Amazon.com essential recording
The entire
Planet of the Apes saga eventually spanned five films and a short-lived TV series. But the original is still the best, even if it's hard to decide what's more memorable, Jerry Goldsmith's inventively modern score or the sight of Charlton Heston in a loincloth. We're sticking with Goldsmith, if only for the bold resourcefulness he showed in creating a new musical idiom--ethnic Ape. Rife with complex percussive flourishes and tinged with haunting instrumental moans, Goldsmith's score remains a singular science-fiction classic.
--Jerry McCulley
From Amazon.co.uk
Jerry Goldsmith maintains he wrote his best work for director Franklin J. Schaffner. With
Planet of the Apes there was so much to be intellectually stimulated by, it's intriguing to consider what he might have put together under another director's mind-set (like the largely conventionally scored four sequels). There's no indication of music in the Ape culture; the film's heroic focal point (Charlton Heston) is a self-centred misanthrope. Goldsmith therefore chose to represent the landscape and ideas (such as slavery). Where possible he turned musical convention on its head, suggesting the upside-down culture. In some places he even about-faced his instrumentation--inverting horn funnels to give a hollow rasp. This stark, bleak, uncomfortable collection of noise, comes at you in clusters. Often the composer's music is accessible without knowledge of the film, but it's imperative you've seen this movie to appreciate the full effect of the ram's horn in "The Hunt", a centrally important cue in the film's narrative and not incidentally one of Goldsmith's most inspired creations. A nice bonus is a suite from
Escape from the Planet of the Apes, which takes all of two seconds to show how the series slipped into predictability with its cheesy electric guitars. They certainly convey the 1973 setting, and the complicated percussive tempos offer some reminder of his original score. In thinking, it cannot hope to match it, unfortunately.
--Paul Tonks
