| Product: |
Cherry 2000 / No Man's Land - Basil Poledouris - Soundtrack |
| Date: |
25/06/07 (123 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Imaginative, well-constructed fun adventure music with a pseudo-futuristic patina
Disadvantages: A little disjointed perhaps and the make-weight score is unremarkable
I wonder what it is that so many extremely bad movies often seem to attract some of their assigned composer’s best work. There are surprisingly many examples of superior scores being produced by many people for films that have been either complete flops or simply mind-numbingly terrible. Scores such as James Horner’s early Krull, Vangelis’ Conquest of Paradise, John Debney’s CutThroat Island, or more recent examples like Alan Silvestri’s The Mummy Returns and James Newton Howard’s Lady in the Water, are all scores that more than over-achieve the films they have been written for. It is not even a case of a terrible film making any music sound better than it is, but all of those I mentioned are among the best the composers’ have managed to put together during their entire careers, in most cases proving to be about the only things that have kept their source films alive in memory. To add to the quite extensive list we can also add Basil Poledouris’ Cherry 2000, a score that is just an unbelievable pleasure to listen to. The film itself strives to be a modernized western set in an apocalyptic Mad Max world of machinery and devastation. Starring Melanie Griffith in a very early role and David Andrews, the film details one man’s attempt to replace a short-circuited substitute wife-sex slave -robot named ”Cherry 2000” (Pamela Gidley) with a rare replacement. He recruits the help of a professional ”tracker” named Edith ”E” Johnson (Griffith) to help along on the dangerous route to claim a new body to the ”love of his life” only to (surprisingly) find how an artificial woman is no replacement for a real one. In all honesty, the movie sucks and rightfully only exists as a cult favourite of a few people (I mean where else can you see somebody firing a bazooka on a quite large mountain and blasting it to pieces or where you'll get confirmation that no-one will take you seriously if you come from Anaheim?).
For Poledouris, the year 1987 was a particularly prolific one. Having already written fantastic scores for directors John Milius and Paul Verhoeven such as Big Wednesday, The Blue Lagoon, Conan the Barbarian and Flesh + Blood, 1987 was the year he managed to pump out scores for the epic mini-series Amerika, a couple of smaller scores for Prison for Children and Island Sons, and an iconic score for RoboCop, he finally rounded out the year with the equally epic Cherry 2000 and the more surplus No Man’s Land. With Cherry 2000, Poledouris was able to pull out all stops in experimenting with what he could get away with. Describing the score as a mix of Mozart, Morricone and Moroder (the three M’s), what resulted was a score that was something that mixed the three disparate elements together into a functioning synthesis underlined by Poledouris own sense of harmonic stability. Taking the classical orchestrational clarity of Mozart, he added the stance of a modern western in the style of Ennio Morricone’s Dollars’ Trilogy with its wide brass statements of theme and the synths of Georgio Moroder that also seem to hark to the masterly synth incorporation of Jerry Goldsmith during this time. Incredibly, the three clashing elements taken from the three composers’ styles mix together as if they are meant to be together from the beginning.
The score is rooted by the use of three main themes. The first is a heroic, Morricone-ish theme for Griffith’s character, which is the main emblem of this score as a modern day western and crops up on a regular basis in cues such as ”The Barricades”, ”Photograb” and the many action outings that frequent the score. Secondly we have an all-purpose action motif that is more bouncingly synthesised (like a synthetic music box) that crops up just about as often as E’s Theme, the main presentation coming in the cue ”Lights On,” whose beginning sounds funnily much like A-ha’s song ”Take On Me” and a coda of epic proportions. The third main element is the sweepingly cheesy love theme for Cherry 2000 that begins the score with its James Bond-like main title sequence and again crops up often, most notably in the cues ”Cherry Awakens” and ”End of Lester.” These three elements flit in and out of the score, creating a sonic canvas of quite imaginative interest, suggesting a much better movie than what you actually get.
Making full use of imaginative orchestrations such as the sparse use of the electric guitar (as in ”Drive to Gloryhole”), special percussion or light synth usage (used more as colouristic devices than an actual driving force), there is certainly nothing to feel bad about any of the music. Particularly the grand action sequences of ”Magneto”, ”Thrashing of Sky Ranch”, ”Truck Fight” and ”End of Lester” provide some pulse pounding action moments to die for with a healthy dose of all three main themes for some wonderfully extended outings, though much of the music is decidedly more light-hearted in tone than in say the same year’s RoboCop. On the whole the score is remarkably fresh from being dated or overly cheesy, the only moments of the 80’s synth cheapness creeping in with the cues ”Hooded Love” and ”Juke’s Jukebox”, both utilizing the love theme as their source of perverted synth manipulation. Also the cue ”Jake Killed” sounds like something that Don Davis took as a model for the techno underscore for his Matrix scores, which however is not to say that it is bad, simply a bit different from the other music on the album. The actual performance of the Hungarian State Opera Orchestra may not be on the level of say the London Symphony Orchestra during their best days, but the translucent writing works wonderfully for the ensemble with a suitably full (though still slightly dry-ish) mix giving credence for the sound, never being diminished in power when it is needed.
