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Posted: |
Aug 26, 2022 - 12:46 PM
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By: |
McD
(Member)
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#15 (of #31)
WOLFEN [1981] (Rejected Score)
Composer Promo MED3004 (1996) ***** (58 min)
Intrada ISCV206 (2012) ***** (61 mins)
Best Track: Main Title and First Kill
Safan’s only rejected score came early. And, thankfully, he survived. I’m far from convinced Jóhann Jóhannsson and James Horner weren’t psychologically damaged when it happened to them. And (as I’ve posted ad nauseam) after getting kicked off Troy, Gabriel Yared’s mojo vanished overnight. The 20 scores before are all classics - the reason he’d been the best film composer for a decade. The 20 scores after are all mediocre.
Safan’s rejected Wolfen score turns out to be one of his best known works. His atonal, experimental work was very much of the moment (a year after Altered States) and is totally 'out there'. Especially considering his career leading up to it had been pretty lightweight (in musical palette, not in quality). I'd personally describe this score - uniquely in his canon - as unknowable. It doesn't matter how many times I listen to it. Other than the opener and the last two, I have no idea where most of these tracks are going even on a 40th listen. As an experience away from the film (the only game in town) it's mightily impressive if a tad overlong. But its nature makes a considered edit a tough task.
Safan could have no clue this would ever see the light of day. So he recycled it a couple of times (maybe more). Parts of the score turn up in Tag: The Assassination Game and Nightmares over the next two years.
ON CD: This came out as a composer promo around 1996 with minimal artwork. It later got a proper release from Intrada with a few additional minutes, good sound, and a nice set of liner notes. It’s the version to go for. Both are currently OOP.
A re-release could happen. It’s unlikely but not impossible it may even be re-attached to the film at some point. These online clamorings for obscure director's cuts occasionally come to fruition these days. Then again, the composer you would now have to replace is the most legendary member of the entire enterprise.
The FILM: Well, if nothing else it gave me a new appreciation for Safan’s approach. I didn’t care for Wolfen. The movie took 90 minutes to get out of the first act and then it was almost over. This is a 25 minute anthology episode completely overblown. It survives entirely on unusual atmosphere and Safan would have hit those marks more memorably than the replacement score managed.
The Hispanic Edward James Olmos gets the lead Native American part. Ouch. Let's hope John Leguizamo never finds out. And to add insult to injury, the film has the obligatory ‘white bloke wants a chat with a Native who demands he walk precariously across a high structure to meet him’ scene. This exact moment also appears in the only Native American drama I’m aware of ever made in the UK.
The film gets a big thumbs down from me, but it has a cult following. And I don't think Safan's career would have turned out that differently if his score remained.
TRIVIA: Is Safan a big Albert Finney fan? 20 years after this debacle, he finally scored a Finney film, Delivering Milo. And promptly, this wish fulfilled, left the filmscoring world for good.
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Posted: |
Aug 27, 2022 - 1:14 PM
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By: |
chadergeist
(Member)
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I would love to see Wolfen with Craig Safan's score, if Warner Brothers would have released it on bluray with two different audio tracks. One with James Horner's original score and another one with Craig Safan's rejected score.
#15 (of #31)
WOLFEN [1981] (Rejected Score)
Composer Promo MED3004 (1996) ***** (58 min)
Intrada ISCV206 (2012) ***** (61 mins)
Best Track: Main Title and First Kill
Safan’s only rejected score came early. And, thankfully, he survived. I’m far from convinced Jóhann Jóhannsson and James Horner weren’t psychologically damaged when it happened to them. And (as I’ve posted ad nauseam) after getting kicked off Troy, Gabriel Yared’s mojo vanished overnight. The 20 scores before are all classics - the reason he’d been the best film composer for a decade. The 20 scores after are all mediocre.
Safan’s rejected Wolfen score turns out to be one of his best known works. His atonal, experimental work was very much of the moment (a year after Altered States) and is totally 'out there'. Especially considering his career leading up to it had been pretty lightweight (in musical palette, not in quality). I'd personally describe this score - uniquely in his canon - as unknowable. It doesn't matter how many times I listen to it. Other than the opener and the last two, I have no idea where most of these tracks are going even on a 40th listen. As an experience away from the film (the only game in town) it's mightily impressive if a tad overlong. But its nature makes a considered edit a tough task.
Safan could have no clue this would ever see the light of day. So he recycled it a couple of times (maybe more). Parts of the score turn up in Tag: The Assassination Game and Nightmares over the next two years.
ON CD: This came out as a composer promo around 1996 with minimal artwork. It later got a proper release from Intrada with a few additional minutes, good sound, and a nice set of liner notes. It’s the version to go for. Both are currently OOP.
