: (Jerry Goldsmith) An obscure but
timelessly entertaining space Western shot by director Peter Hyams in
1981,
in particular) but switches the time and
location to Jupiter's moon of Io in the future. There, one of many
mining colonies is busy sending ore back to Earth on lengthy journeys,
and the lifestyle on the station is identical to what you'd find in
Dodge City of an era past. It's a dirty existence full of addiction,
whores, and other recreation, all kept in line by one sheriff and a
mining company supervisor. The man of law is none other than Sean
Connery in his prime, and he quickly learns that the company is
filtering drugs to the miners so that they work like animals.
Unfortunately, the drugs also drive them mad, leading to several grisly
suicides that catch the attention of the lawman. When he learns the
truth and endeavors to put an end to the company's drug infusions, two
assassins are dispatched to the station to restore the previous balance
of order. Lengthy scenes depicting Connery's preparations for the
ensuing battle (delayed by the crawling pace of space travel) without
the assistance of most of the station's inhabitants yield classic
suspense. The film wasn't highly regarded, despite Hyams' previous
success, and it has since comfortably assumed the role of a hidden gem.
Grotesque human explosions in the vacuum of space and simulated hardcore
sex acts in the station's "recreation room" give the production a
decidedly "B" status. Fun stuff all around, especially when Connery
(sans wig, thankfully) eventually blasts men at point blank range rather
than trouble himself with arrest procedures. The film represented the
second of composer Jerry Goldsmith's collaborations with Hyams, the
former being
. Although the 1978 NASA thriller
received an extremely intelligent and explosive suspense score from
Goldsmith,
is conversely underplayed. In fact,
Goldsmith's work here is so anonymous in its atmospheric stance that it
plays only a minor role in the picture, perhaps a result of the
composer's admitted difficulty handling the assignment. Several of
Goldsmith's cues were removed by Hyams and replaced with either the
music of others or simply dropped in favor of silence. As such,
Goldsmith's score doesn't have a particularly notable impact on the film
until a handful of late cues (culminating in the tonal finale), a
consequence of the fact that it was partially dismembered in the final
edit and because, frankly, it remains one of the composer's weaker
suspense and action scores of this otherwise fruitful period in his
career.
Despite its problematic, sometimes arduous demeanor,
there is no lack of intelligence in the music for
Outland.
Rather, Goldsmith's choice to handle most of the film with churning,
unpleasant rhythmic propulsion in the lower regions of the orchestra
leads to a very challenging listening experience when separated from the
claustrophobic, alienating context of the film. Goldsmith wrote two
themes for
Outland, and while one is applied very specifically to
its targeted representation throughout the picture, the other, lesser
heard idea steals the show at the end. The primary, frequently employed
theme (representing the monolithic, technologically imposing mine) is an
extremely obtuse, unpleasant series of paired notes heard immediately on
woodwinds in "The Mine" and punctuating the sheriff's conversations with
the lead company villain running the station. A secondary part of this
theme is a motif that wavers just one note below key, producing a
pitch-altering effect that will remind some listeners of James Horner's
forthcoming
Star Trek scores. Goldsmith often employs the
menacing note-wavering motif for purpose of suspense in the picture,
made effective by groaning performances by extremely low brass. The
actual theme that exists above that motif is so sparse that its
fragmented applications in between the opening and closing exterior
shots of Io are lost in the ambience of Goldsmith's unsettling
atmosphere. Some will find the environment of
Outland's stalking
cues to be similar to
Alien, though there's less intelligent
creativity here. The most similar piece between the scores is actually
the equally ominous, largely synthetic "Main Titles." The brooding tone
of the lowest registers of the performing group can occupy nearly an
entire cue (such as "The Hostage") and the explosive ensemble
performances of brutal rhythmic pounding (as in "Early Arrival") are,
despite sometimes being quite impressive, not frequent enough to form a
satisfyingly cohesive listening experience. The latter cue, "Early
Arrival," features extremely harsh brass tones and slamming percussion
that foreshadow the confrontation material late in
Star Trek:
Nemesis. The second theme in
Outland is the one for the
sheriff himself and, to a lesser extent, his family, which leaves him
early in the story until he can clean up the station. Goldsmith's use of
this theme in the score not clearly defined, because action variants of
its primary, descending three-note phrase are applied in places that
aren't directly attached to his character (such as the disturbing brass
clusters in "Spiders"). It could be a more general representation of the
overall scheme of the mining operations.
The cue "The Message" barely establishes any warmth in
the secondary theme's depth, which isn't a problem given that it was cut
from the film anyway. But the symphonic crescendo featuring this theme
at the end of "Final Message" is a glorious homage to the similar relief
in
Alien and, for some, may salvage an otherwise non-descript
listening experience. The only other singular cue of note is Goldsmith's
"The Rec Room," a futuristic sex bar piece for synthesizer that is about
as annoying as any single cue in the composer's career; perhaps it's not
surprising that Hyams replaced this cue to better represent the explicit
holographic-style fornication with traditionally harder material. Since
Goldsmith was unavailable for some of Hyams' later requests for changes
in the score, two other composers stepped in to make last minute
contributions. Goldsmith associate Morton Stevens rearranged the final
struggle outside the station during the film's climax, utilizing
Goldsmith's themes and tone but producing a strikingly more linear
action sound. The two recreation room scenes required all new music from
Michael Boddicker, whose music for the seedy environment is just as
futuristic in its employment of splashy synthetic rhythms and sound
effects as Goldsmith's, but more primal and direct in its personality.
On the whole,
Outland is a functional score that will only appeal
on album to the composer's most fanatical collectors. It remains one of
the most effective Goldsmith scores in context to present insurmountable
challenges on album, difficulties exacerbated by the heavy rearrangement
in edits, repetitiveness, and the recording of alternate, supposedly
more accessible takes for the album release. The score's forty-minute
album presentation was long featured on a 1993 GNP Crescendo product
that also includes the album recording of the far superior
Capricorn
One. Together,
Outland is a minimally interesting distraction
from the earlier score, with only its final minute serving to compliment
Capricorn One. A 2001 re-issue from Warner's European division
remastered the same
Outland tracks alone. In 2010, Film Score
Monthly released the score as part of its Silver Age Classics series and
finally assembled a presentation of the score that begins to make sense.
Hearing the Boddicker and Stevens cues in proper order does cause some
continuity problems, though the product includes a second CD with the
album arrangements in their original order. It's somewhat surprising to
see FSM choose
Outland as the recipient of a 5,000-copy pressing
with two CDs and even more in-depth liner notes than usual, but the film
remains a guilty pleasure and the score is as well served as it could
possibly be on the 2010 release.
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- Music as Written for the Film: **
- Music as Heard on the 1993 and 2001 Albums: **
- Music as Heard on the 2010 Album: ***
- Overall: **
| 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.
|
