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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Dragonslayer (Alex North)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you specifically appreciate Alex North's large-scale
action scores with avant-garde tendencies that play more like classical
symphonies rather than film scores appropriate to a specific genre.
Avoid it... if your sword and sorcery scores need to have bold thematic statements, easily recognizable progressions, distinct action pieces, and, like the film, a tone fitting even the most basic parameters of genre expectations.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Dragonslayer: (Alex North) When you look back at
the sword and sorcery age in Hollywood, otherwise known as the early to
mid-1980's, it's hard to figure out exactly what drew so many people to
that particular fascination with fantasy all within one short time. The
special effects advancements of George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic
were an obvious reason, though escapism in general was a logical
reaction to the grittier fare of the early 1970's. Director Matthew
Robbins' take on the Dark Ages was more realistic than all of its
contemporary peers, and the film was aided by early efforts by ILM to
create the most stunning dragon ever seen on screen at that time. The
fact that it was a Walt Disney production was one of its most deceptive
aspects; parents expecting their children to see a whimsical tale of
swords and sorcery were treated to a grim, gory, and depressing
reflection of American socio-political disillusionment in the context of
the Dark Ages. Even within its genre, the acting and the plot were also
significant problems. Imagine the fallacy of logic here: one young
female virgin has to be sacrificed every year to a nasty dragon up on a
hill neighboring the local village, and a lottery is conducted to see
who will be fed to the beast. The lottery is rigged, of course, but why
doesn't anybody in the village realize the obvious and easier way to
disqualify all the young women? Such things don't get addressed in
Dragonslayer, along with magic amulets, a resurrected sorcerer,
and an eclipse, none of which are convincingly established in such a way
as to make much sense unless, perhaps, you want to make comparisons to
the Richard Nixon administration. Luckily for all of them, the
completely defocused score doesn't make much sense either. For film
music collectors, the era was marked with a series of large-scale,
ethnically diverse epics, leading to its pinnacle with James Horner's
Willow in 1988 before a monumentally embraced renaissance in 2001
with Howard Shore's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. But even
before then, scores by Basil Poledouris, Trevor Jones, and Horner
captured our attention with their bold themes and robust orchestral
employment for the genre, extensions of the Wagnerian adaptations by
John Williams to epic fantasies in the late 1970's.
The name you often don't associate with the others is Alex North, a man seemingly out of place among all the young, rising stars of the bronze age. North was in the latter stages of his career by 1980's but still a favorite of film score collectors and the Academy, which honored the composer with an Oscar nomination for Dragonslayer opposite Chariots of Fire and Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1982. He was long removed from his great epics of decades prior, seemingly content concluding his career with small-scale dramas that did not require the monumental orchestral prowess of Spartacus and Cleopatra. Compared to its contemporaries in the genre, North's music easily stands out as a continuation of his trademark, unorthodox styles rather than a consistent entry among the other scores that, for the most part, have garnered much more long-standing praise. So was North mis-assigned to Dragonslayer? Not necessarily. His capabilities with a large ensemble have never been questioned. His knowledge of ethnic and historical variety was considerable. His instrumentation was often extremely creative, especially in the percussion section. His popularity in the industry ranked him among legends. The production sought a more challenging environment than other sorcery epics, begging for a less linear musical identity. Unfortunately for Dragonslayer, North's music tended to intellectualize a subject to death (specialty instruments for this recording include three log drums, two parade drums, two grand pianos, a tack piano, a clavitimbre, a harpsichord, bell trees, a large organ, a thunder sheet, and a wind machine), and what the sword and sorcery films of the 1980's required was a simplistic transparency of construct to balance the otherwise awkward worlds and plots displayed on screen. North's score for Dragonslayer is highly layered, complex, and intelligent, but so much so in every regard that he completely loses all the primordial excitement and magic inherent in the genre. As Trevor Jones often remarked in the following decades, the job of a composer in this kind of genre is to balance the alienating fantasy elements on screen that audiences cannot relate to in their own set of experiences with music that is rooted in a palette that those audiences can indeed understand. By challenging audiences with such a difficult and unconventional score for Dragonslayer, North was simply driving a wedge further into the divide between those who didn't appreciate the film's downbeat, cold demeanor and those who found it to be a refreshing change. Disappointing box office numbers eventually proved that the latter crowd wasn't enough to justify the experiment. For a myriad of reasons, Dragonslayer is a nearly impossible score to review because of precisely that divide between mainstream expectations and intellectual deviation. On top of that, you have a circumstance in which North's fluffier material (upbeat scherzos and whining string romance) was dialed out of the film and sometimes replaced with his challenging avant-garde material from other scenes. Either way you look at it, there's little doubt that the audience for Dragonslayer and especially its score is very limited, and whether you fall in the "love" or "hate" categories in response to North's approach, it's hard not to recognize that the score was, outside of the context of intellectual appreciation, a conceptual misfire to match that of the film. First and foremost among the arguable detriments of Dragonslayer is North's set of themes, which is never stated with the kind of clarity necessary to define locations or characters. As in many of his other scores, he