Probably a key rule Intrada had to follow in order to get James Horner’s Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) out on CD was to steer clear away from any mention of the film’s troubled production – a clause that’s likely at the root of Disney’s DVD lacking the extremely candid (and superb) commentary track with writer Ray Bradbury.

(The short form is that the film went through a series of reshoots, re-edits and rescoring, and one certainly gets a sense some scenes in the film feel out of place. If one looks at the spider attack in the boys’ bedroom, one notices the blonde actor is wearing a wig and looks slightly older – an example of a new sequence that was shot about a year after production wrapped to goose up the film and please studio execs.)

Georges Delerue did in fact write a full score – a few cues popped up on a 1991 Varese Sarabande compilation titled the London Session Vol. 3, as well as a 2005 Disques Cinemusique recording called The Music Of Georges Delerue For The Films Of Jack Clayton – and his approach, at least from those samples, was much darker than the blend of whimsy, mordant humour, and childhood innocence that oozes from what’s easily one of Horner’s best scores. It is in fact quite fair to say a good chunk of Horner’s best work stems from his early years, including Wolfen (1981), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), the gorgeous Brainstorm (1983), and action score for Aliens (1986), 48 HRS (1982), and Red Heat (1988).

Bradbury does speak of Delerue’s score a few times in the old Image laserdisc commentary track, and his appreciation for Horner’s interpretation is appropriate because the new score nails the film’s dark aspects while reminding us we’re watching a story through the eyes of two impressionable boys with wild imaginations.

Horner’s themes and sweeping lyricism also matches the lovely poetry that Bradbury invested into the film’s narration and dialogue; as frightening as Mr. Dark (Jonathan Pryce) is, there’s something regal in Dark’s plan to absorb the souls of the townspeople and reuse the affected as members of his travelling troupe. He’s comprised of a mysterious kind of evil, surrounded by shocking carnival exhibits, and Horner’s themes for things exciting and fearful stay within the realm of accessibility, performed through a large and powerful orchestra.

Wicked is also important because it’s virtually (or at least sounds) all-orchestral, and while Horner never lost touch with his grasp of symphonic writing, this score, much like Brainstorm, functions as a compact, symphonic portrait – a musical narrative that’s perhaps more full blooded, but as charming, moralistic and gripping as Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf.

Dark is the de facto wolf, and Horner announces his arrival during the main titles using brass, shimmering metal sounds, chimes, and furiously spiraling strings that not only start the film on a highly energetic tone, but gets audiences excited by all the visual and aural movement of the title sequence.

Once the titles fade up into daytime and we’re in the small town, Horner shifts to the boys’ theme, and it’s a melody that Bradbury loved because while it may present an idyllic view of small town mysteries as shared by imaginative kids, it also evokes the very real memories of what it was like to disappear into a fun fantasy world as a child – something that’s integral to the script as well.

Horner’s harmonics are conveyed through warm tones, gliding harps, French horns, and woodwinds – all circulating in a lovely waltz tempo for the long montage where the boys watch Dark’s troupe enter the town. Horner closes the cue with a sudden shift to high registers for the strings, and a final section that pulses with string bass and woodwinds.

“The Carousel” really introduces danger with eerie female vocals and a furious spiraling motif that’s reminiscent of Brainstorm. Like that score, Horner’s use of chorals is very chilling, as he has them mimic an icy wind breathing its way through forests and along the train tracks into the town. The plaintive main theme that’s overlaid provides a strong image of innocence under threat of brutality (emotional or physical), as that’s what ultimately converges in the film’s last third as the boys, the father, and Dark finally converge.

Echoes of Bernard Herrmann are also evident in Wicked, mostly through low register tones on woodwinds that evoke a mystical presence. A bit of Herrmann is also part of a large sonic collage in “The Carousel” where Horner moves from score to carnival organ, reversed organ sections, and a terrifying combo of female voices, sustained high pitched notes, and piano.

A few cues run around 2 minutes, but the bulk of Wicked consists of very long cues with decisive statements, and Horner’s use of themes and sonic motifs ensure the album has a solid progression from the arrival of a menacing presence to a battle of wits, and a final victory for a father and son.

Wicked also beholds a lot of beautifully dark imagery. The gentleness of “Miss Foley in the Mirror” morphs into a horrifying modern assault of voices, tones, and peripheral rumble, and there’s a stellar moment where child vocals glide up to a steep pitch before a clamor stabs and scares the hell out of the listener.

The only problem with the score is that on album, it builds quite elegantly toward s a grand climax that never really arrives. “The Spiders” provides some screeching chills, but right after the eerie blend of female vocals, somber tones and some hard, screeching accents, “Magic Window” quickly winds down the score with a restive version of the main theme, after which the “End Titles” roll and Horner brings back the boys’ theme, closing the score with his childhood idyll.

Maybe it’s due to a familiarity with the film and its uneven finale (the regrouping of the father and boys always felt like a ‘Whew! We made it!’ coda), but one feels the score should’ve closed with a bigger finale. (An archive featuring text from a period article published in Twilight Zone magazine details some of the tweaks mandated by the studio, some of which didn’t make it into the final release version.)

For years the only available source of Horner’s score was the isolated music track on the laserdisc, and while in mono and affected by the usual edits of a mixed score, it nevertheless appeared on a bootleg CD. Intrada’s CD marks the score’s first legit and complete release, and certainly for the composer’s fans, this is one score they can scratch from their Most Wanted list.

A gorgeous and often gut-wrenching collection of themes and movements destined for revisitation and reflection.

© 2009 Mark R. Hasan