Soundtrack Review: The Faculty (1998)
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This is a review of the motion picture score The Faculty by Marco Beltrami.
Beltrami The Hack
Marco Beltrami and I have only become friends in the last year or so, though I’ve been under whelmed and unexcited by him for many more.
After the runaway success of the SCREAM franchise (the first entry of which is still to this day the composer’s most memorable composition), Beltrami cashed in for the next ten years or so, writing identikit-sounding scores for a crop of largely substandard horror films, strangulated by the tropes and clichés of their genre. Their respective scores more often than not fared no better. MIMIC is perhaps the only noteworthy effort of this extended period for possessing a melodic focus that belied the composer’s mentor, Jerry Goldsmith. For the longest time, that was the only Beltrami score I owned. The collective likes of BLADE II, THE WATCHER, JOYRIDE, DRACULA 2000, UNDERWORLD: EVOLUTION, CURSED, CAPTIVITY and REDEYE to name but a few, seemed to follow, one after the other in increasing formulaic predictability: The atypical dark atmosphere of the title sequence, (too excessive to be as genuinely brooding as it would like to be), followed by an album’s worth of genre wallpaper; choppy strings, brass blasts, and pounding timpani, seemingly designed to deafen rather than fright.
For years I’ve only ever thought of Beltrami as a poor man’s Christopher Young, who of course is guilty of many of the same charges, but with the likes of say, URBAN LEGEND and THE GLASS HOUSE, can always be relied upon to put melody and strong themes before zapping the listener with the expected jump-out-your-seat moments. Even when he’s playing with the generic constructs of a “crash-bang-wallop” orchestra, his blood and thunder brand of horror is always expertly organised, so as to give you gothic macabre textures as well as excessive volume.
Teenage Expectations
Amongst Marco Beltrami’s less impressive horror brood of the last decade was his score for Robert Rodriguez’s THE FACULTY. As a then sixteen-year old, his attachment was a most depressing announcement. Back then, these adolescent eyes looked on director Rodriguez from up high on the pedestal of the one-two punch of DESPERADO and FROM DUSK TILL DAWN and Beltrami’s lack of originality or intelligence seemed a most incongruous fit to Rodriguez’s boundless invention, imagination and wit.
Needles to say my initial reaction to the film and score fell way short of hormonally charged expectation and even as a teen, the whole enterprise always felt much more derivative of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS rather than a tongue in cheek homage. Rodriguez’s trademark DIY, “Rebel without a crew” camera work seemed suspiciously reigned in here from resultant studio pressure to bow to current teen-horror trends. The score came off as a positively lazy recycling of SCREAM (which was put out by the same studio) and was a huge contributing factor to my then-and-there resigning both director and composer to the ranks of hackdom.
A Change Of Heart
A change of heart towards Beltrami occurred years later with the most unlikely of film scores, MAX PAYNE, which was co-scored with long time collaborator Buck Sanders. This downbeat, terse, largely electronic crime thriller score got under my skin in a way Beltrami’s horror scores had thus far failed to do. I don’t know exactly how, but Buck Sanders, by now sharing scoring duties up front, proved to be the necessary secret ingredient that has helped the composer to produce the best scores of his career, all within the last two years. THE HURT LOCKER is not only one of the best films you’re likely to see all year in ‘09, but also my most hotly anticipated release, despite there being no rumours of a score album or digital download being put out at present. IN THE ELECTRIC MIST (which curiously doesn’t have Sander’s name above the title, despite Beltrami himself referring to it as a joint effort) is also one of the best surprises that the year has offered so far. Its instrumental authenticity evoking a way of life, a setting and its sights and smells with remarkable immersiveness. This is one of those under the radar releases, I urge all of you to go check out as soon as you’re done reading this. Even Beltrami’s solo compositions have leapt up in quality as of late, the standout cue from KNOWING (Door Jam), coming off like a dip in the JAWS infested waters of John Williams, mashed up with a Saul Bass designed, Bernard Herrmann scored Hitchcock title sequence!
There’s nothing I enjoy more than when a composer can suddenly come out of nowhere like that and completely blindside me with sounds I never thought possible within his or her niche soundscape. My abrupt change of heart has forced me recently, to consider delving back into those many scores I quickly wrote off throughout the years in the hope of rediscovering an album or two worthy of merit in the light of reappraisal.
