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| Goldsmith |
Link: (Jerry Goldsmith) Plenty of films have been
made using the premise of cute monkeys in underdog roles. Only rarely,
as in
Planet of the Apes, are the tables turned against humans,
and Richard Franklin's 1986 horror film
Link was another such
attempt to give the chimps the upper hand. Terence "kneel before Zod"
Stamp plays a scientist studying monkeys in his creepy, hilltop English
mansion in contemporary times, and when a student played by Elizabeth
Shue comes under his employment and is made responsible for the animals,
things unsurprisingly go awry. The oldest monkey, Link, known for
wearing suits and smoking cigars, has learned that the scientist plans
to sell him to certain death and, instead of facing his destiny
willingly, goes on a murderous rampage that places the lone protagonist
(unless you side with the chimps) in danger. Several devastating plot
holes doomed
Link, and not even some flashes of nudity from a
Shue body double, admirable training of the monkeys (no men in suits or
robots were used in the production), and a Jerry Goldsmith score could
salvage the long forgotten film. At a time when the composer could do
little wrong, with both
Hoosiers and
Lionheart
highlighting his career in 1986 and 1987,
Link was a truly
bizarre sideshow. Goldsmith would make a career out of scoring such
absolute trash in the 1990's, though
Link remains the kind of
picture that only Goldsmith collectors have much interest in pursuing.
More interesting than the assignment itself is the composer's extremely
unexpected approach to handling the subject manner. Film music critics
often refer to wild, intolerable carnival music as some variant of
"demonic circus music," and, quite frightfully, Goldsmith actually
decided to construct an entire score around this cliche. His
counter-intuitive method of addressing the otherwise straight forward
horror elements in
Link is based upon the creation of a wacky,
electronic circus-like environment for the misbehaving monkeys and then
the maniacal twisting of that sound into deviously frantic incarnations
later in the narrative. The National Philharmonic Orchestra plays a
secondary role behind Goldsmith's electronics of
Gremlins fame.
In fact, the film's plot could be described as an awkward merging of
Gremlins and
The Shining, and Goldsmith thus uses his
previous score as a base of operation in
Link. Unfortunately,
when you take chances, you sometimes miss the mark, and
Link is a
distractingly inappropriate and nearly intolerable result.
It's not often that Goldsmith completely blew an
assignment. He was so reliable in his assessment of a film's music needs
that hearing a score almost ruin one in context is quite rare. The style
of
Link is a faithful merging of Goldsmith's music for
Gremlins and
Hoosiers. That should sound alarmingly
strange to you. The title theme is a sickly perverted extension of the
wacky
Gremlins theme, sharing several progressions and a
perversely jovial spirit. The electronic rendering, perhaps using the
extensive drum pad hits as a reminder of the African jungle, is equally
familiar to the previous score. From
Hoosiers comes a faint
string theme of light romance, only appearing twice in the film, and
this idea's anonymous structure doesn't help it compete with the
monkeys' distinctive theme. Within that idea is the use of the bouncing
basketball and high range faux-cymbal hits that will remind of
Hoosiers as well, and for brief moments in later cues (and
especially "Angry Link"), the brass and string accompaniment to the
rhythmic mayhem connects this score to the famed Goldsmith effort a bit
more. In fact, "Angry Link" may be the only palatable cue in the score
for collectors of the composer to appreciate. He does alter the tacky
primary theme for darker purposes, led by ominous string interludes such
as the one about a minute into "Bravo Link," but the score never fails
to return to the wilder side of its personality, even when the film
calls for tighter suspense. Some of the music in
Link is so
sickeningly bizarre (and not in a truly comedy fashion as in
The
'Burbs) that it becomes a terrible distraction in the film and a
bewilderment to the listener of the score album. It's clearly evident
that Goldsmith must have had a ton of fun with this score, though
Link is no
I.Q., and because of the score's ultimate
inflexibility to adapt outside of its carnival origins, the work fails
on all levels. Its futuristic sound effects, mimicking the sounds of a
flock of birds in the opening and closing recordings, are equally
mind-boggling. The score was inexplicably released by Varèse
Sarabande in 1986 with cute track titles and fell completely out of
print. Replacing it on the secondary market was a bootleg that expands
the material from 39 minutes to 50, the extra music consisting of
redundant filler in lesser, sometimes distorted sound quality. Intrada
Records used the same studio source for a strict reissue of the
Varèse contents in 2011, a limited product that sold out
immediately. La-La Land Records followed with another re-issue of the
same contents in 2016. No place on any presentation exists the song "I'm
an Apeman," humorously inserted twice into the film. Overall, there's
absolutely no reason to go ape wild for this weak link in Goldsmith's
career.
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| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.26
(in 124 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.29
(in 153,454 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The inserts for the 1986 and 1997 albums contain no extra information about the
score or film. Those of the 2011 and 2016 albums include detailed notes about both.
