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FILMTRACKS.COM
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Review of The Fly (Howard Shore)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you desire one of Howard Shore's best pre-The Lord
of the Rings career achievements, a massively melodramatic horror
score of operatic constructs and overwhelmingly morbid romanticism.
Avoid it... if you expect the listening experience of The Fly to be as accessibly fluid as Christopher Young's mostly unrelated music for the inferior sequel.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
The Fly: (Howard Shore) Skepticism about remakes is
usually warranted, for so few manage to improve upon the concepts' prior
incarnations. Such was not the case with David Cronenberg's The
Fly in 1986, a loose rearrangement of ideas from George Lengelaan's
original short story and the subsequent 1958 film adaptation. Whereas
much of the prior film was truly laughable, Cronenberg's version was a
horror tragedy of the highest order, praised soundly by critics, earning
an Academy Award for make-up, and rewarded with more box office success
than all of the director's other films combined. The basic premise
survives; an eccentric but likable scientist invents a working
teleportation device but has difficulty sending living objects through
it. He eventually works out the kinks, but in the process of teleporting
himself, his DNA is accidentally fused with that of a housefly that
occupied the chamber with him during the experiment. His transformation
into a human/fly hybrid thus begins, slowly at first but eventually
turning him into a hideous, rampaging creature. Along the way,
Cronenberg provides some extremely gruesome visuals, with plenty of
blood and exploded intestines to go around. Key to The Fly is the
love story that made audiences attach themselves emotionally to both
Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis' characters, and their strong on-screen
chemistry (until she has to take matters into her own hands with a
shotgun, that is) was assisted by the fact that the two actors were
dating in real life. There has been speculation over the years that,
with so few characters in the film, the plot was actually a highly
directed allegory involving the rise of AIDS, but Cronenberg has never
bothered himself to address such claims. Cronenberg's collaboration with
Howard Shore had been responsible to a great degree in bringing the
composer from the anonymity of television and other writing venues into
the motion picture scene, and their work together would continue for
several decades.
Cronenberg and Shore agreed to approach The Fly as though it were a full-blown opera, playing the tragedy very literally and melodramatically in the tone of the music. The technique was relatively new in a genre that had been recently defined by far less traditional (or even orchestral) sounds, but it would prove to be successful due to the inherent emphasis on the romance in the story. The sound also managed to inform a new generation of film music in the genre, including the work of Christopher Young, whose score for the idiotic sequel to The Fly in 1989 extended the larger-than-life scope of Shore's approach into another generation of fly mutation horror. Shore's work for The Fly remains a highlight in his pre-The Lord of the Rings career, assuaging his severe initial qualms about his strategy for the project. Despite the opportunity to explore harrowing electronic textures on top of an orchestra in a context like this, something Jerry Goldsmith might have done with the assignment, Shore utilizes the force of The London Philharmonic Orchestra alone. The general tonality of his music for The Fly is harmonically accessible enough to remain pleasantly suspenseful for much of its length while exploring wildly fiendish and challenging avenues when necessary. Many of his motifs and underlying rhythmic constructs are based on multiples of two notes, an appropriate choice given the duality inherent in the topic. The primary theme of the film is a series of identical four-note progressions over shifting bass chords that extend from the solitary and ominous tone of "The Phone Call" to full-ensemble crashing of "The Finale." The score both opens and closes on a monumental, six-note brass figure that addresses the larger-than-life science fiction aspects of the tale. A rising string progression in both "Main Title" and "The Finale" would seemingly inspire a range of similar progressions from John Ottman, Marco Beltrami, and others in genre scores of the following decades. All of these ideas are toned back into strained, tense applications within the center of the score, though usually exhibiting the same morbidly heavy attitude led by bass strings. There are brief respites from the gloomy atmosphere in the score for The Fly, including the lighter piano and solo woodwind romance of "Particle Magazine" and a wispy xylophone continuation in "The Street," but the remainder of the score as a whole is generally extremely oppressive. The outward horror explosions in The Fly culminate in "The Creature," which offers several brutally harrowing, incongruous symphonic lines and a dissonant, timpani-pounding, cymbal-crashing crescendo worthy of only the best killing scenes. On album, The Fly is a very impressive and engaging work that does require a mood of doom and gloom for enjoyment. The five minutes summarizing the most tonally appreciable performances of the themes in "Main Title" and "The Finale" are nothing less than awesome outside of context, though the remainder is almost morbid to a fault. The harmonics are not as simplistically grandiose as those in Young's overwhelmingly powerful sequel score's primary theme, but together they form a good tandem. Young's score for The Fly II, while not explicitly utilizing Shore's constructs, is equally impressive on album and arguably a more fluid listening experience. All the CD releases of Shore's score dating back to 1986 have been pressed by the Varèse Sarabande label, and all utilize the same non-chronological track ordering. A 2005 remastering for release with the sequel score is a great value, but that product unfortunately did not solve these major sequencing problems with the 1986 presentation. Both albums fell completely out of print despite being commercial products. The same arrangement for The Fly alone was re-issued in 2016 as part of Varèse's very limited, 12-CD "Little Box of Horrors" novelty set, with no changes to mastering either. The 2005 set with the sequel score remains the most attractive available product for The Fly despite its resale price. The best testimony in favor of Shore's music is his extension of the concept into an actual opera two decades later for an impressive live performance. If only every horror film plot and accompanying score could have such gut-wrenchingly melodramatic substance. ****
TRACK LISTINGS:
All Albums:
Total Time: 37:34
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert of the 1986 album includes no extra information about the
score or film, though the 2005 and 2016 albums' inserts includes detailed notes
about both. The latter is contained in the 24-page booklet of the 2016 "Little
Box of Horrors" 12-CD set, the product bundled with other scores in a stylized
exterior box.
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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 The Fly are Copyright © 1986, 2005, 2016, Varèse Sarabande, Varèse Sarabande, Varèse Sarabande and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 9/9/09 and last updated 1/22/23. |
