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Hi all — well, I’ve been redesigning this site for the past few weeks. Still have a lot to go, but it’s given me the opportunity to revisit all of Elfman’s scores once again. Every so often I get caught up listening to the new stuff, or non-film music stuff, and get pulled back into the Elfman material while working on this site. One score I’ve always loved is DARKMAN, and redesigning the DARKMAN page allowed me to revisit this vintage work. There was something in ’90-’92 that made Elfman so impossibly brilliant. His work from that period is my favorite (stretch it to ’94 and include NIGHTMARE (’93) and BLACK BEAUTY too).
What I’d like to do is start up occasional threads on older Elfman scores so we can talk about them. We’re a little strapped for topics right now waiting for CHARLIE and CORPSE BRIDE and I figured any thread other than ones about “hot” daughters and stuff that makes my blood boil would be a good idea!
Any thoughts on DARKMAN?
Ryan
I used to run home from Junior High and blast “Rage”. I think the outlet kept me from shooting people.
I once sat down and had a nice chat with one of the producers of Darkman. He later went on to produce the Xena and Hercules series. But anyway…I loved Darkman. 1990 a favorite year of mine, with Dick Tracy and Edward Scissorhands in that same year. I loved all of those scores.
You want to talk about Darkman, Ryan? Fine!
I think 1990 is perhaps, arguably, Elfman’s finest year, with — dare I say masterpieces? — like Edward Scissorhands, Dick Tracy and Nightbreed.
If you forgive the stupid analogy, Darkman is like a mixed drink, musically speaking — a splash of Bernard Herrmann, another splash of Korngold and Bartók, a tablespoon of Prokofiev (most notably, the Alexander Nevsky fare), and fill the rest of the glass with Danny Elfman, and you get Darkman.
Danny Elfman (as most composers do), has been very vocal about how he dialed, and channeled-upon, his musical predecessors, who in their day, elaborating upon the same musical grammar from composers who came before them:
“I’m always tapping into my 12-year-old mind-set when I’m scoring. You know, everybody does. That’s the whole thing,” Danny Elfman said for a Film Score Monthly interview in ‘97. “Every time I hear a score, if you look deep enough, you may not find a deconstruction of an earlier film, but you’ll find a deconstruction of Mahler, or you’ll find a deconstruction of Korngold, or you’ll find a deconstruction of — it varies — Bartók.”
Carnival from Hell, is a really fun track that transforms tremendously throughout the cue. First, it starts with a nutty curcus-piece, and it merges, musically, with dark, heavy woodwinds and brass. This is completely indicative of opera, with the art of sonic transformation, and other evocative “tools” from opera. This may be why the early Elfman scores, Darkman, Batman, respectively, is sometimes compared to Wagner, due to the abovementioned opera influences.
In a horribly wayward, paragraph-long, review on the Film Tracks website, Darkman got slapped with dubiousness: “The theme promises more than it delivers, and ultimately the score is not very memorable.” Personally, I don’t know what that means.
The Darkman theme is laid all throughout the score, with intelligent orchestration/construction in the Korngold, leitmotif, fashion. The High Steel cue takes the Darkman theme and gives it a Swashbuckler slant, akin to how Korngold would score a scene when Errol Flynn swings across the frame in The Adventures of Robin Hood or The Sea Hawk.
What’s more memorable than Korngold?
In Creating Durante, Elfman’s Korngold and Herrmann influence, for me, is clearly evident throughout the cue. Wherein, the Main Theme is reconstructed and put into all kinds of motivic, and leitmotivic, variations. It’s one of my favorite cues in the album that really epitomizes Elfman’s early, full-blown, Macabre sensibilities — with the Herrmann-brand instrumentation of bass clarinets, twin harps and organs.
(If you listen carefully in Batman, you can hear an early version of the Darkman theme when Vicki Vale’s shoe falls onto the wooden Cathedral stair and Batman looks up; or ties to, anyway — the suit was tight.)
Danny’s macabre sensibilities are probably the most apparent in The Nightmare Before Christmas. Especially during the Doctor Finkelstein/In The Forest and Christmas Eve Montage cues (with the bouncy tubas and playful woodwinds). It’s the hallmark of the vintage film scoring, circa, 30s and 40s, that Danny hearkened back to — the old-timely sound… the kind that was used back when the Warner cartoons had a lot of singing in them.