The Class of ‘99
THE FACULTY is a perfect choice for such a task. It’s a film that in spite of myself, I’ve watched a good many times since its theatrical run. With each viewing the flaws I saw the first time around are only that much more obvious, but those same reservations now only further my enjoyment of the film, nostalgically reminding me of the blind teenage optimism and excitement I was gripped by upon it’s impending release eleven years ago. Watching and listening to the film is to revisit a very specific time and place of comfortable complacency for studio produced teen horror in the late nineties. The film and the score now seem so much more fun in light of current generations of teens forgoing haunted house slasher jolts, for the grim realism and, unrepentant nastiness’ of the likes of SAW, HOSTEL, MARTYERS, EDEN LAKE and every unwelcome, Michael Bay produced, horror re-tread that routinely come out of his Platinum Dunes production company.
Promo Scores Online
Revisiting THE FACULTY today is harder than you might think. There was never an official release of the score and as such there are two versions floating around in cyberspace. I once owned a 40+ track album, which after a hard drive failure, I lost for good. I haven’t come across it since, so it is with some regret that I am instead reviewing the more readily available 20 track promo album for the less determined purveyor of soundtrack blogs. Any links to the complete release would certainly be much appreciated!
Track Listing
- Playing With Scissors ****
- Heavy Drinkers ***
- The Faculty : Extra Credit ****
- Prep Talk ***
- Alien At Heart ****
- Too Cool For School ***
- Hot & Scaly *****
- Roof Surfing **
- Deck The Halls ***
- Casey *
- Stanning Tall **
- Singing In The Rain ***
- Pop, Pop, Fizz, Fizz ****
- She’s A Breeder **
- Worm Takes A Dip ***
- Zeke & The Geek **
- Ridden Hard ***
- Drugs Kill ***
- Sleeping Booty *
- Hot For Teacher ***
Superb Opening
Playing With Scissors is a superb opener that brings things to boil almost immediately, plunging us into the horrors to come and branching seamlessly into Heavy Drinkers, which does a great job at capturing the overriding sense of mounting fear and tension the movie projects as it progresses.
The Faculty: Extra Credit is characterized by an unexpected and very playful, Jon Brion type melody that soon comes under attack from a journeyman brass section which makes the human vs. aliens struggle so much more epic than I remembered and the film has any right to be.
Prep Talk’s combination of strings and piano is impressive given that it manages to simultaneously chill and sooth the listener in just over a minute.
Alien At Heart is a full fury unleashing of vertiginous strings before giving way to savage, bombastic brass and string dissonances that comprise the majority of the rest of the cue. The strings then start to strike regularly each time receding with a terrifying echo, while the percussion goes into a John Williams, JURASSIC PARK: THE LOST WORLD style gallop. The harp work here is also suitably sweaty and feverish.
Playing It Safe
Too Cool For School is heavily indebted to Beltrami’s earlier SCREAM, all whispered voices played backwards, roiling around in a sloshing, three quarters full canister as it rolls bounces and scrapes down a flight of stairs in an industrial factory. Also, an overbearing electric guitar is on hand to reprise the earlier Jon Brion sound-a-like melody from The Faculty: Extra Credit. It calls to mind an only slightly more bearable, slightly less cringe worthy take on Carter Burwell’s 80’s action-flick guitar riffery for TWILIGHT. There’s some nice subtle chime work running throughout in the background though, and as all this crescendos, some coarse chilly string work breaks through accompanied by an electronically manipulated didgeridoo, that connotes the topsy-turvy dangerous world of the high school once the aliens have taken over. Finally a wave of electronic simmering breaks over some dry plucked guitar notes that lend the cue a hopeful human element.
Thematic Dissonance
Hot & Scaly is a standout cue, offering xylophones, a lurching percussion section, and ostinato string effects to maximize the creep factor. Roof Surfing is just about satisfactory filler that mimes industrial SCREAM territory once more.
Deck The Halls is staple horror chase music but performed with gusto: undulating string lines and brass stabs hitting all the right notes. Casey then later, She’s A Breeder and Sleeping Booty offer rare moments of tragic self-reflection, but for the most part from here on in, the score is dominated by giddy, off-colour string work, darting-eye percussion and ticking-clock brass perfectly suited for the aliens picking off yet another victim by. This is typified by the cues Stanning Tall and Singing In The Rain. Pop, Pop, Fizz, Fizz is arguably more of the same, yet its dissonant orchestral stingers are nicely integrated amongst propulsive brass and stomping anvils. There’s a moment of musical chaos ending the cue that even recall Goldenthal at his demented best. What I would particularly applaud is that despite all the wailing noise, it’s a kind of thematic dissonance that is actually achieved.
