THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER

DAVID WHITAKER

Rating:

Original Review: They don't write scores like this anymore. In fact, now that I come to think about it, I don't think ANYONE ever wrote scores like The Sword and the Sorcerer, except for maybe Erich Wolfgang Korngold on a bad day. The Sword and the Sorcerer was, as the title suggests, a would-be sword and sorcery epic that was released in the genre's early-80s heyday, hot on the heels of films such as Dragonslayer, Excalibur and Conan the Barbarian. Directed by the legendary Albert Pyun, whose recent credits include classic films such as Blast, Adrenalin: Fear The Rush and Mean Guns (I'm being ironic here!), the film suffered at the box office by being far too excessively violent and gory, and by not having a bankable star in the lead role. Instead, the film employed the services of second-string players such as Lee Horsley, Kathleen Beller, Simon MacCorkindale and Richard Lynch. Similarly, the slightly less-than-famous David Whitaker was hired to provide the music, a man who has since vanished from the cinema scoring scene, leaving behind an uninspiring list of credits including Run Wild Run Free, several Hammer horror flicks (Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, Old Dracula), Dominique and Death Wish 2. This is a score that desperately wants to be a grand orchestral tour-de-force in the greatest action-adventure tradition. If John Williams, or Korngold, or Alfred Newman, or even Horner or Goldsmith had written it, then it would have probably gone down as another Sea Hawk, or Star Wars, or Krull. However, because it's by David Whitaker, it is merely a score which gives off the appearance of being an epic, but lacks the class, style and orchestral inventiveness its more successful contemporaries had. The other problem with The Sword and the Sorcerer is that it's extremely cheesy. Think of the cheesiest piece of music you have ever heard, and then add on three extra layers of cheese and thin coating of Parmesan, and you'll catch my drift. The march that opens the 'Sword and the Sorcerer Overture' is the prime example of this mozzarella overload, a cue in which the flutes sound too shrill, the horns off key, and the melody too bouncy for its own good. It tries ever-so hard to be likeable, and bears a striking resemblance to the theme from Masters of the Universe which Bill Conto would compose five years later but, in trying to appeal to the film music everyman, ends up going too far and, instead of liking it, you end up laughing at it. This is not to say that score is without merit. On the contrary, there are some interesting passages of orchestral dissonance which put me in mind of Krull, some decent action cues ('Skull Cave', 'Castle Chase', 'Round Table Fight'), a lovely string love theme which gets a fabulous rendition in 'Alana's Theme', and a sorrowful but noble secondary theme heard at the end of the 'Overture' and again during cues such as 'Black Sorcery/Kingdom of Eh-Dan', 'The Bordello' and the final rendition in 'Love Theme/Epilogue/End Credits'. The really surprising thing is the rather poor sound quality. Considering that Supertracks and Alan Howarth re-mastered this from the original recording, it is rather muffled and poorly defined. Although it does not really diminish the listening experience to any degree, is nevertheless a little annoying. The artwork is smashing though, as are the liner notes and the fact that the CD is of extended length, featuring eight or nine previously unreleased cues. Personally, though, I find that I don't listen to it all the way through very often, mainly because the smell of the gorgonzola gets too overpowering.

Track Listing: Running Time: 69 minutes 35 seconds

Supertracks STCD-884 (1982/1998)

Music composed and conducted by David Whitaker. Performed by The Graunke Symphony Orchestra. Edited by Fred Aronow. Digitally edited and mastered by James Nelson. Album produced by David Whitaker and Ford A. Thaxton.


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