The original album release for Cherry 2000 actually came as late as 1989 when Varèse Sarabande released the score as their first limited 3000 unit ”Club” title ever and has since become a valuable collector’s item. In fact, Cherry 2000 also holds the record of most money paid for a soundtrack album, an original Club title once selling for a total of $2500. It was not until 2004 that the Belgian Prometheus Records acquired the score and released an expanded album of it, restoring a couple of extra cues (among alternate mixes for the seminal cues ”Photograb” and ”Lights On”) for a more widely available release, something which I’m exceedingly grateful for. Coupled along with Cherry 2000, was another out-of-print 1987 score from Poledouris, No Man’s Land, a modern day yuppie cop thriller, that elicited an all-synth score from Poledouris, his attempt at ”using electronics to a larger degree than he had been used to”. The result is nothing of real interest, a score that is filled with pounding 1980’s fuel-powered synthesizers for a sound that by today is terribly dated and largely forgettable. But the plus side of course is to get an alternate view of what Poledouris’ music could also be alongside his more symphonically masterful creations even within the same year. It makes for an interesting study piece, but little else (though the cue ”Payoff” was actually tracked into his score for The Hunt for Red October in 1990).
So, on the whole, Cherry 2000 is a wonderful and fun surprise in the day-and-age of scores that are more centered on creating atmosphere than any truly memorable material. It is quite remakable how fresh Cherry 2000 still sounds even after all these years and through all of the synth usage, which by 1980’s standards is something not easily escaping the super-cheese factor. I have always had a soft spot for the Morricone western sound and Cherry 2000 provides me a sort of modernistic follow-up to the sound, mixing in Morricone’s classic Dollar scores with Brian May’s fuel-hungry Mad Max scores for something that is just a pleasure to listen to, making me wonder why I hesitated so long in getting the score for myself. It is quite honestly one of my absolute favourite Basil Poledouris scores ever written, sitting just a peg or two below Conan the Barbarian, but a step or two above RoboCop as a complete listen. With Amazon quite uncharacteristically offering it at £13.99 (they usually don’t list Prometheus titles), it is a score that I say is an absolute delight to have and should be grabbed while you still can. I will give it my full endorsement, hoping to at least sound persuasive enough to get a few people test the cold water with the brilliance of Basil, who unfortunately died of cancer in late-2006 quite unexpectedly for many of us film score fans who didn’t even know he was ill. So, for fans of fantastic 1980s sci-fi/western scores, Cherry 2000 is a score not to be missed on any account. I guarantee it will not disappoint.
- Track Listing for Expanded 2004 album -
1. Cherry 2000 – Main Title (1:58)
2. Photograb (alternate) (1:11)
3. Cherry Shorts Out (1:32)
4. Lights On (alternate) (1:51)
5. Flashback #1/Drive to Gloryhole (1:25)
6. ”E” Flips Sam (1:17)
7. The Barricades (1:51)
8. Flashback #2 (1:06)
9. Photograb (1:11)
10. Magneto (4:19)
11. Pipeline (0:57)
12. Water Slide* (1:04)
13. Juke’s Jukebox* (1:37)
14. Lights Out* (1:26)
15. Moving* (0:37)
16. Thrashing of Sky Ranch (3:24)
17. Drive (1:56)
18. Hooded Love (1:16)
19. Ambush in the Cave/Truck Fight (2:13)
20. Lester Follows* (0:19)
21. Drop ’em* (0:41)
22. Lester on the Move (0:39)
23. Rauda (on) Mic (0:43)
24. Jake Killed* (0:51)
25. Plane to Vegas (1:01)
26. Cherry Awakens* (1:13)
27. Lights On (1:51)
28. End of Lester (5:02)
29. The End (0:37)
30. No Man’s Land – Main Title (2:58)
31. P.C.H. (1:01)
32. First Score (2:25)
33. Lone Score (1:18)
34. Love Theme (1:38)
35. Chase (5:27)
36. Porsche Power/Drive My Car? (2:39)
37. Ann Buttons (1:13)
38. Payoff (3:27)
39. Showtime (4:16)
40. No Man’s Land – End Credits (3:01)
Bonus Track:
41 Cherry 2000 Movietone* (0:56)
* previously unreleased
Cherry 2000
Produced by Basil Poledouris
Music Composed and Conducted by Basil Poledouris
Performed by The Hungarian State Opera Orchestra
Synthesizers: Eric Austin & Brian Gascoigne
Orchestrated by Steven Scott Smalley
Recording Engineer: Eric Tomlinson
Music Editor: Tom Villano
No Man’s Land
Produced by Basil Poledouris
Music Composed (and Conducted) by Basil Poledouris
Orchestrated by Steven Scott Smalley
Recording and Film Mix Engineer: Joel Moss
Recorded at Record Planet, Stage L
Cherry 2000: 1987 / Varèse Sarabande, 1989 (VCL 8903.1)
No Man’s Land: Varèse Sarabande, 1987 (VCD 47352)
Prometheus Records, 2004 (PCD 155) (produced by Ford A. Thaxton)
© berlioz, 2007
Summary: A futuristic western score for the desperado in search for sex machinery.
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