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Review of Gremlins (Jerry Goldsmith)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you've already sought and enjoyed the more readily
available and possibly easier to appreciate Gremlins 2: The New
Batch on album and are prepared for Jerry Goldsmith's cat-howling
original.
Avoid it... if you tend to be annoyed by Goldsmith's harsher electronic tones that existed primarily in his mid-1980's scores, for they dominate the soundscape in this ultra-quirky entry.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Gremlins: (Jerry Goldsmith) Joe Dante's comedic
answer to every horror movie cliche in the playbook was the 1984 romp
Gremlins, a darkly violent laugh fest involving the now infamous
little fuzzballs that grow into nasty killers and terrorize a perfect
little American town. The rules are relatively simple, and audiences
became well aware that when you happen across a cute little creature
called a Mogwai, it's generally a good idea to avoid feeding it after
midnight and/or getting it wet. If you commit the first error, the
adorable ball of fluff grows into a big vicious "gremlin" that will act
similarly to the monsters in the Alien series. If you commit the
second error, you compound the problem by causing them to multiply like
tribbles. Either way, as everyone knows by this point, expose them to
sunshine and your problem is more or less solved. The setting in
Gremlins is the kind of unsuspecting town you might see in any
horror film, and along with exploiting the Christmas season and common
myths about your local Chinatown, Dante successfully shocked audiences
with enough funny scares to earn massive box office returns and merit a
1990 sequel in which the same lead characters fight off the little
beasts in an urban skyscraper. The director's relationship with composer
Jerry Goldsmith had begun with Dante's Twilight Zone: The Movie
and was just beginning to roll with Gremlins, a project obviously
tackled with much humor by the veteran composer. His period of
experimentation with electronics was in full swing by 1984, many of his
most successful largely-synthetic scores coming in the following few
years. In many ways, Goldsmith's technique in Gremlins would be a
warm-up act for Dante's satirical The 'Burbs, for which Goldsmith
would write a remarkably funny score with a perfect combination of
snappy Americana spirit and synthetic mayhem. Some listeners might even
say that Goldsmith's merging of the orchestral and synthetic styles
would make Gremlins 2: The New Batch a more mature and listenable
score. But maturity wasn't the primary idea for Gremlins, a score
that was supposed to sound ridiculous for much of its length and thus
achieves its goal through similarly subversive silliness.
It is with an active sense of humor that you have to appreciate Gremlins, despite the fact that most of what you hear in its contents would be executed better by Goldsmith in subsequent efforts. In this case, it's the idea that counts, and the composer hits the nail on the head with his concepts. The catchy main theme for Gremlins became a staple of the composer's concert rounds for many years, and whether you can tolerate it or not, there's no getting around the fact that it's memorable. Its lone full performance in Gremlins comes in the end credits and is performed entirely by the composer's electronics. Its appearances throughout the film take a while to reveal themselves (previewed in "The Lab" and really only blossoming in the main attack sequence) coinciding with the rise of the evil side of the creatures, the pace of the film never allowing it much cohesiveness for lengthy periods of time. More enjoyable are the two subthemes that become more evident outside of context. First, Gizmo's theme, heard in "The Gift" and extensively the final two cues, is the expected tender and loving representation of the lead gremlin's cute personality. Second, a rollicking theme for the main human character is introduced in "Late for Work" and features Goldsmith in perhaps the most humorous township spirit since The Film-Flam Man (but without the Western styling, of course). Both of these themes would be exploited by the sequel's score, arguably to an equal or greater effect. A less tolerable theme for "Mrs. Deagle" takes some of the more obnoxious, slurred low-range electronics (sounding like a badly mutated tuba) from the upcoming Legend and arranges them into an insufferably bizarre march. One of the better qualities of both Gremlins scores is Goldsmith's knack for extra touches of creativity that define the music's character. In the original, these range from a straight forward presentation of the Christmas carol "Silent Night" to several skittish viola solos and a single sound effect that dominates the score. That sound is a merging of a yowling cat and a police siren, usually offered in tones closer to the former than the latter. Goldsmith uses the cat howl as an ominous, animalistic warning that things are awry, and the technique (among a few others) works like a charm as it becomes more aggressive in later applications. When separated from the film, though, some of these wacky sound effects are a tad difficult to enjoy at times, especially when mixed harshly at the forefront of the soundscape, as the howling cat sound is eventually treated. Surprisingly, the layering of electronic and orchestral tones aren't integrated as well as they could be in Gremlins, with the two ironically existing best in several sequences when largely separated. A straight forward, triumphant action rhythm in "The Fountain/Stripe's Death" is a Prokofiev-style, militaristic tone for the orchestra alone that, in its era, was likely to remind film music listeners of James Horner's popular Star Trek scores. A slight thumping echo in "Spilt Water" could be a nod to Ennio Morricone's The Thing. Overall, Gremlins is a score that is difficult not to love, but one that doesn't necessarily offer its own material at its best capabilities. Both the sequel score and a number of recordings by various performing groups in the years since have proven that an orchestra alone can have a riot with the "Gremlin Rag," achieving better results than even Goldsmith's original synthetics could accomplish (the City of Prague Philharmonic in particular tackled it with one of their best performances ever, complete with the necessary quirky personality). With that circumstance in mind, Gremlins 2: The New Batch may be a better listening experience on album for some collectors. The situation involving the original Gremlins score on album was long a source of major frustration for Goldsmith enthusiasts. The commercial Geffen CD, a very early product on that medium, featured only 16 minutes of Goldsmith's score along with the usual assortment of pop songs (Geffen provided the same format of presentation to Goldsmith's Innerspace a few years later), and this product eventually went hopelessly out of print and sold for upwards of $100. Unsatisfied fans inevitably sought a variety of bootlegs (usually of 51 minutes from Gremlins) that became available at the end of the 1990's. These bootlegs typically featured poor sound and tacked a few tracks from The Twilight Zone onto the end. Subsequent variants of the bootleg only offered the same Gremlins material alone with vastly improved sound quality that is largely indistinguishable from other Goldsmith scores of the era. Finally, a 2011 double-CD set from Film Score Monthly's Retrograde Records officially released 62 minutes of the score alongside many bonus cues and the original Geffen presentation. This definitive presentation of Gremlins is outstanding in all regards, though if you're just getting your feet wet in the franchise's music, then the readily available album for the sequel score may be a safer bet. Still, despite the score's incessantly alien, playful personality, few would deny that Gremlins is an endearing classic from the height of Goldsmith's electronically-dominated phase of immense creativity in the 1980's. ****
TRACK LISTINGS:
1993 Geffen Album:
Total Time: 30:53
1999 Bootleg Album: Total Time: 68:35
2011 Retrograde Album: Total Time: 107:06
* composed by Max Steiner
NOTES & QUOTES:
The inserts of the 1993 Geffen and 1999 bootleg albums include no extra
information about the score or film. That of the 2011 Retrograde/FSM album contains
extensive information about both.
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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 Gremlins are Copyright © 1993, 1999, 2011, Geffen, Bootlegs (Mogwai), Retrograde Records/Film Score Monthly and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 11/30/99 and last updated 11/10/11. |
