Rocks In The Attic #1214: Danny Elfman – ‘Beetlejuice (O.S.T.)’ (1988)

I do like this film, but I don’t love it. I have a problem with a lot of comedy films around this time – I’d put GROUNDHOG DAY and SCROOGED in the same bucket – where I just don’t think they’re as funny as they’re made out to be. 

BEETLEJUICE is a great idea, but I think its set-up is fairly clunky and by the time you’ve figured out what’s going on, too much running time has passed. That’s not to say the narrative is opaque, it just feels like the kind of thing that could have been streamlined had it been made 10 years by the same director. 

I do enjoy revisiting it though, particularly as you don’t need to concentrate on the mediocre set-up, and can just focus on the unbelievably beautiful design of it all, including the note-perfect madcap Danny Elfman score. 

And, boy oh boy, Geena Davis can kill me by swerving to avoid a dog on the road anytime!

A Saturday evening screening at the glorious Hollywood Avondale – with a surprisingly busy crowd full of kids (who didn’t all laugh as much as the film would have liked, adding further fuel to my opinion that it just isn’t as funny as it could be).

Hit: Day-O – Harry Belafonte

Hidden Gem: Main Titles

Rocks In The Attic #1159: Danny Elfman – ‘Batman (O.S.T.)’ (1989)

I’ve wrote about this film and this soundtrack before, but an awesome screening of Tim Burton’s film on Sunday evening at the glorious Hollywood Avondale gives me a good reason to write again, this time while spinning the 2018 expanded 2xLP reissue from Mondo. 

Now, I love an expanded score as much as the next man – Mondo had given us the expanded 3xLP reissue of BATMAN RETURNS a year earlier in 2017 – but I just wish Mondo would take a bit more care in their packaging and liner notes. The faux pas here is that, just a few short years after his death, the final line of the (otherwise brilliantly conceived) liner notes states that ‘Mondo would like to dedicate this re-issue to Prince Rogers Neslon (sic)’. 

The same year, Mondo credited the director of HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH in their beautiful reissue as Tommy Lee Jones, rather than Tommy Lee Wallace. Thankfully I haven’t noticed anything as jarring in the last couple of years. 

Seeing Burton’s film again on the big screen – my first time since opening night in August 1989 – was an absolute delight, but with even more water under the bridge since we’ve had Christopher Nolan’s interpretations, it feels like a much weaker film than the last time I saw it, roughly ten years ago when it was first released on Blu-Ray.

The studio-heavy production design feels inauthentic, the screen ratio is weirdly narrow, and the narrative is almost infantile in its simplicity – we’ve all got used to so many revolving storylines, particularly in contemporary comic-book movie fare. But as NZ film critic Dom Corry recently pointed out, Burton’s BATMAN belongs on the Mt Rushmore of comic book movies alongside Donner’s SUPERMAN, Raimi’s SPIDER-MAN and Favreau’s IRON MAN. It might not be perfect, but its charm lies in how it’s enjoyably rough around the edges. 

The performances are all superb – particularly Jack Nicholson and Michael Keaton, who are both having a whale of a time. Only Kim Basinger seems a weak link compared to her co-stars, although I’m not sure how Sean Young would have coped in that role, before a riding accident close to filming led to her replacement by Basinger. 

And while the supporting cast might not be as strong as what we’ve since seen from the Nolan films, their pedestrian performances – Pat Hingle’s impotent Commissioner Gordon, Michael Gough’s grandfatherly Albert the butler, Billy Dee William’s inconsequential Harvey Dent, Jack Palance’s non-threatening crime boss Grissom – all fit the film’s stuffy ‘40s aesthetic perfectly. 

But it’s the music of the film that hasn’t aged a day. On the one hand, you have Danny Elfman’s madcap brass-heavy score, that’s spinning a dozen plates at once and managing to pull it all off without any dropping. My favourite cues are the quieter, moodier pieces like Batman and Vicki Vale’s drive towards the bat-cave (Descent Into Mystery), and a similar cue (Childhood Remembered) when Bruce Wayne finally recognises Jack Napier as the killer of his parents (a narrative shortcut I’ve never been happy with). 

And then on the other hand you have the suite of pop songs by Prince. What once sounded so unnatural and futuristic now feels like a bunch of songs etched in granite they built a film around. The one musical moment I noticed on the big screen that seemed for more obvious than it does on smaller screens is the Partyman sequence where they play the song as a needle-drop, but they leave the ambient sound of the scene. It’s those shuffling sounds, and the sound of paint hitting canvas which adds to the humour of one of the film’s best moments. 