A re-release could happen. It’s unlikely but not impossible it may even be re-attached to the film at some point. These online clamorings for obscure director's cuts occasionally come to fruition these days. Then again, the composer you would now have to replace is the most legendary member of the entire enterprise.
The FILM: Well, if nothing else it gave me a new appreciation for Safan’s approach. I didn’t care for Wolfen. The movie took 90 minutes to get out of the first act and then it was almost over. This is a 25 minute anthology episode completely overblown. It survives entirely on unusual atmosphere and Safan would have hit those marks more memorably than the replacement score managed.
The Hispanic Edward James Olmos gets the lead Native American part. Ouch. Let's hope John Leguizamo never finds out. And to add insult to injury, the film has the obligatory ‘white bloke wants a chat with a Native who demands he walk precariously across a high structure to meet him’ scene. This exact moment also appears in the only Native American drama I’m aware of ever made in the UK.
The film gets a big thumbs down from me, but it has a cult following. And I don't think Safan's career would have turned out that differently if his score remained.
TRIVIA: Is Safan a big Albert Finney fan? 20 years after this debacle, he finally scored a Finney film, Delivering Milo. And promptly, this wish fulfilled, left the filmscoring world for good.
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I don't know if you'd be interested, but I added a couple of missing credits to his IMDb page in the last week:
He's credited with the theme music (the only score in it) for a documentary called "Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8". And I added a pilot not previously on IMDb; from 1984, it's called "Poor Richard" and people involved in the production of "Cheers" brought this to us.
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I would love to see Intrada Records release a score soundtrack cd to the early 80's movie "Nightmares".
Why Intrada? They've just put out the worst all-round CD release I own (their second awful stab at Last Starfighter in a row - they didn't bother to quality check either) and haven't put out any premiere releases of old Safan titles for almost a decade.
Dragon's Domain, on the other hand, have released FOUR this year alone!! And it's only August.
I wouldn't trust DD...Ford is behind that outfit and their awful customer service....Ford!!!!....alone should show they'll bollocks it up.
Ok Intrada, unnecessarily, went to the Starfighter well again with poor results. I'd still gift them $20 for Nightmares, than put a penny in Thaxtons purse. Besides....Universal - Intrada. They wouldn't even answer the phone for Ford.
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Make a list of those titles and e-mail me. I'll check them out and let you know what I can do.
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Posted: |
Sep 9, 2022 - 1:47 PM
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By: |
McD
(Member)
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#16 (of #33)
DARKROOM [1981]
Dragon’s Domain DDR647 (2022) 96 mins *****
Best Track: The Bogeyman Will Get You
In the 1980s, Safan did several anthology shows but normally only an episode or two (Hitchcock, Crypt, No-so-Amazing Stories). He had bulk scoring duties on just two - Darkroom and (my all time fave) The Twilight Zone four years later. I never, ever expected to see this earlier one on CD.
I’m like a three-decade-long hardcore fan of Nirvana’s Nevermind only now hearing Bleach. The writing would get sharper and the production went off the charts. But the germ of it all is right here.
Safan’s smaller synth arsenal of 1981 is apparent but he makes the most of it for 90+ minutes of creepily atmospheric miniatures. I’m indifferent so far only to Catnip and love the other eight scores. He didn’t re-invent the wheel with each like he would on TZ (Daisies feels like the end to the track before, The Partnership, not a new score), but it’s still great stuff from beginning to end.
The theme from Make-up got a makeover for his Amazing Stories episode Main Attraction four years later. Closing score Guillotine, at a whopping 24 minutes, is the grandest on offer but is perhaps too meandering at times to be the best of the bunch.
THE TV SHOW: It’s easy to see why this was cancelled. Even an interesting idea (Daisies) never feels fully formed. And the James Coburn intros seem improvised on the spot. If Rod Serling and Roald Dahl proved anything, it’s that writers make better on-screen narrators than actors do.
Uncle George is, however, my idea of what an anthology episode should be. Short, clever, and unexpectedly oh so evil.
Guillotine has superior production quality to the rest of it by some distance. Given Nightmares (1983) is supposedly four superior episodes of Darkroom chucked out theatrically, Guillotine may have been in the running for that. It’s better than the four used (not hard to achieve), but perhaps less suited to the film title.
TRIVIA: Turns out Safan had a crack at Phantom of the Opera forty years before he scored the Lon Chaney silent film. The first 30 seconds of this disc is the score to Herbert Lom’s Phantom (1962) which opens an episode. It’s even tonally similar to what he did with it in 2019.
