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| Elfman |
Nightbreed: (Danny Elfman) Based on his novella
titled "Cabal," horror writer Clive Barker teamed with genre director
David Cronenberg to make
Nightbreed, though the film's mortal
mistake is the fact that Barker was directing an adaptation of his
script and Cronenberg was in a lifeless acting role in front of the
camera. To try to describe the plot of
Nightbreed would do
injustice to the metaphysical division in the film between the living
and the undead, though it should suffice to say that
Nightbreed
is a significantly less gory and slightly more romantic variation on
Barker's
Hellraiser concept translated to screen just a few years
earlier. What matters most here is that the monsters of the Midian
underworld are the protagonists while angry mobs of living men are the
villains, the movie essentially encouraging audiences to find peace in
the diversity and plight for freedom of the monsters. While the plot and
acting of
Nightbreed were certainly not destined to win any
awards, the visual effects and make-up were, as usual, top notch, with
monsters of all sorts existing in the gothic nether regions depicted
gloriously between Hell and the land of the living. The music for
Barker's universe was clearly defined with great success by Christopher
Young for
Hellraiser, though Danny Elfman's take on the Barker
universe in
Nightbreed was comparatively decent, if not even more
interesting in its diverse instrumentation. Elfman was in "sucker" mode
in the late 1980's and early 1990's; he was a clear sucker for any
project dripping with tragedy, blood, and misunderstood outsiders, and
Nightbreed extended this fascination to the martyr-related
subgenre as well. He also happened to be a massive fan of Barker, so he
actively sought out this collaboration, one that proved extremely
challenging from a writing and recording standpoint but also one that
the composer fondly remembers anyway. Another problem Elfman was facing
in his orchestral writing at the time was the massive dominance of
Batman in his early career, with every project thereafter
(outside of
Edward Scissorhands) serving up some small level of
disappointment for Elfman's newfound fans by comparison. Compounding the
problem was a mundane score for
Darkman, a work that repeated
many of the motifs from
Batman with little infusion of style or
individuality.
While the score for
Nightbreed is no classic
either, it is a rather unique entry in Elfman's career, for the composer
rarely ventured into the large-scale horror before
Sleepy Hollow
finely tuned his skills in that realm. (Whereas
Sleepy Hollow was
a frightfully huge genre score, Elfman's
The Frighteners was a
far less creative and straight-laced attempt to scare an audience.) By
comparison,
Nightbreed has much more humor and beauty in its
ranks, with a core of themes and motifs that remain largely tonal from
start to finish. Instead of using only standard dissonant slashes and
orchestral shrieking for its horror, Elfman establishes propulsive
rhythms and overbearing orchestrations to achieve the right atmosphere.
In the process of doing that, he carries over many of the funky
instrumental elements from his mid-1980's efforts, making
Nightbreed a potentially far more entertaining score for his fans
than his other horror works. Utilizing a full choir and generous
percussion section, Elfman's main two themes roll with elegance as they
address the romanticism of the concept, all the while adorned with
memorable plucking motifs for strings and the cascading four-note
children's choral effect from
Scrooged as a subtheme. The
composer's thematic core is divided between a Midian motif and a destiny
and rebirth theme, both of which explored in "Titles." The Midian motif
is a set of descending pairs of notes heard immediately in that cue and
extending to become frantic in "Dream" before forming an undulating
string identity in "Scalping." It is twisted into a love theme in "Lori
Enters Midian" and "Love Reprise" and provides the cyclical base to
"Carnival" in lighter shades. With more forceful resolve, it battles the
evil human material in "Militia Montage," punctuates the action in
"Boone and Decker Duke It Out," slashes in the horror surprise to end
"Finale," and offers brute force early in "End Credits." The destiny and
rebirth theme, meanwhile, is the prettiest identity of the work, its
rising three and four-note phrases of fantasy occupying the latter half
of "Titles." It takes on a more dramatic stance in "Boone Dead" and
"Boone's Back," rambles on piano and strings with a romantic tilt in
"Rachel's Oratory," and becomes confrontational in "More Mayhem." As the
idea matures, it adopts religious choral tones in "Two Reasons," slowly
unfolds under the tumult of "Baphomet Calls," opens "Finale" with
mystery and allure, and closes "End Credits" with quiet beauty.
While Elfman's two primary themes for
Nightbreed
clearly define its romantic inclinations, other ideas offer brute force
or disturbing environments. A "beast" theme presents the glory of the
monsters with demented choral lines in "Dream" and "Meat" and is adopted
by the human hero himself by "Boone Transforms," eventually directly
fighting the mob's militia tones in "Trouble in Midian." An outright
villain theme is less defined, its creepy piano ambience in "Grinnell"
and elsewhere. Straddling the line between all these identities is
Elfman's circus theme, the descending four-note choral line from
Scrooged that dominates the quirky character cue of "Carnival"
and faintly returns as appropriate in "Ohnaka Go Boom!" This idea is
extensively explored in "End Credits," however, by which point it
becomes a direct preview of the Penguin material in
Batman
Returns. These themes are cleverly constructed for easy reference
throughout the score, though with the constant bombardment of horror
thrashing, it's hard not to return to "End Credits" as the easy
highlight. One of the more intriguing elements of
Nightbreed is
that it exhibits a stylish usage of a South American pan flute to echo
in the fog of mystery. Further pushing the diversity of the monsters,
the composer also employs a Balinese gamelan and African drumming. Other
instrumental uses of note include a standard flute fluttering with great
skill in "Carnival Underground," the monstrously brutal percussive
display (especially for seemingly uncontrolled timpani) in "Meat for the
Beast," and the rolling piano under the title theme in "Rachel's
Oratory." A harp shines in the more somber character cues for the
primary themes. Some listeners may be bothered by the heavy borrowing in
choral usage from
Scrooged, however, as well as the in-joke of a
country song on the album. "Country Skin" is actually an Oingo Boingo
creation adapted sickly with a sense of humor and was recorded at a
variety of speeds for this project. On the other hand, one fantastic
action cue, "Berserker's Party," was composed by Shirley Walker during
the chaotic re-editing of the film, and it uses a few of Elfman's motifs
in more conventional orchestral action modes. An expanded Intrada
Records album in 2024 provides more much horror filler than necessary
and is short on the alternate score cues, concentrating on four versions
of the song and related source material instead. The original album will
suffice for most. While
Nightbreed features bombastic horror
exhibitions for most of its length, it has about fifteen minutes of
truly beautiful writing by Elfman, and the score as a whole remains an
ever-intriguing work.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Danny Elfman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.16
(in 89 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.27
(in 153,886 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert of the 1990 MCA album includes no extra information
about the score or film. That of the 2024 Intrada album contains details
about both.
