: (Jerry Goldsmith) So often
Cannon Films attempted to imitate top flight movies in their efforts of
the 1980's to strike box office gold, and yet so often they produced the
kind of embarrassing comedic action that permeates their 1985 film
. Marking the 100th anniversary of H. Rider
Haggard's famed novel, this J. Lee Thompson adaptation followed many
authentic renderings of adventurer Allan Quatermain but, due to its
timing, had
firmly in its sights.
Unfortunately, a combination of extremely poor casting (both Richard
Chamberlain and Sharon Stone are completely out of place and
uncomfortable with their cheesy dialogue), numerous production problems,
including a much publicized curse placed on the crew, and a ridiculous
level of silly comedy doomed
, betraying its
solid conveyor belt of action with arguably racist depictions of the
villains and lines so awkward that they draw unintentional laughs. By
the time the soundtrack becomes a punch line in the film, you know that
it has crossed into the realm of parody. Forced into that situation was
composer Jerry Goldsmith, a veteran collaborator with Thompson despite
no fantastic successes together. The task for the composer was clear:
rearrange the style and spirit of John Williams' music for the
franchise and weave it together with a very obvious
piece of source music incorporated into the script. The story is one of
almost perpetual chasing through Africa, and the two leads are being
pursued by a tandem of villains, one of which a Nazi Colonel obsessed
with Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries." The fact that this
character is frequently playing this theme on his gramophone on screen
generates the punch line, and Goldsmith incorporates the well-known
melody of Wagner's piece into the score as the general representation of
the villains. Why the production thought it could get away with this
usage after its extraordinarily memorable insertion into
Otherwise, despite the replacement of the religious
component with a tribal one,
King Solomon's Mines indeed plays
like a tongue in cheek parody of Williams'
Raiders of the Lost
Ark. The film deserved nothing more or less, and Goldsmith's score
pretty much nails the prevailing attitude of the production. But in
matching the shallow tone of the film, Goldsmith's score suffers from a
fate very similar to his music for
Supergirl a year earlier. It's
technically smart and effective (and thus a fan favorite for the
composer's avid collectors) but also ultimately tedious and obnoxious in
its overly positive spirit, straying into the territory of trite
futility in parts. Listeners friendly towards the other score and its
airy symphonic atmosphere will be likely, therefore, to appreciate
King Solomon's Mines. The flighty tone of the adventure is equal
in both
Supergirl and
King Solomon's Mines, yielding
sibling works of similar thematic jubilation and orchestral ruckus that
dominates the soundscape with overflowing pomp. The ensemble's usage is
fairly standard to Goldsmith's mainstream action style at the time,
percussion embellishments in no short supply. The title march in
King
Solomon's Mines is exuberant to a fault, prancing on trumpets with a
kind of pretentious heroism usually reserved for straight parody scores.
Goldsmith's loyalty to this idea is admirable, though its cartoonish
demeanor, not helped by wild xylophone lines in its ranks, makes it
memorable whether you like its tone or not. Out of this theme's
underlying rhythm does develop one of the two better aspects of
King
Solomon's Mines, a driving string and percussion identity familiar
to the better portions of
Explorers and
The Swarm. Heard
more frequently as the score progresses, this idea flourishes in "Under
the Train," an amusingly faithful rip-off of the truck chase sequence in
Raiders of the Ark that is followed so closely in structural
formula by Goldsmith that the key and the tempo of the rhythm even
increase as the unlikely pursuit continues. By the time you get to the
formulaic "No Diamonds" at the end, however, the identity's chipper
personality could drive you insane.
A little more original is Goldsmith's love theme for
King Solomon's Mines, an identity that would strangely inform
Michael Giacchino's primary idea for 2009's
Star Trek in its
elegantly swaying progressions. Introduced in "Good Morning," it serves
as the usual finale crescendo and a bridge for "No Diamonds," the work's
de facto concert arrangement for the main themes. The use of the Wagner
piece in the actual underscore for
King Solomon's Mines is
limited to a handful of fragments within cues, but it's quite
distracting in its famous progressions. The tribal sequences offer some
impressive bursts of percussion, but they are not on par Goldsmith
triumphs like
The Ghost and the Darkness. Ultimately, the key to
King Solomon's Mines is its carefree attitude, and even in its
most harrowing action pieces, it's hard not to get the impression that
Goldsmith intended no straight-faced outcome for much of this recording.
The performance by The Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra isn't always
perfect, but it handles most of the composer's usual complexities of
competing lines. The history of
King Solomon's Mines on CD is
lengthy. Originally following Alan Silvestri's
Delta Force on a
1987 Milan Records product from Europe, the score was expanded from 34
to 60 minutes on a 1991 Intrada Records album that was re-issued in
1997, both with awkward cover art from the film's sequel. A 2006
Prometheus Records album stretched the score to 70 minutes with
interesting but not necessary bonus cues and unsuccessfully tried to
correct digital transfer problems that had affected the playback speed
of the music on previous albums. With that product out of print, Quartet
Records revisited the score in 2014 and presented a remastered 2-CD
arrangement that eliminated some nuisance crossfades between tracks and
included both the film and album edits of the score on separate CDs. All
of these albums suffered pitch problems, however, which were finally
corrected carefully on an excellent-sounding, limited 2025 La-La Land
Records set that newly added alternate takes as well. In the end,
Goldsmith's title theme would live on in Michael Linn's music for the
1986 sequel,
Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold, though
given its irritatingly bloated sense of enthusiasm, that may not have
been a good thing.
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- Music as Written for the Film: ***
- Music as Heard on the 1987-2014 Albums: **
- Music as Heard on the 2025 Set: ***
- Overall: ***
| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.19
(in 150 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.19
(in 159,817 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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