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Posted: |
Sep 11, 2022 - 2:39 PM
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By: |
McD
(Member)
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#17 (of #33)
MAJOR PAYNE [1995]
Composer Promo MED3002 ***** (44 mins)
Best Track: Payne in Love
I was tortured on this one. My feelings on it are mixed, but I'm ranking it based on its finer moments. I could also make the case for putting it 10 places lower. At its best, this is great stuff. Incredibly, it’s Safan’s only substantial big screen exposure after 1988. The movie was a hit! Although it didn’t make any kind of splash in the UK.
It’s the first of two consecutive Nick Castle / Safan summer films, both with near identical titles. It’s also the first score where you can hear the influence of Safan’s mentor Elmer Bernstein loud and clear in the theme. And several other composers, which is one of my peeves - it’s something of a hodge podge. Even the secondary theme (Opening Track from 0:30) feels out of place and would have worked better in Last Starfighter or Son of the Morning Star.
Training Montage even has a moment where it goes from Goldsmith-esque to Barry-esque without a single breath in between (0:26 - 0:49).
But there’s that love theme. Payne in Love is so similar in DNA to the love theme from Mr. Wrong I’m convinced he wrote both on the same day, using the best one first. It’s beautiful, the best love theme of his on CD and a first draft pick for any Safan ‘Best Of’ from his theatrical releases. [I’m sitting on a love theme even better, circa 1999, but have no idea what it’s from. I can only hope I’ve nailed it by the time I get to the Downloads ranking]
The Film: I have mixed feelings here too. I watched it in chunks, finishing two months after I started. It was a slog, but Wayans was laugh out loud funny at times. He deserved a better career. And I noted Safan left the opening cue off his promo disc entirely. A good decision. It’s a rock’n’roll concoction (but definitely him), best left in the film.
TRIVIA: Major Payne gets my vote for the worst acting of all time... on a poster. Just check out that CD cover. Razzie nominations could be made on that picture alone.
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Posted: |
Oct 9, 2022 - 12:11 PM
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By: |
McD
(Member)
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#18 (of #33)
STAND AND DELIVER [1988]
Varese Sarabande VCD70459 ****
Varese Sarabande VCL11171183 (2017) ****
Best track: Pancho and Lupe
This is Safan’s second favourite score after Last Starfighter. Perhaps as it’s his one film nominated for a major Oscar (Best Actor). It's also become one of the most watched in America, shown in schools to this day. I thought this was exaggerated, but since starting this ranking, I met a 21 year old American on a train. He’d seen it twice, during Maths classes! He wasn’t aware of any 'issues' with the film.
The South American score stylings are effective with a nice, compact presentation and great sound on both CD releases. But whilst the brevity is a plus, in neither its main title nor best track does it justify a higher ranking. And a few similar scores (like Courage) feel superior. And, not for the first time, I’d like to replace all the percussion in the Main Title.
Varese revisited the disc in 2017, with a minor sonic touch up (the first release is just fine). And, more impressively, new liner notes. It has gone from the worst Safan booklet to one of the best. We hear of Safan picking up South American instruments for the forgotten Buenos Aires-standing-in-for-L.A. The Stranger [1987], which he then used for drug trade movie Courage [1986] (using a time machine perhaps), again here for ‘Bolivian’ teacher Jaime Escalante.
THE FILM: Well, there’s a big freakin’ elephant in the room. It was obvious to me from first viewing in the 90s. Stand and Deliver is about the overturning of a miscarriage of justice. Problem is, everyone in this film was guilty exactly as charged.
A whole class of students cheat in their calculus exam. Same wrong answers. The scam was obvious, the results withdrawn. The school and their teacher fight this ‘injustice’ (even accusing the Andy Garcia character of being a race traitor for disbelieving Hispanic students). The class win the right to take the test again. What happens next is neither here nor there, but the last line of the film is ‘I want the original results re-instated’. They were. Shamefully so.
Contemporaneous reporting concluded the students had cheated just as Andy Garcia alleges (but bizarrely said ‘the spirit of the film is still true’). It should have been just as obvious to the filmmakers (and I'm far from convinced it was not). The students finally admitted it a decade ago, long before my train companion was forced to watch it twice.
Does it matter if something’s a big lie if a lot of people are inspired by it anyway? Yes it does.
Dodgeball might play even funnier since Lance Armstrong’s exposure. But the truth makes an utter mockery of this entire film. It would also be the first of several Safan projects in just a few years whose treatment of their subject matter went beyond the pale. And compared to the Putin-esque propaganda of Shootdown (also 1988, score unreleased), Stand And Deliver is practically a harmless romp.
Still, Olmos is brilliant in it. And the score is rather good.
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