: (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 Goldsmith was clear:
rearrange the style and spirit of John Williams' music for the
franchise and weave it in 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.
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
Supergirl 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 scores of similar thematic jubilation and orchestral ruckus that
dominates the soundscape with overflowing pomp. 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," a 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 tempo of the rhythm
(and key) even increases as the unlikely pursuit continues.
A little more original is Goldsmith's love theme for
King Solomon's Mines, a piece 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 title theme's concert
arrangement. 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 with Goldsmith's best (see
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 product from Europe, the score was
expanded from 34 to 60 minutes on a 1991 Intrada album that was
re-issued in 1997 (both with cover art from the film's sequel,
awkwardly). A 2006 Prometheus album stretched the score to 70 minutes
(with interesting but not necessary bonus cues) and corrected some
digital transfer problems that had affected the playback speed of the
music on previous albums. In 2014, Quartet Records revisited the score
(by this point, the Prometheus album was out of print) and presented a
2-CD arrangement that eliminated some nuisance crossfades between tracks
and included both the film and album edits of the score on separate CDs.
A remastering also highlights the 2014 product. 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.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
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For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.26
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