: (James Horner) Although
Roger Corman's New World Pictures studio was attempting to expand into
the realm of mainstream science fiction in 1980 with the space fantasy
, the inevitable pull towards the unsavory
realms of sex and gore led the gang of B-rate filmmakers to tackle
the same year. The low-budget flick was a
variation on the "monsters from under the water" scenario realized so
many times before since
, but
with Corman as the financier, this entry would appeal to teenage boys
because of its gratuitous scenes of nudity, rape, and death. Ironically,
its script and original direction (by female director Barbara Peters, no
less) emphasized the story's more serious character-based conflicts and
prejudices, assigning false blame for declining fish counts in an
American Northwest town to easy human targets rather than beasts from
the ocean. During post-production, it was determined that the movie
needed more of the typical Corman touch, so most of the sex and nudity
seen in the final cut was shot and inserted late in the process. The
monsters in
are giant bipeds that come
out of the water to procreate with women, and like most teenage men,
they seem to prefer sexy types with large breasts. By the end, however,
they declare war on the town and tear apart its festival for good
measure, leaving bloodied bodies everywhere for the cameras to feast
upon. It's the type of movie destined for a life on home video, where it
has received a fair amount of attention in part due to a remake by
Corman himself in 1996. The rising house composer for New World Pictures
at the time of the original production was 26-year-old James Horner,
fresh out of graduate school and looking for a break in the industry.
The Corman films were largely that stroke of luck, introducing the
composer to several of his later collaborators, including Ron Howard and
James Cameron. That experience was well worth the paltry $8,000 to
$10,000 he was paid to produce a score like
While
Battle Beyond the Stars featured clearly
the best music of Horner's association with New World Pictures, all such
efforts, including
Humanoids From the Deep, contained significant
resemblances to temp tracks and the composer's sources of inspiration.
In the case of this trashy horror film, the connections are nowhere as
obvious as they are in
Deadly Blessing or the far more famous and
acclaimed
Battle Beyond the Stars, but they do exist. Add to the
equation the need for a fair amount of glum suspense music and you get a
score that is definitely one to forget, even for Horner enthusiasts.
While the score for
Humanoids From the Deep is basically
sufficient at its task, it remains a work better destined for study by
Horner collectors than appreciable to enjoy casually. The soundscape is
sparse, orchestrated for strings, woodwinds, piano, harp, xylophone,
percussion, and lone trumpet. Its percussion rhythms and lengthy whole
notes on strings or keyboards maintain the needed ambience of mystery.
The harp is omnipresent as the expected representation of underwater
intrigue. Woodwind solos convey occasional melodies of tortured human
interest, but not as compellingly as in
Deadly Blessing. Abrasive
synthetic tones pulse underneath jabs of metallic percussion and
waterphone while occasional Blaster Beam thuds carry over from Jerry
Goldsmith's
Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The solo trumpet
sometimes accesses the reverberating echoplex from Goldsmith's
Patton. Just as Horner's
Battle Beyond the Stars was an
homage of sorts to Goldsmith's music, this one additionally takes an
assortment of other techniques and motifs from several Goldsmith scores
as well. Aside from the Blaster Beam and echoplex trumpets, the most
obvious are the woodwind and trumpet motifs from
Alien, an irony
considering Horner's eventual replacement of Goldsmith in that
franchise. In the attack sequences, Horner switches to
The Boys From
Brazil, though you can also hear similarities to David Shire and
Laurence Rosenthal at times. The pretty woodwind theme that
disintegrates in the score is a leftover from Goldsmith's 1960's small
drama scores. This Noyo town theme debuts on piccolo at 1:14 into "Main
Title" and recurs on cello at the start of "The Buck-O," late in "The
Search," and more prominently in "Jerry and Peggy" and
"Aftermath."
The "humanoid" monsters of
Humanoids From the
Deep receive the score's other theme, heard on trumpet at 0:37 into
"Main Title" and then turning to woodwinds in "Men Discover Dogs," flute
in "The Underwater Boat By," and strings in "Tommy's Struggle" and
"Carol's Final Confrontation." Supplementing this idea is two-note
phrasing that the composer accesses more often than this theme to denote
lurking suspense. Unique melodic phrasing passes by in "Trip Up River"
and "Drake's Lab," too. Don't expect these identities to carry the
listening experience, however. Only in the final trio of cues does
Horner explore substantial expressions with the full ensemble, by which
point you'll be bored out of your wits. Overall,
Humanoids From the
Deep is too sparsely ambient to merit much attention, despite the
raw intrigue of its placement early in Horner's career. The score has
been released several times on CD, its initial albums emulating Horner's
carefully edited LP presentation. This arrangement was first paired with
Battle Beyond the Stars on a GNP Crescendo product in 2001 and
then alone on a 1,000-copy follow-up from BSX Records in 2011. The
latter album follows the Horner score's LP experience with three cues of
17 minutes total from Christopher Lennertz's largely synthetic music for
the 1996 remake. Interestingly, Lennertz, who was himself breaking into
the industry using Corman at the time, reprises several motifs and
instrumental tones from Horner's score, albeit mostly sampled.
(Interestingly, Corman was tracking his early Horner music into projects
all the way up to 2001.) Out of Horner's foundation, Lennertz takes a
more tonal approach in the remake, including a lovely sequence for piano
and woodwinds that occupies most of "Part #2" of the suites on the
album. Also on the 2011 product is an additional 10 minutes of outtakes
from Horner's score, though the sound of these is muted and the material
is redundant. In 2023, Intrada Records revealed that superior sources
had been located for the 1980 score, and they pressed the complete work
in better sound quality and its original film arrangement. (The LP
version is appended as well.) This presentation nicely illuminates the
woodwinds, among other orchestrations. If the improved sound quality and
film version of the score are not important to you, then the 2001 album
is the better deal, as it also contains the far worthier
Battle
Beyond the Stars. Alone,
Humanoids From the Deep earns little
praise as it stews aimlessly through derivative ideas.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
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