The Darkman score, starting with the Main Titles, have what I call, the “Sam Raimi sound”. The sound lives, particularly, in the brass. The horns are jaunty, shrill and violent. You can hear them in the Army of Darkness theme, and again, in the Spider-Man movies, more specifically, when Spidey confronts the highjacked convertible in the second film.
The Woe, Darkman…Woe cue is pure Burton-esque melancholy, and again, operatic. Prime vintage Elfman — complete with an organ motif that’s reminiscent of Beetlejuice. It also has a great feeling of isolation, full with harps and xylophones. Moreover, with the building of strings, there’s a little bit of Vertigo in Darkman’s secondary theme presented in the cue.
Rebuilding/Failure has much of that, Alexander Nevsky tone, with an alteration of the Darkman motif. It then merges into jumpy brass and then a viola solo — a Herrmann attribute, which can be heard in On Dangerous Ground, although, of course, the technique is not exclusive to Benny.
Maybe the weak link of the score, at least to my ears — the Love Theme — is just a warm and tender extension of the Darkman theme, but lovely, nevertheless. There are touches of Edward and Batman gooeyness, to boot.
The Fairy tale, nursery rhyme-feel that occupies the Julie Transforms cue, will later be the prototype for Little Demons, and the like. The great Elfman-fantasy archetype.
Rage boasts a very unsettling female choir, with taunting, almost nasally chant performance. With the type of “nah-nah-nah-nah…” you would hear in a schoolyard. This also might be what Darkman is hearing in his tortured head.
This also parallels (perchance), Herrmann’s Sisters score, with the film’s “stabbing” music.
Double Durante is common Elfman staple, with a rolling cadenza for piano (Mars Attacks!) and raw brass. I believe that you can also hear similar brass figures in Batman Returns, Black Beauty, and even Insanity, the Oingo Boingo gem.
Fun instrumentation, here, particularly the Tambourine. The cue very much characterizes Elfman’s patented (not really) dark, fanciful color — the Batman Returns/Nightmare template.
Plot Unfolds (Dancing Freak) is a doozy — nightmarish, Army of Darkness brass, followed by a Danny Elfman fantasia-of-color. It’s proceeded by frantic strings and wild carnival-like music. Soon after, the love theme reprise creeps in, and then… we get a waltz!
In the first several seconds of Julie Discovers Darkman, there’s a harp passage that sounds suspiciously like the Hulk six-note motif. Later, there’s a very precious, delicate, verison of the Darkman theme.
There’s more Darkman Theme in the Finale/End Credits, this time with a French horn solo, and ending, with a condensed version of the Main Titles.
Fin.
This is a nice topic and it’s funny to me because I actually just picked Darkman up from my collection and popped it in the CD player a few days ago. I bought this CD way back in 1997 and I don’t think I’d ever actually listened to it as an album after buying it. At the time, I was attracted to the shallower aspects of the Elfman sound and migrated immediately to the carnival music found on the disc. Listening to it, I was impressed with the Herrmannesque feel to the album (after listening to this score I immediately played Vertigo to keep the mood going) and also the mix. I am not, by any means, an audiophile but I thought the brass on Darkman sounded excellent.
Anyone remember what the helicopter sequence music sounds like? It’s been years since I’ve seen the film.
The helicopter sequence was written by Jonathan Sheffer and if I remember correctly it sort of skirts away from any full blown statements of Elfman’s theme, but orchestrationally is inline with the rest of the score.
Ryan
I loved the helicopter cue and the rest of this score. I play it all the time, and I actually used Carnival From Hell in a college project I did.
I know it’s a long shot, but is the helicopter cue available anywhere?
It’s the hallmark of the vintage film scoring, circa, 30s and 40s, that Danny hearkened back to — the old-timely sound… the kind that was used back when the Warner cartoons had a lot of singing in them.
I thought I should clarify this.
The cartoons that I referenced were those Max Fleischer Betty Boop shorts, with the Cab Calloway specialty numbers. Those cartoons, and ones like it, were done at Paramount, not Warner Bros.
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