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Review of Escape From the Planet of the Apes (Jerry Goldsmith)

1997 Varèse

1997 Volcano

2009 Varèse

2019 La-La Land

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if you enjoy punishing yourself with intentionally bizarre combinations of musical genres, Jerry Goldsmith striving to merge his prior franchise instrumentation with contemporary 1970's style for comedic effect.

Avoid it... on all albums if you demand continuity in the music of your major franchises, Goldsmith largely abandoning his motifs from the first score in this totally divergent misfire.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Escape From the Planet of the Apes: (Jerry Goldsmith) With all of the sequels to the classic 1968 science fiction spectacle Planet of the Apes ranging somewhere between barely decent and outright awful, 1971's second sequel, Escape From the Planet of the Apes, is considered one of the more thoughtfully engaging. In the prior year's Beneath the Planet of the Apes, 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 Beneath the Planet of the Apes 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.  *

TRACK LISTINGS:

1997 Varèse/Volcano Albums:
Total Time: 16:27

• 18. Suite From "Escape From the Planet of the Apes" (16:27)

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2009 Varèse Album:
Total Time: 29:00

• 1. Main Title (2:32) • 2. The Zoo (1:07) • 3. The Gorilla Attack (0:57) • 4. I Like You (1:05) • 5. Shopping Spree (2:19) • 6. A Little History (1:23) • 7. Interrogation (3:18)

• 8. Labor Pains (1:05) • 9. Breakout (0:38) • 10. The Labor Continues (3:55) • 11. The Hitchhiker (1:06) • 12. Mother and Child (3:52) • 13. The Hunt (4:07) • 14. Final Chapter and End Credits (1:42)

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2019 La-La Land Album:
Total Time: 30:01

• 1. Main Title (2:35) • 2. The Zoo (1:08) • 3. The Gorilla Attack (0:57) • 4. I Like You (1:10) • 5. Shopping Spree (2:20) • 6. A Little History (1:24) • 7. Interrogation (3:20)

• 8. Labor Pains (1:07) • 9. Breakout (0:40) • 10. The Labor Continues (3:56) • 11. The Hitchhiker (1:07) • 12. Mother and Child (3:59) • 13. The Hunt (4:11) • 14. Final Chapter and End Credits (1:50)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The inserts of all the albums contain varying levels of information about the score or film. The 2019 5-CD set from La-La Land Records includes extensive information about all the films and scores in the original franchise, including a note from Charlton Heston. Some pressings of that set included the wrong CD art for the first CD in the set, accidentally featuring that of the 1997 Varèse CD that was still in print at the time.

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