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| Carpenter |
Ghosts of Mars: (John Carpenter) There is a place
in Hollywood history for John Carpenter, a writer, director, and
composer whose films of the 1970's and 80's had a significant impact on
the plethora of B-rate horror thrillers that he inspired. Unfortunately,
in the subsequent two decades, Carpenter himself became that very
stereotype of schlock, creating films like
Vampires and
Ghosts
of Mars that had completely abandoned the production values that had
at least allowed his early films to straddle the line between first and
second rate cinema. In fact, by
Ghosts of Mars, Carpenter wasn't
even trying to hide the circumstances of this own artistic demise. The
film, a translation of
Assault on Precinct 13 onto Mars of the
future, is an absolute intellectual loss, with no redeeming qualities in
its script, acting, or special effects. It's cheap, it's dumb, and it's
painful to the ears. That last comment is in regards to Carpenter's
intentional attempt to mask the limited success of the remaining
production elements by doing something radical with his music. Rather
than rely solely on his typical synthetic elements to create the
ambience familiar to many of his films, he continued a trend he was
exploring with
Vampires, merging that traditional sound with a
collection of artists in an unrelated genre of music. The purpose in the
case of
Ghosts of Mars was to simply crank up the intensity and
volume of a heavy metal soundtrack to such an extent that it compensates
for the lack of excitement inherent in the film. Unfortunately, while on
an extremely basic level, that technique works for viewers aiming at
getting a quick thrill out of the film, it does absolutely nothing to
actually elevate that work to a higher level of artistry. Of course, if
you're looking for a positive review of the
Ghosts of Mars
soundtrack at practically any film score website, then you're bound to
be irritated by what you find, instead choosing to justify the score's
effectiveness as a collection of heavy metal pieces outside of the realm
of any traditional notion of film music. Let's be clear: as a metal
album, it's fine. The wailing guitars aren't the problem. But in its
duties as a film score, the work fails to provide any kind of structure
that music has been meant to provide for film over the previous
century.
The vast array of talent that Carpenter collected for
Ghosts of Mars is a partial indication of his intended deviation.
In the rock and metal genres, the names of Steve Vai, Elliot Easton,
Anthrax, and Buckethead (it's still difficult to imagine what Colonel
Harland Sanders would have though of this guy) speak for themselves, and
in Carpenter's effort to merge their electric guitars and percussion
into a well balanced display of genre-specific tones, he succeeds. There
can be no doubt that the ensemble offers the sound that the director
desired, but the fact that so little of what you hear on the album is
actually used in the film is perhaps indication that Carpenter
recognized their limitations. The score in the film itself has a
significant amount of the director's own keyboarded effects, and this
material is for some reason largely absent from the album. Conversely,
many of the harsh metal cues that ramble on for several minutes on album
are mixed down to just token usage in the final edit of the film. So, in
the end, what you get with the album for
Ghosts of Mars is just
that: a standalone album. Its relation to the film is tenuous, which
explains why the product plays well to an intended audience that doesn't
typically collect film scores. For soundtrack collectors specifically,
and especially those who have appreciated Carpenter's music through the
years,
Ghosts of Mars offers nothing of interest. In fact, the
only recognizable aspect of the score for that crowd will be a rhythm in
"Love Siege" that emulates the opening of George S. Clinton's
Wild
Things. Otherwise, Carpenter's work here has no thematic
development, no emotive fluctuations outside of the general difference
in tone between cues like "Fight Train" and "Visions of Earth," no hard
synchronization points, and no maturation of concepts from the opening
to the conclusion. Other than the tone of the instrumental choices,
there is no inherent style that is built gradually as the score
progresses. The recordings were created in such a way that small pieces
of them could be chopped up and inserted as need be in certain scenes in
the film without any overarching intelligent design. As such,
Ghosts
of Mars may thrill metal fans, but it is a dysfunctional disgrace to
Carpenter's career and should receive absolutely no interest from
collectors of scores that are actually meant to develop and accentuate
the finer aspects of their films. Save yourself some anguish and seek
the pain pills ahead of time.
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