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| Carpenter |
Escape From L.A.: (Shirley Walker/John Carpenter)
Cult favorite John Carpenter has long lamented the failure of
Escape
From L.A., his 1996 follow-up to the grungy suspense techno-thriller
Escape From New York from 1981. For the writer and director, the
sequel was essentially a remake that corrected all the ills of the first
film. For much of the rest of the world, however,
Escape From
L.A. was simply an awful picture. The concepts in the prior movie
are bloated to extreme silliness, the societal commentary too
gratuitously overwhelming and the technology pushing the boundaries of
sanity even further than the first film's unlikely premise. The
anti-hero is once again Snake Plissken, this time sent into the island
of Los Angeles (conveniently severed from the mainland by an earthquake)
to retrieve a device with which the theocratic authoritarian president
of America can knock out power anywhere in the world via space
satellites. Fallacies of logic abound, of course. (How can there be only
one hand-held device to control the satellites? Seriously?) In the
film's favor, Kurt Russell does his best to look directly at the camera
and damn all of humanity, and Cliff Robertson portrays the villainous
president well. The movie couldn't get traction against
Independence
Day in theatres, however, and it has been doomed to a cult status as
connected to the first film in the franchise. By the 1990's, Carpenter
had parted ways with composing collaborator Alan Howarth and was
becoming more comfortable with the idea of having other composers write
the entirety of the film scores for his movies. He had formed a trusting
friendship with career orchestrator and conductor Shirley Walker after
she had replaced Jack Nitzsche in providing the music for
Memoirs of
an Invisible Man a few years earlier, a symphonic score that sounds
nothing like a typical Carpenter soundtrack. Given that Walker was
herself a synthesizer expert for film scores going all the way back to
her
Apocalypse Now involvement, the director sought her for
Escape From L.A. as means of combining the synthetic heritage of
the franchise with the orchestral muscle that Carpenter realized was
necessary by the mid-1990's for this genre of film.
One of the more fascinating aspects of the music for
Escape From L.A. is its own uneasiness with the blending of
synthetic and orchestral elements. The score always utilizes acoustic
soloists, so in that regard, it is more consistently vibrant than the
predecessor. Also gone is the oppressively dark and sparse personality
of the Carpenter and Howarth machinery of the prior score. Even when
Carpenter scores cues on his own in this sequel, the result, while
predictably atmospheric and drab, is not as heavily persecuting. But
Walker's dominant contribution here is no more comfortable or
consistent. Her synthetics are rather conservative in tone, but defining
the irreverent attitude is the application of drum kit, looped
percussive effects, and ethnic and choral influences, not to mention the
harmonica and electric guitar for the gunslinging lead. The orchestra is
not applied at all until about two-thirds of the way into the movie,
largely supplanting the synths but retaining the drum machines. Reports
indicate that Walker hadn't intended for there to be so much orchestral
dominance in the final third of the score, but 13 minutes of her
orchestral material for these later scenes was recorded in
post-production to continue beefing up the end product. Add onto this
split personality the wacky sense of humor that Walker brought to the
equation (and which Carpenter accepted), and you have a score that
functions only because it is consistently weird. It has one of the worst
and most absolutely bizarre chase cues of all time ("Motorcycle Chase")
and perhaps the most awkwardly silly villain's identity ("Hang Glider
Attack"). Some of these outrageous moments of wild character could be
explained away by the fact that the film itself is so atrociously
hideous, but if you accept that explanation, it's hard to pardon the
resulting album. Still, from an intellectual perspective, Walker's
approach to
Escape From L.A. is intellectually rich and offers
much to consider. She writes too many themes for the picture while
diminishing those that needed to be present. There is a narrative in her
thematic strategy for the score, but it's so convoluted that much of it
ceases to be effective. A modernized version of "Escape From New York -
Main Title" is an admirable highlight of this recording, but that theme
then needlessly disappears in the subsequent score, repeating the prior
score's biggest problem.
Walker provides two themes to Snake's positive actions in
Escape From L.A.. The first is the score's main theme of cowboy
suggestion, a perfect representation of the character and maybe
coincidentally similar to the rejected end credits theme of the previous
score. It features a cool electric guitar riff in the bass that can
sometimes function as its own suggestion of Snake's prowess for
sarcastic one-liners. That bass riff struggles to get started in "Snake
Arrives" against the score's death chime motif, but the metal guitar and
harmonica coolness of the full theme is introduced in "Snake's Uniform."
The harmonica takes the idea sparsely in "Showdown" with the riff barely
in tow while the riff alone is accented by harmonica in "Snake Takes a
Breather." It is scantly evident late against the chaotic madness of
"Beverly Hills Surgeon," and the bass riff plays lightly against some of
the other themes in "Helicopter Arrival." The main melody sneaks in
"Texas Switch," the bass riff barely teased, and the signature cowboy
mode slowly succeeds the suspense theme in "Presidential Decree" to
close the score in style. Walker also devises a challenge theme for
Snake, a more orchestrally heroic variation that would be unnecessary if
the composer had chosen to instead alter the main theme for this
purpose. By its frequent use in the symphonic action cues at the end,
some listeners may mistakenly interpret this theme to be the main one.
