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•	1992 Album

•	2022 Album

•	1992 Album

Collectors of the composer's work often hold a soft spot for Death Becomes Her because of its playfully fiendish behavior that represents his take on similar ideas John Williams explored for The Witches of Eastwick not to long before. Its best relation within Silvestri's own career, however, is The Witches in 2020. One of the most astonishing aspects of this music is how it exudes all the right basic personality traits and consists of a fantastic set of ingredients yet never achieves the larger-than-life fantasy element or truly attractive charm that a work like The Witches conveys. As such, the 1992 score is dripping with potential at every corner but is partially doomed by its lifeless Los Angeles performance. On paper, the work had immense prospects, but it somehow lost its zeal, opulence, and wonder in the recording process. In a technical sense, though, there's much to admire about Silvestri's approach, and for many listeners, that tact will be enough. The orchestral score tosses aside the composer's synthetics for the most part, though they play a role around the periphery. There isn't much hardcore action material in the work, either, but it's decent when present. For the demonic element, Silvestri ensures that the fiddle is the heart and soul of the score, pushing the main theme of the work to clever ends. Silvestri describes this theme as representing the Devil and thus the inherent evil associated in the tale. Naturally defined by that instrument and using a chopping string rhythm underneath, the main Devil theme is introduced immediately in "Main Title," its rhythm previewing the skittish 8-note phrases of the melody. The composer strikingly translates the theme into a playful jazz version in the cue's middle for comedy, a mode that never returns. The theme stomps lightly in "The Altar," recurs in identical form in the latter half of "Sempre Viva" and middle of "It's Alive," and toys around in the alternate recording for "Self Defense." It's conveyed much faster as the moment of realization comes in the middle of "Violation of Natural Law" but simply cannot escape its base form, reprising its original performance at the center of "Helen Spies."

The main identity of evil humor for Death Becomes Her extends out of an extended rhythmic sequence in "Another Miracle" and stews for the whole cue while offering some light panic in "Seal the Room" and "I'd Rather Die." It laments the happy ending in the unused "Switzerland" finale and anchors the start of "End Credits" with its largest performance since the opening titles, later completing that suite with some stirring action variants. Although this identity induces smirks, it doesn't receive enough development outside of its initial format to really guide the score, the underlying rhythm especially tiresome by the end of the work. The most melodramatic and swirling representation of tumult in Death Becomes Her comes with Silvestri's destiny theme that accompanies the choice the characters make to utilize the potion. It's an identity of sorrow and temptation at once and provides the lush passages of grandeur with roiling desperation. Massive at the start of "Woman on the Verge" and becoming sinister thereafter, the destiny theme toils with the Lisle/potion theme at 0:29 into "Lisle" and announces itself with a sense of bloated importance at 0:21 and later into "A Touch of Magic." It takes an overly dramatic turn in "Sempre Viva," explodes in pieces early in "It's Alive," offers some tragic lament in the latter half of "To the Morgue," and becomes lush and lightly choral in "I'll Be Upstairs." The identity's fight through pieces of the Lisle/potion theme in high drama during "Loving You" is impressive, and it prevails over the other themes for the culmination in "I'd Rather Die" using brighter tones as an escape is realized. In the closing suite, this idea transitions out the main theme about a minute into "End Credits." The related theme for the witch, Lisle, and her potion is built upon descending fiddle phrases of mystery and intrigue with flowery accompaniment, a touch of Bernard Herrmann definitely apparent in the orchestrations of the idea but never achieving the Vertigo level of doomed romance that it needed. There's just not much sensual or sinister allure or sense of wondrous magic in this identity's performances, but it does access the fiddle for the appropriate connections. It often intertwines with the destiny theme, sometimes harmoniously overlapping with it explicitly.

The potion theme opens "Lisle" in solitary form and continues similarly at 0:46 into "A Touch of Magic" but twists deeper and more dangerously on woodwinds under the fiddle in "Now, A Warning." The theme is then slight at the beginning of "Violation of Natural Law" and finally returns wholesale in "Loving You," where it expertly toils with the destiny theme more overtly as mentioned before. The final major theme in the score belongs to Hawn's defeated character of Helen, and it's often exposed by its octave-hopping baseline under what could be an alluring melody but is never allowed such care. Her melody is revealed in the middle of "Woman on the Verge" in a slightly altered form, and an alternate performance of the cue on the longer album presentation for the score pushes the idea to far grander heights. It's pretty but disturbed on flute at 0:23 into "Another Drunk Driver" before shifting to other winds and strings for several subsequent performances. Helen's identity repeats itself briefly in "Self Defense," tickles the latter half of "Hurry Up, You Wimp," and quivers with mystery at the outset of "Helen Spies" and meanders throughout that cue. It punctuates the main theme in "I'd Rather Die" on muted trumpets and reprises its original performance at 2:37 into "End Credits." Listeners will note that the unique and tender oboe melody in "Switzerland" for Tracey Ullman's character went unused, as she was edited completely out of the film after its initial happy ending tested poorly with audiences. Silvestri never had a chance to properly score the conclusion that was used instead. On album, the Varèse Sarabande label offered 36 minutes of pertinent highlights from the work at the time of the film's debut. That label expanded the presentation to 51 minutes in 2022, with five minutes of that running time dedicated to source music and alternate takes. The longer album, which was released as a limited CD but also digitally, has some useless filler cues like "She Was a Bad Actress" and can be redundant given the lack of manipulation for the main and potion themes. It's difficult to recommend the expanded product because Death Becomes Her has always played like a score that never achieved the level of self-importance that its film's characters conveyed. If anything, it is simply too restrained, and the composer had better fortunes unleashing devilish tones in The Witches, which succeeds as the better experience overall.  ***   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Alan Silvestri reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.31 (in 59 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.21 (in 43,064 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.