takes a sufficiently harmonious melody and masks it behind a layer of dissonance meant, perhaps, to make it sound scary or foggy, as it always appeared to be outdoors in the Dark Ages. Don't expect a harmonious result from the merging of his bass and treble lines. Thus, it takes two or three listens to the score separated from the film before you can actually identify each of North's five distinct thematic ideas. And they are certainly there, despite their shrouded nature in the picture. Because of its tone, the brass theme for the dragon, heard immediately at the outset, is perhaps the most effective, though the tepid love theme for the two leads offers some brief moments of standard woodwind beauty. Even in these themes, both in the film and on album, North's score plays like a mass of orchestral noise, often with several different sections performing different "polyphonic" tangents, sometimes mimicking an ensemble warming up, with action sequences that bludgeon the listener rather than entertain or exhilarate. The application of many of these troubling cues to Dragonslayer is an "in your face" saturation of the soundscape, causing North to distract the viewer from some scenes rather than tastefully compliment them. The "dissonance by default" method of scoring here simply wasn't necessary to yield the kind of response sought by this production. For those who defend Dragonslayer to no end, it's difficult to qualify North's theme for the amulet, which structurally is fine but is enunciated with such dainty, ridiculous instrumental tones that it's no wonder the filmmakers were inclined to remove such material from the film. From the scherzo in "Forest Romp" to the entirety of the finale and end credits merging of the amulet theme with the primary love theme, North writes material suitable for a 1960's backyard romantic comedy. It's disgracefully out of place, with a plucky personality of harpsichord, violins, metallic percussion, and high woodwinds that was better suited for the composer's nature documentary assignments than a swords and sorcery film. A few exceptions from the otherwise tiring, abrasive, and awkward listening experience include "Landslide," with a snippet of John Williams string rhythms at 2:00, and fantastic timpani usage in "Tyrian and Galen Fight." While distractingly silly, the spirited, upbeat, and rejected chase cue in "Galen's Escape" and more lyrical presentation with fluttering woodwinds and cheery percussion in the aforementioned finale are at least a break from the gloom and doom. But moments like the terrible dissonance in "The Lottery," imitating the shrieking of a female voice over tolling bell, cause Dragonslayer to annoy more often than not. In its addressing of synchronization points, the score completely misses the mark, playing like an extended, aloof classical concert piece rather than a film score with a coherent narrative. Distinct cue changes are rare, thematic statements are often veiled, and inconsistent pacing in the score fails to allow the action sequences to really stir up much excitement. This final characteristic isn't surprising given North's history of composition outside of film scores. In the end, you don't hear Dragonslayer discussed much, if at all, in debates about the great sword and sorcery scores of the 1980's, and that's due to the score's inability and/or refusal to fit into the basic parameters of the genre outside of its most basic orchestral employment. On album, Dragonslayer frustrated listeners for three decades. It was originally released on an LP record with the unbelievably ridiculous statement: "never to be re-released in any medium." Well, in 1990, Soundtrack Collector's Special Editions (SCSE) made fools of whoever wrote that statement by releasing the score on CD as the third of their original five products of the early 1990's. While purists in the soundtrack production industry long lambasted the SCSE releases for being nothing more than professionally pressed bootlegs, collectors didn't really care. Limited originally to 2,000 copies, another 750 were pressed by SCSE shortly thereafter as a special but identical "Gold Edition" of the product. All versions from SCSE contained badly mislabeled tracks, with the listings on the CDs completely erroneous and useless when matched to the music. These long expensive products were eventually supplanted by an expanded album from La-La Land Records in 2010 that the label made a fuss about being "the first official release" of the score. Regardless of the SCSE/bootleg debate, the La-La Land product, limited itself to 3,000 copies, is a fine presentation of the music, offering very satisfying sound quality with a tasteful amount of reverb that doesn't drown out the precise individual performances by the London ensemble. A few alternate and source cues finish off a corrected presentation of the score proper. One listen to North's disastrous, alternate "Main Title" cue at the very end of that album, however, with the obnoxiously bouncing amulet theme in the treble originally set to open the story, is clear proof alone that North was hopelessly lost in this genre. With the 2010 product selling out, the label re-pressed another 2,000 copies of the same presentation in 2021 for the film's 40th anniversary. Overall, this score is a stylistic mess that happens to enjoy a very limited but highly devoted following of intellectual listeners, and despite the genuine size and scope of North's music, the veteran failed to grasp the necessary connection points of the genre and wrote an inappropriate and unsatisfying score for the picture. If you seek a truly timeless, avant-garde fantasy score that actually works, try Elliot Goldenthal's vastly superior but equally intellectually stimulating Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. That score has a balance of conventional, linear gravity and unusual instrumental structures that exposes North's Dragonslayer as both misguided and badly dated.
TRACK LISTINGS:
1990 SCSE Albums:
Total Time: 62:40
* compiled by Filmtracks in 1997 2010/2021 La-La Land Albums: Total Time: 73:24
* not used in the film ** contains material not used in the film
NOTES & QUOTES:
The inserts of the 1990, 2010, and 2021 albums include detailed information
about the score and film. All copies of the SCSE album were numbered.
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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 Dragonslayer are Copyright © 1990, 2010, 2021, Soundtrack Collector's Special Editions, La-La Land Records, La-La Land Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 8/10/97 and last updated 6/16/21. |
