: (Jerry
Goldsmith) With all of the sequels to the classic 1968 science fiction
spectacle
ranging somewhere between barely
decent and outright awful, 1971's second sequel,
, is considered one of the more thoughtfully
engaging. In the prior year's
, the
franchise killed off Charlton Heston's main character and destroyed the
Earth entirely by demand of the actor, who loathed the idea of more
sequels. But 20th Century Fox used the imagination of the genre to find
a way to allow the two sympathetic chimpanzees from the prior films, Dr.
Cornelius and Dr. Zira, to escape in a spaceship that had been sent in
the second movie to rescue Heston's character. In their journey, these
last surviving members of the future Earth travel back through the same
time funnel to land them in early 1970's America, where they are both a
sensation and a threat. Dr. Zira gives birth and hides the infant to
ensure its survival, a wise move since the government predictably kills
the apes after interrogating them to discover the truth about their
future experiments on humans. While there is much comedy in the
displaced ape portions of the movie, the ending is almost as depressing
as those that graced the prior entries, though the infant is destined to
grow up to become Caeser, who will lead his rebelling apes in an
uprising in subsequent sequels. The concept was badly cheapened by this
third film, the studio thrilled by the reduced production costs but the
political satire losing its appeal by this point. Stuck in the middle of
this bizarre combination of ape and human societies are the soundtracks
of the sequels. For
in 1970,
Leonard Rosenman had replaced Jerry Goldsmith when the latter's schedule
didn't allow him to take the assignment. Rosenman's score jettisoned all
of Goldsmith's established motifs and much of his unique
instrumentation, extending a different avant-garde flavor that did
nothing to further the franchise musically.
Intriguingly, Rosenman was encouraged by the studio to
make a "listenable" album out of his largely unsellable score for
Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and he responded by creating an
album variant that combined his extremely challenging orchestral
coloration and strange religious undertones with pop-culture elements
(and later dialogue from the movie) that together form one of the most
jarringly bizarre soundtracks in history. With Goldsmith able to return
for
Escape From the Planet of the Apes, the franchise was faced
with that same dichotomy between ape and human musical genres, this time
quite literally. With the chimps exploring early 1970's humanity, the
soundtrack had to present the off-kilter structures and instrumentation
of
Planet of the Apes with the contemporary pop inclinations that
Rosenman was forced to adopt. Generally, Goldsmith fares a bit better at
the merging, but the end result is still too disparate to really
tolerate as enjoyable music. Vitally, the demeanor of the composer's
highly respected music for
Planet of the Apes is almost complete
neglected in
Escape From the Planet of the Apes, causing this the
second sequel to fail to extend the narrative via the music. For that
reason alone, the third score is a tremendous disappointment even before
you get to the hapless infusions of contemporary style. In a few choice
places, some of the 12-tone inclinations return, along with the unusual
meters typical to Goldsmith, but those carryovers just aren't
significant enough to suffice and won't even be noticed by the mass of
listeners. Instrumentally, only some of the creative ensemble persists,
led by otherworldly use of piano, slide whistle, steel drums, steel
bowls, xylophone, wind effects, and percussion, with a descending
moaning effect common throughout. The strangely modern elements are
represented by sitar, electric and acoustic guitars, electric bass, and
vibraphone, with the sitar in particular a strange inclusion. The soft
contemporary romance material early in the film, led by "Shopping
Spree," doesn't advance the narrative at all, focusing solely on style
over substance. Not much improves when Goldsmith addresses the military
aspect, the action rhythms stale and unexciting in every instance.
Goldsmith doesn't leave
Escape From the Planet of
the Apes without any thematic development, but his ideas here are
ineffectively anonymous and potentially obnoxious. The score's main
theme is barely developed, an obtuse, meandering, nine-note sequence in
the first minute of "Main Title." It's performed by electric guitar and
sitar to give it a weirdly timeless, modern and exotic sound. After this
really oddball performance, flutes attempt to normalize the idea in
"Labor Pains." Fragments then try to return in "Breakout" before the
composer reprises the identity with the original instrumentation in "The
Hitchhiker." The theme is turned very serious for the orchestra at the
conclusion of "Final Chapter and End Credits" for an arguably overly
dramatic moment. A secondary theme represents fate as the score
progresses, with three-note figures on flute that maybe were meant as a
nascent idea for Caeser. This idea debuts late in "The Labor Continues,"
recurs in the middle of "Mother and Child," and is shifted to massive
ensemble explosions early in "Final Chapter and End Credits." Finally, a
chase motif is a wandering xylophone figure late in "Labor Pains" that
is provided the main theme's instrumentation in "Breakout" and continues
in an off-kilter tone at the outset of "The Labor Continues." For those
looking for any semblance of the prior film's music, Goldsmith does
oblige in the flashback-oriented scene treated to ghostly exploration of
Planet of the Apes motifs in "Interrogation," the score's most
intelligent but arguably unlistenable cue. Overall,
Escape From the
Planet of the Apes is a frustratingly divergent score that was
nearly destined to fail conceptually, its nods to the original 1968
score swallowed up by the need for 1970's modernity. Very little score
actually made the film, causing short presentations on album. On the
Varèse Sarabande label's 1997 release of
Planet of the
Apes, a 16-minute suite of music from
Escape From the Planet of
the Apes was appended. The label fleshed that out to a limited CD
Club product of 29 minutes in 2009. A massive, likewise limited 2019 set
from La-La Land Records containing all five of the original franchise's
film scores padded a little more time in the music for that same
presentation. None of these products can be recommended for this score,
which, like Rosenman's just before, is about as unpleasantly aimless on
album as one could imagine.
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For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.2
(in 142 reviews)
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