Howard BLAKE
Flash Gordon (also includes music from
Amityville 3D)
arranged and conducted by
the composer
Flash Gordon performed by the National Philharmonic
Amityville 3D performed by the Sinfonia of London
Composer's Promo HBCD 01
[Total 72:00 - Flash Gordon 50: 52 - Amityville 3D 21:08]
How
to get copies of promotional discs
Perhaps it just that its summer, but it's definitely sci-fi month. That's
right, not SF or Science Fiction. Prime slices of tacky pulp. Alongside
Battlefield Earth comes a reissue of Jerry Goldsmith's
Supergirl (both of which I review elsewhere on FMOTW this month),
and the first ever issue Howard Blake's music for the 1980 version of Flash
Gordon. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. A year before
Star Wars producer Dino De Laurentis burnt a huge heap of cash on
a spectacular and spectacularly misjudged remake of 1930's SF / fantasy landmark
King Kong. Apparently he fancied having another go at the 30's, and
why not given that Star Wars was essentially Flash Gordon with
state of the art production values? The resultant film was actually rather
better than many hoped (though the shelved Nic Roeg project could have been
great), with glorious production design that captured well the colours and
look of Alex Raymond's original comic-strip. Howard Blake wrote a striking
score too. I clearly remember sitting in the cinema 20 years ago being struck
by it.
Unfortunately, and bizarrely given that John Williams score for Star
Wars had been so instrumental in the success of that film, to say nothing
of selling a colossal quantity of LPs, the rock band Queen were invited to
contribute to Flash Gordon. Originally the idea was that they would
provide a title song, but things escalated, and they ended-up 'scoring' several
sections of the film with, considering the cod-1930's ambience, completely
inappropriate and crassly heavy-handed rock numbers. A hugely successful
'soundtrack' album was released, and a massive hit single was had. The foundation
was laid for plastering action movies with rock music and editing the result
like a pop video, a dire practice which came to 'maturity' with Top Gun
(1986) and of course Highlander (also 1986), a fantasy adventure virtually
transformed into a feature promo for Queen's then current album, A Kind
of Magic. With Queen's Flash doing so well at the record store,
Howard Blake's score has had to wait 20 years for a release, and even now
it is as a composer's promo rather than a commercial issue.
Clearly it was thought worth sticking with what worked on orchestral SF and
fantasy scores of the time, and there are some very familiar names in the
credits: The National Philharmonic, Sidney Sax, Eric Tomlinson. There is
a fair bit of tape hiss and the sound is not so full-bodied as the recent
Star Wars and Star Trek The Motion Picture soundtrack reissues
from the same period, but it is perfectly adequate and more than does its
job. In-fact, apart from the strong stereo, rather than coming from 1980,
it all round sounds more like a classic Bernard Herrmann soundtrack recording
from the Ray Harryhausen fantasy films part of his career. The album presents
18 tracks from the film, five of which briefly interpolate some of the Queen
material, though this fact can safely be ignored, such a good job did Blake
do of weaving it into the tapestry of his score.
Some very short cues 'The Hero', 'Romantic Reunion', 'The City of the Hawkmen',
leave space for some extended set-pieces such as 'Opening Scenes/Killer
Storm/Plane Crash', with a very old Hollywood / Adventures of Superman action
suspense feel, 'Tree-Stump Duel / Beast in the Swap' and 'Duel on the Sky
Platform'. Some interesting pitch-effects come into play for 'Rocket Flight',
the track developing into a mutant orchestral modern jazz before heading
into Planet of the Apes pounding piano figures, all in 90 seconds.
Only in film music! And so it goes, a thoroughly entertaining and engrossing
score for the committed film music fan. I mentioned Bernard Herrmann above
in respect to the recording, but I would take the comparison further. Both
in the robust action writing and in the glittering oriental fantasy of cues
such as 'The Princess' the legacy of Herrmann's imagination is apparent.
Of course there isn't the big theme here to attract the more casual listener,
Queen having grabbed all the opportunities for a rousing orchestral march,
filling them with their patent brand of carnival rock. Don't however, let
that put you off. The score is well worth exploring, and suggests that had
things been different Howard Blake might have become famous for more than
The Snowman.
Amityville 3D is necessarily a very different affair. The mysterious wordless
female vocal in the main titles soon putting us right to the fact that we
are deep in the heart of supernatural horror territory. It's second rate
horror territory though, and Blake does a good job of bringing some real
style and imaginative orchestrations to the routine proceedings. The female
vocal returns throughout, echoing in the end-titles the best of such moody
doom-laden sound worlds down the decades, demonstrating that Blake certainly
knows how to both establish atmosphere and to Hammer the horror home. Not
worth buying the album for on its own, but certainly well worth having appended
to the main feature
Reviewer
Gary S. Dalkin