Nightmarish Shifting Tones
Worm Takes A Dip contrasts beautifully teased razor-edge strings, backed by swirling synthesized tones, creating a distinct sense of unease. Zeke & The Geek builds on this tension, left-footing the listener with groaning violins and nightmarish shifting tones that disappointingly shift one time too many to be all that listenable.
Ridden Hard is book ended by mournful themes in the lowest registers of the string section that reverts back to standard chase music in the middle, saved by some brilliantly played string swells and the now militaristic, “time is running out” styling of the brass section.
All-Out Insanity
Drugs Kill breaks the floodgates for all-out insanity. Whooping violins, the increasingly loud bellow of the wind instruments and a flurried succession of stingers (like a lesser version of John Frizzel’s signature They Swim from ALIEN RESSURRECTION) give the chase music a wonderful “stalking” quality. The asphyxiated quality of the electronics at the end was also a really nice subtle effect that caught my ear.
Hot For Teacher pairs the humanism of the guitar and piano with creeping alien electronica to create a mood of uneasy romanticism and general uncertainty. The cue and score is topped off with a Molotov cocktail of exploding brass and quivering strings, a cheap scare tactic to make the unwary leap from their seats.
Conclusion
In 1999, I would have rated this a 3. It has since doubled it’s geek score to a 6, thereby going from a bad score to a good one, that now has solid placement amongst the 900 or so scores on my ipod. While I sincerely doubt another decade gone by will improve that upgraded score, hearing THE FACUTLY again serves as a reminder that from time to time, we’d all do well as listeners to keep our pejorative dismissals based on composer prejudice in check. In the spirit of continuing to trawl through the shit of scores once loathed to mine the odd nugget of gold, I’ll now throw it back at you, the reader. What do you think is the next best step on the road of re-visitation of Beltrami-based horror?
Geek Score: 6
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Comments
6 out of 10 is over half marks. Nothing “barely” about it. That’s the equivalent of a 3 star review in a film magazine, usually meaning, good but not great. The review is less about the final grade and more concerned with exploring how one can go from loathing a score to liking it. How the passage of time can change our initial opinions. In this case the shift of opinion was pretty seismic. I’ve listened to this score maybe 12 times in the last week, so I definitely like it.
Jon Blough Reply:
August 5th, 2009 at 11:40 am
ok, clearly the emphasis of my post was missed, so I’ll rephrase. Why do we need a nearly 2000 word (excluding track titles) review of a score?
The review of the score itself probably takes up half the word count. Much of it was context and my personal opinions on Beltrami’s body of work in light of recent releases. This is more an essay than a review. I used the score of this film as a jumping off point to talk about a composer’s career and how I have never really related to him, despite his being one of the busiest composers in Hollywood. If 2000 words is too much, the sections are clearly labeled so you can skip straight to the meat n’ potatoes section which talks exclusively about the score.
In answer to your question, we probably don’t need it to be so long but these were all the thoughts I had that I wished to share. Personally, I like as thorough and as extensive a review as possible (as yours often are). I believe word count is irrelevant as long as the writing entertains the reader. If I didn’t entertain, I’ll aim to do a better (more concise) job of it next time.
if you don’t like it, Jon, then you don’t have to read it. some of us love reading score reviews, and Tim’s very good at writing them.
anyways tim, excellent review like always. not quite sure where all the Beltrami hatred comes from, but glad to hear you’re relistening to his stuff.
anyhoo, i’ve long been a Beltrami fan…his work is very distinctive, and sometimes he winds up with a track like End Credits on I Robot or Drive on Watcher that i wind up listening to a billion times. haven’t heard his Hurt Locker or Electric Mist yet, sadly, but i’ll definitely hunt it out.
nice that you revisited something you weren’t that fond of to begin with……..especially Beltrami. I’ve been a fan of his since I was a 19 year old kid watching Scream in the theaters for the first time. I’d definitely go back and take a closer look at Scream 2, Hellboy or The Omen.
Soundtrack Seek
Why do we need a nearly 2000 word (excluding track titles) review of a score you just barely like?
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