April 3: National Film Score Day- Write about a movie that has a great score.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Exploitation-film historian A.C. Nicholas, who has a sketchy background and hails from parts unknown in Western Pennsylvania, was once a drive-in theater projectionist and disk jockey. In addition to being a writer, editor, podcaster, and voice-over artist, he’s a regular guest co-host on the streaming Drive-In Asylum Double Feature and has been a guest on the Making Tarantino podcast. He also contributes to the Drive-In Asylum fanzine. His essay, “Of Punks and Stains and Student Films: A Tribute to Night Flight, the 80s Late-Night Cult Sensation,” appeared in Drive-In Asylum #26.
Dragonslayer (1981) and Trancers (1984): Two Great Film Scores but Only One in Service of Its Film
The mating of visuals to music can be transcendent. Think of how many movies, even stone-cold masterpieces, wouldn’t be as effective without their iconic scores by musical geniuses such as Max Steiner, Erich Korngold, Bernard Herrmann, John Williams, Miklos Rozsa, Henry Mancini, John Barry, Jerry Goldsmith, Vangelis, Danny Elfman, and, of course, the greatest film composer of all time, Ennio Morricone.* And we can’t forget groups who did scores, like Goblin, Tangerine Dream, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Who, Nine Inch Nails, and Queen. Music has always been a part of movies even in the silent era.
A great score can elevate a movie or hurt it. My fundamental maxim for judging the effectiveness of a score is whether I’m paying more attention to the score than the film itself. During my prime theater-going days, I went to see Dragonslayer, a now-forgotten film from 1981, a year packed with classics like Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back, Superman II, Altered States, Flash Gordon,** The Evil Dead, An American Werewolf in London, The Howling, Ms. 45, and Possession. I’d read in reviews before buying my ticket that the score by legendary composer Alex North was exceptional. My expectations were high.
So there I sat on opening day in a Philadelphia grindhouse—not one of the scarier ones—enjoying Dragonslayer, a decent enough film. And the reviewers were right: Alex North’s score was fantastic. (It was later nominated for an Academy Award.***) The score was so good that it took me right out of the film’s universe. The music had transformed this urban shithole, with urine-stained floor, broken seats, and tattered velvet curtain, into Carnegie Hall. (If only it could have literally done that—and changed the wino snoring next to me into a tuxedoed high-society type offering me a single malt Scotch.)
It was then that I realized that this was not a good thing. All the effort that had gone into creating that awesome-looking dragon had been lost on me. I’d closed my eyes and was zoning out to the music. While it was a classic symphonic score, it wasn’t the usual rousing John Williams stuff. Instead, it was more brooding. North had incorporated complex lines with counterpoint and some atonality. It’s not that the score was inappropriate to the action. It’s just that it was so much better than the film itself that it became a distraction and put a damper on my viewing experience. Dragonslayer’s score, though outstanding, does no service to the film it supports.
But sometimes—more accurately, rarely—a film with a few good elements that would otherwise be forgotten is improved so much by an unexpectedly great score that both the film and its score live on, each beloved. Case in point: Trancers (1984) a film I first watched on home video.
On paper, Trancers doesn’t look like much: a low-budget mash-up of Blade Runner and The Terminator that Charles Band and his Empire International Pictures dumped into Chicago and LA theaters to make a few bucks before the VHS cassettes hit the shelves at Blockbuster. But Empire made exploitation films that were a cut above the rest, so it looked good, courtesy ace cinematographer Mac Ahlberg. And it had some other good things going for it: stand-up comedian Tim Thomerson, perfectly cast as Jack Deth, the futuristic gumshoe; future Best Actress winner Helen Hunt as his juvenile love interest; and a funny, clever screenplay from Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo. That duo went on to write even more great stuff, including Zone Troopers (1985), Eliminators (1986), and The Wrong Guys (1988) for Empire; The Flash (1990) for television; The Rocketeer (1991) for Disney; and Da 5 Bloods (2020) for Spike Lee, which was released after De Meo’s death. These things make Trancers memorable, to be sure, but you’ll be blown away by the score by Phil Davies and Mark Ryder.
Like the score in many 80s films, the Trancers score used the premier electronic instrument of the day, the Fairlight synthesizer. The main theme, which serves as the musical motif throughout the film, is simplicity itself: an initial burst of synthesizer whine, followed by a slow, haunting melodic line in a minor key supported by swelling harmonies. It’s mournful mood music that stands in contrast to the film’s action scenes. The film may be part science fiction, part noir, but the music emphasizes the noir. Like the Dragonslayer score, it calls attention to itself, but does so in a way that doesn’t violate my rule. Instead of distracting, it engages.**** George Bernard Shaw once said, “Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. To this day, I can’t listen to the Trancers soundtrack without being moved.
Trancers was so successful on home media that it became a franchise with seven installments.***** Charles Band’s brother Richard, Empire’s house composer, reworked Davies and Ryder’s compositions through Trancers III before the uneven series turned to other composers and music with lesser effect. Recently, there’s even been talk of a Trancers TV series. Jack Deth may live on, abetted, I hope, by the original Trancers score.
But, you ask, “Isn’t the Trancers soundtrack just a knock-off of Vangelis’s opening theme from Blade Runner?” It’s true that Trancers and Blade Runner are both science-fiction films with synthesizer scores. The difference is that the Trancers score, even if it was inspired by Blade Runner, is better. If you weren’t scorched by my hot take there, here’s a molten-lava take: The Trancers score is among the best movie scores of all time. If you don’t believe me, some kind soul has put together a 10-hour loop of the theme, which you can listen to on YouTube.
There you have it: two genre films, Dragonslayer, a big-budget studio film with high ambitions, and Trancers, a low-budget exploitation film with modest ambitions, both with excellent scores. But only one score does what it’s supposed to do, and it does so beautifully. I want the Trancers theme played at my funeral as I head down the line to the next life.
* For my money, the scene in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly with Eli Wallach as Tuco running through the cemetery to “Ecstasy of Gold” by Maestro Morricone is the greatest music cue in any movie ever. If perfection can exist in this world, this is it.
** If you read any discussion of movie soundtracks mentioning the rock group Queen, you’ll always sing aloud “Flash! A-ah… Savior of the universe!” See? You did just now. It’s an immutable law of the universe.
*** North received 15 Academy Award nominations, including one for the American standard “Unchained Melody,” which he wrote early in his career for the film Unchained. If that was the only thing he’d ever written, I’d say he had an amazing life.
**** Just last month, Band released to YouTube a black-and-white remastering of Trancers. The noirish score complements the monochrome images even more brilliantly.
*****Six features and one 20-minute short. The short, originally intended as a segment of the Empire portmanteau film Pulse Pounders, was shot in 1988 but was unreleased until 2013. It fits between Trancers and Trancers II on the series’ timeline and is lovingly called “Trancers 1.5” by fans.
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