain for the composer. The performances by the "Unione Musicisti di
Roma" orchestra are truly hideous in parts, with the horns often missing
key notes entirely during important sequences. The vital "Main Title"
and "Chamber of Mirrors" cues contain several moments that will induce
wincing. Much of the brutality inherent in the original score's
recording is lost in this flimsy entry, despite valiant efforts by some
of the bass woodwind players to create the same resonating depth. The
increasingly prevalent light and festive percussion, despite being
limited by budgetary reasons, offers tingling metallic sounds with equal
effectiveness and is a highlight, but the remainder of the orchestra's
sections seem incredibly unpolished and, perhaps more disturbing,
passionless. The troublesome issues relating to the severe performance
and recording problems with
Conan the Destroyer were in part
related to the fact that the composer wrote the sequel score in the same
demanding fashion as
Conan the Barbarian, with even more rowdy,
abnormal meters abounding, so the flaws stand out very obviously. Also
frustrating is an extremely dated sound due to poor recording
technology, with an even more archival, muted ambience exhibited in
several key cues. So dry is the soundscape that the cymbal crashes sound
as though they've been reduced to children's size. Thus, you have a
decently strong composition nearly ruined by limited orchestrations and
unsavory post-production due to budget and unqualified performers. While
there was an attempt to shift the personality further from the grandiose
nature of its predecessor, the result is not truly effective in
addressing any of the fantasy or adventure genre offshoots despite some
promising ideas throughout. The original album for
Conan the
Destroyer went out of print just like the Varèse Sarabande
companion for
Conan the Barbarian, also released in 1992. In this
case time, however, the album could be missed without much sense of loss
for even an avid Poledouris collector. A good alternative for those
unsatisfied with this score is the "The Adventures of Conan: A Sword and
Sorcery Spectacular" recording from 1983, which foreshadows several
ideas explored in
Conan the Destroyer but with arguably superior
performances; although that CD was targeted at film music collectors, it
remained reasonably available for decades.
In 2011, Prometheus Records released the continued
efforts of producer James Fitzpatrick to breathe new life into
Poledouris' music from the Hyborean age, resulting in re-recordings of
both
Conan the Destroyer and "The Adventures of Conan: A Sword
and Sorcery Spectacular" together by the City of Prague Philharmonic in
similar fashion to that team's successful presentation of
Conan the
Barbarian the prior year. While these sequel scores are not as
essential for a casual collector,
Conan the Destroyer has long
suffered in its original form and the re-recording is surprisingly
impressive. Hearing the complete score orchestrated as it was intended,
with all live players instead of synthetic backing in places and in
superior digital sound, is certainly a pleasure. On the downside, its
mix is not as resounding as that of the
Conan the Barbarian
re-recording, with far less reverb for the fantasy element, and the
fuller presentation does expose the fact that
Conan the Destroyer
is still a work heavily reliant upon passages from its predecessor. The
re-recording of the 1983 live-action show's score is perhaps the best,
hidden attraction on the product, though the absence of the immense
narration present with the original recording is a detriment. It took
until 2022 before a longer album of the original recording for
Conan
the Destroyer became available, treated about as well as possible by
Intrada Records. The 2-CD set contains the score as written for the
film, a handful of alternate versions, and the original album's
rearrangements by Poledouris. The Intrada team manages to improve the
sound quality of the recording, but there's not much they could do about
the players' numerous flubs and the relative obscurity of the score's
new themes against the established favorites. Some of the new
compositional highlights, including the momentous "Chamber of Mirrors,"
will never escape the frustrating limitations of the recording. For this
reason, the 2022 Intrada product can be recommended for avid concept
enthusiasts, but the 2011 re-recording remains the most appealing option
overall. The presentations on the two albums contain the same music,
including the most important alternate takes, but the re-recording does
combine shorter cues into longer suites. No matter the album, however,
neither of these follow-up works can compete with the mastery of the
music for the original
Conan the Barbarian, a qualified classic
in the genre. Poledouris did not follow the Conan-spinoff character into
Red Sonja shortly thereafter, Ennio Morricone shifting the
concept's music even further from the immensity of the 1982 triumph.
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- Music as Written for the Film: ***
- Music as Heard on the 1992 Varèse Album: **
- Music as Heard on the 2011 Prometheus Album: ****
- Music as Heard on the 2022 Intrada Album: ***
- Overall: ***
| Bias Check: |
For Basil Poledouris reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.54
(in 35 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.29
(in 36,752 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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