It is conveyed with simple, slightly heroic synth brass early in
"Submarine Launch" to denote the start of Snake's mission, the idea
accelerated to rhythmic formations against a pronounced drum kit later
in the cue. The challenge theme returns at 1:21 into "Decapitation/Game
Time/The Game" on woodwinds and plays counterpoint to the villain's
theme in "Hang Glider Attack" while becoming massively orchestral in
James Bond fashion at 2:20. It resumes that near-espionage personality
at 1:25 into "Helicopter Arrival" and enjoys some excellent call and
answer formatting in "Texas Switch." While these two themes are fairly
effective at their task, they don't both need to exist, and it would
have been very interesting to hear Walker adapt the cowboy-like main
theme into these later cues. Or, even better, she could have utilized
the main theme from the prior movie instead, especially its less awkward
B phrase that had more than a strong suggestion of a potentially strong
action identity.
Walker supplies a bevy of secondary themes to
Escape
From L.A. as well, and the suspense theme is notable in that it
traverses both the synthetic and orchestral halves of the score. This
brooding, meandering identity of dread uses a bassline moving opposite
of the theme. It is heard several times in "Snake Gets Scratched"
against sound effects and marks the score's abrupt transition to the
orchestral parts in "The Black Box/Target L.A." It gains more orchestral
prowess in "The Broadcast," accompanies a moment of gameplay peril in
"The Game," and is turned into an orchestral action motif in "Escape
From Coliseum," a mode that is reprised in "Helicopter Arrival" and
"Escape From Happy Kingdom." It earns a more melodramatic presence in
"Crash Landing," shifts back to rather bland underscore duties early in
the unused "Out of Time," and stews throughout "Presidential Decree"
before the defiant ending. Also representing adversity is Walker's death
chime motif, which consists of the metallic clanging of prison bars. It
debuts late in "History of Los Angeles," overtakes the nascent Snake
material in "Snake Arrives," and serves a quick reminder at 1:27 into
"Presidential Decree," a stinger to suggest that Snake may never be
truly free. Less obvious to viewers will be Walker's sympathy theme, a
slightly hopeful but mostly broken alternation of two chords repeatedly
at 1:39 into "Defense Lab" on synths and slowly and barely tonal in "I
Think We're Lost/Taslima," where a few more progressions are added. A
revelation motif is a latecomer in the score, debuting at the end of
"Escape From Coliseum" and continuing early in "Queen Mary," in which
the idea explodes on brass at 1:13. For whatever reason, Walker never
returns to even a quieter version of this theme for the major switch
reveal at the end of the movie. Sprinkled amongst these themes are a
number of singular cues with an ethnic or otherwise bizarre tilt,
including Asian and Middle-Eastern influences for the melting pot of
post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. Carpenter's cues for the island use the
Asian tones, as previewed in "Fire Base Seven" but really emerging in
"Mulholland Drive-By" and "Acid Rain." Walker's "Sunset Boulevard
Bazaar" subtly accesses stereotypically Middle-Eastern chords. By her
"Motorcycle Chase," the ethnicity has drained to leave just plain
strange percussion, and that tone is dialed back for the very bizarre
vocal effects of the lengthy "Beverly Hills Surgeon."
No discussion of
Escape From L.A. would be
complete without addressing the debate over Walker's theme for the
villain, Cuervo, and his Happy Kingdom. (The bad guy has taken
Disneyland has his headquarters in this story.) There are two ways to
look at the Cuervo theme; it's either a brilliant stroke of genius by
Walker, or it's one of the most distractingly awful villain themes of
all time. It uses a distinctive Latin samba movement to define itself,
which is amusing given the ethnic consistency of the gang of thugs. That
rhythm is previewed in "The Coliseum" and "Decapitation" but erupts in
its full, truly wacky but memorable form at 2:39 into "Hang Glider
Attack." This scene shows Cuervo riding into Happy Kingdom amongst his
countless followers wasting ammunition by firing into the air, an
overhead shot of the amusement park clearly showing that it is
Disneyland. The outrageous music, which suggests almost a carnival party
atmosphere, helps the scene become so ridiculous that you can't help but
laugh at its intentionally shameless silliness. To Walker's credit, she
adapts this theme well in lesser incarnations elsewhere, using it to
open "Helicopter Arrival" with more serious determination, twisting it
for menacing brass action in "Fire Fight" while maintaining some of the
samba style, and appropriately forcing it to struggle to retain cohesion
in "Escape From Happy Kingdom." This intelligence in the score for
Escape From L.A. makes you want to appreciate and even enjoy it
more than it really deserves. On the whole, it remains an
extraordinarily discordant and unpredictable work, and nothing is more
jarring than the sudden stylistic shift in the score when the orchestral
presence arrives in "The Black Box/Target L.A." There is no transitional
mingling between the synthetic and organic sections of the recording, no
early moments previewing the symphonic bombast to come. The overall
narrative is largely destroyed by the lengthy "Presidential Decree"
because of the composer's choice to play the scene very conservatively.
The final confrontation with the president's forces is too drawn out
anyway, but Walker doesn't play any of its suspense and drama
adequately. The score on album thus suffers in its longer presentation.
A 34-minute version from Milan Records in 1996 is missing some vital
cues, but the 79-minute follow-up from La-La Land Records in 2014
(re-issued in 2021) exposes all the aforementioned weaknesses in the
narrative. On either album, expect some dissatisfaction with the
thematic handling and inconsistent tone. More importantly, be prepared
for some inventively wacky and bizarre music for this genre.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
The insert of the 1996 Milan album includes no extra information about the
score or film. Those of the 2014 and 2021 La-La Land products contain details
about both.