Hit: Main Title

Hidden Gem: Childhood Remembered

Rocks In The Attic #895: Danny Elfman – ‘Mission: Impossible (O.S.T.)’ (1996)

I love everything about this film. The cast, the music, the story, the TV-show credit sequence, the whacky Hitchcock close-ups in the aquarium bar, ALL OF IT! It nicely manages to sidestep a lot of the cheap visual effects that burden a lot of mid-‘90s blockbusters (as long as you ignore that preposterous helicopter sequence). It also helps when you can build your 20-minute action centrepiece around a man hanging from a rope in a room.

The European setting of the film’s first and third acts feel like the start of what would become a trope in Hollywood. After this, it seemed like everything in the spy genre was set in Europe – and this is still ongoing with films like Atomic Blonde and The Old Guard. Ronin – also brilliant – and The Bourne Identity were the first ones that felt clearly influenced in this respect.

And whatever happened to Emmanuelle Béart? She’s great in this, but seems to have avoided Hollywood ever since. My wife astutely pointed out that her part could have been played by Elizabeth Olsen, they look so similar, if it was cast today.

Here’s a starter for ten. Is Tom Cruise purposefully invoking other action stars in this film, possibly in an effort to become one himself? He starts off in a dinner-jacket (James Bond), then a white singlet (John McClane), then a black leather jacket (Mad Max?). I may be overreaching here…

Ving Rhames and Jean Reno are both brilliant, and the ambiguity of their motives is handled well. De Palma shoots their first scene superbly, an incredible introduction. It’s nice that Rhames has been a constant throughout the series, while it’s a shame that Reno turned out to be a bad egg – he lights up any film, and he would have been a great addition to the rest of the films. I find Ethan’s relationship with Luther much easier to get on board with than his later partnership with Simon Pegg’s Benji, which has always felt a little too contrived for me (although it more than has its moments). You do get the impression at the end of Mission: Impossible, when Ethan and Luther are celebrating with a pint, that this is the beginning of a wonderful friendship.

De Palma’s split-diopters are all really good, and perhaps not as jarring as they are in some of his earlier films. This is his twenty-second film of (at the time of writing) twenty-nine, and probably his most successful alongside The Untouchables. Danny Elfman’s choice as composer feels possibly studio-led, and it’s difficult to imagine what the score would have been like by De Palma regulars Donnagio or Morricone. I’m not too much of a fan of Elfman – his bonkers composing can feel a little out of place when he’s not scoring Tim Burton – but his contribution here feels quite restrained. I especially like his smattering of bongos from time to time, which immediately conjures up Lalo Schifrin’s work on the original TV series. Elfman doesn’t lean on that well-established Mission: Impossible Theme, but when he does drop it into the helicopter sequence, it’s magical.

I’m playing a beautiful reissue by Mondo Records, on ‘Red Light-Green Light’ split-coloured double vinyl, and featuring spot-on ‘60s style artwork.

Hit: Mission: Impossible Theme

Hidden Gem: Mole Hunt

Rocks In The Attic #159: Danny Elfman – ‘Batman (O.S.T.)’ (1989)

This is a very busy score – but then again so is everything that Danny Elfman does. His theme for The Simpsons is all over the place, and there’s not really a better composer suited to score the madness that Tim Burton injects into his films.

I’ve never been a big Tim Burton fan – early on I spotted his inability to create a truly three-dimensional world. Beetlejuice made me laugh, but Edward Scissorhands left me feeling cold, and I’ve felt that way ever since about most of the stuff he churns out. 1989’s Batman however, is another matter.

I was very much into Batman at the time it was released, having just got back from a holiday in the USA where I had started to read comic books. So I eagerly awaited the release of the film, and I even remember going to see it on opening night, probably with my Dad. Since Superman II, there hadn’t really been a decent superhero film, so I literally couldn’t wait to see this. My impatience was demostrated by the fact that I read the graphic novel of the film, before I watched the film itself – a huge mistake I learned to never make again.

In hindsight, it isn’t a fantastic film – especially now that Christopher Nolan has shown how a Batman film should be made – but I still have fond memories of it. Part of the nostalgia I have for the film, is the music, which proved that a superhero score could be composed by somebody other than John Williams. The Batman Theme is great, and although it’s nowhere near as majestic as Williams’ Superman Theme, it seems to suit Batman as it’s darker, moodier, and more fitting to the whole Dark Knight ethos.

This score is a perfect companion piece to Prince’s Batman soundtrack (which I also have on vinyl). Where this is dark and full of shadows, Prince’s offering is more light-hearted and almost futuristic in its sound. Let’s broaden our minds…

Hit: The Batman Theme

Hidden Gem: Descent Into Mystery