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Review of Nightbreed (Danny Elfman)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... on any album if you seek the most creatively adventurous
and instrumentally diverse horror score of Danny Elfman's early
career.
Avoid it... if only fifteen minutes of thematic beauty and fantasy intrigue cannot compensate for an onslaught of brutal symphonic horror material that otherwise dominates the work.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
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. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
1990 MCA Album:
Total Time: 46:38
* Performed by Michael Stanton 2024 Intrada Album: Total Time: 142:46
* Performed by Michael Stanton
NOTES & QUOTES:
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.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Nightbreed are Copyright © 1990, 2024, MCA Records, Intrada Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 7/22/98 and last updated 8/2/24. |
