December 30, 2013

  • Music from ANGEL: An '80s Sexploitation Thriller Trilogy

    The plot of Angel (1984) finds a somewhat unbelievable plot of a young 15-year old female honor student who works Sunset Boulevard as a prostitute to earn “extra” spending cash.   It’s tagline, “High School Honor Student by Day.  Hollywood Hooker by Night.” suggested a sexploitation comedy, but turns out to be a mediocre thriller involving necrophilia and a serial killer.  Cliff Gorman plays Detective Andrews who tries to get Molly, played by 24-year old Donna Wilkes (Hello, Larry; Jaws 2; Days of Our Lives), off the street.  In Avenging Angel (1985), Molly (now played by Betsy Russell) has gone off to become an attorney but returns to the streets of LA when she hears that Andrews was murdered by gangsters and returns to take out her revenge.  The third, and final film, finds that Angel (played now by Mitzi Kapture) gave up law school evidently to try her hand at photography and inadvertently meets her mother at an art show.  This leads to her needing to return to her “Angel” persona to help find her sister.

    For film music fans, this new BSX release is a bit more historical in nature.  The first Angel was scored by Craif Safan and was completed right before his most admired score for The Last Starfighter.  The second film found Christopher Young entering another project very early in his career as well and a break from the many horror scores that would cement his reputation.  The final film features a score by a German electronic duo called Berlin Game (Eric Allaman and Reinhard Scheuregger) who had recently completed a score for another Canon Film’s release, Down Twisted (1987).  This was their last joint venture as “Berlin Game”.  Scheuregger would return to Germany and some series television work.  Allaman most recently is involved providing music for Duck Dynasty.

    The disc begins with a rock ballad, “Something Sweet” written by The Allies, and recreated here by BSX’s Dominik Hauser and featuring Melody Michalski.  Safan’s score then follows with 10 score tracks beginning with a beautiful title track with touching flute and string writing.  We move into standard 1980’s rock-tinged underscoring in “Hollywood Boulevard” with guitar and synth riffs and electronic rhythms.  Fortunately though, Safan’s score does have more thriller-based orchestral writing that, while somewhat cliché, feels quite effective and in “He Kills” one gets a blend of these extreme string registers in avant-garde clusters with some synth sounds.  The continuity of the score works well as the “Angel theme” is used to help pull different sequences together providing more gentle contrast when needed (“Yo-Yo Man”, “Reflecting Angel”).  The use of non-traditional synth and rock-like ideas helps provide an appropriate edge to the music while the string writing lends a more intense emotional undercurrent (“Drag Fight”).  A more extensive track, “Angel’s Triumph”, allows Safan to show off his ability on providing growing tension over a longer sequence that works fairly well, though perhaps a bit overlong on its own.

    Young’s roughly 20-minute contribution begins with a nice comedic track for the character, “Kit Carson”, featuring a sort of rag-like melody suggesting an earlier age (repeating in the final “Bughouse Bust”as well) and appears when Angel breaks Kit out the sanatorium—the first score heard in the film as well.  The score then shifts into a nice blend of guitars and big jazzy orchestral writing (recalling many a 1970s Schifrin score) in “Overdrive” and “Good Golly Solley”, the latter featuring some great sax work.  “Molly Mey” shifts into a jazzy noirish sound that is a close parallel to Safan’s almost lullaby-like main theme.  The more jazzy brass works really well here which lends the almost improv-like percussion section in “Ratamacue” work.  Some of Young’s horror scoring experience can be gleaned here as well in tracks like “Dark Angel.”

    The final 9 tracks of the release focus on the score for the third film.  The music here is an example of early electronics abilities.  The score uses a Roland MC-500, an early sequencer, along with a Oberheim OBX and Prophet VS.  The latter allows composers to “bend” sound waves.  Additional sampling of unique percussion sounds are added in as well (heard best in “Final Car Chase”).  The opening titles feature some of the bell-like synth piano sounds and some interesting rhythmic ideas that are syncopated just enough to provide interesting forward movement.  The ideas tend to be sequenced upon themselves and then layered one on top of the other with occasional splashes of thematic material (a sax idea in the opening music).  Some of the effects are fairly well-done for the period and suggest a great deal that would become fairly standard use of these technologies heading into the next decade.  The constant pulse ideas provide interesting propulsive energy (“Bust at Party”) and while the club sense of the music is a potential inspiration, the music does not simply rely on generic techno trance loops.  A nice piano theme appears in “Angel in Taxi” which also provides relief from the electronic musical approach.  These sorts of little touches are what will surprise many who are hearing the score here for the first time.

    The BSX limited edition is not a bad release and there are plenty of nice moments in Safan’s score, especially his primary thematic material.  Young’s work stands out a bit more here though and one will have to determine whether it is worth it for 20 minutes of scoring.  The final score will also be of interest to electronic music score fans though there is more to it than just how Allaman and Scheurenberger use their equipment.  The one thing this release does allow for though is a look into 1980s film music approaches for low budget films.  Overall an interesting release that will have some appeal to fans of Safan and Young especially.