The Fly II

Every thoughtful horror is entitled to at least one tacky sequel and The Fly is no exception. Actually, although not a patch on Cronenberg's vision, the Son of Fly (Eric Stolz taking on the role of Brundle Jnr), seemed to receive surprisingly decent reviews and sits alongside The Fly much in the same way Jaws 2 did alongside Spielberg's classic; a decent film, but anything was going to disappoint compared to the original. For the sequel, Christopher Young took over from Howard Shore and the results are often every bit as operatic as the original. A year after the first Hellraiser sequel, Young was around his peak as the horror composer of choice - particularly horror scoring at the more grandiose end of the spectrum - and The Fly II is another fine entry on an impressive roster.

The Hellraiser score were clearly somewhere in the minds of the producers as Young's main theme for The Fly II is almost an inversion of the three note main theme for Pinhead and his gruesome world. However, it appears fleetingly and is, if nothing else, the perfect, portentous idea to pick up from the operatic proportions of Shore's score's again emphasising the film as grand tragedy, albeit with a sci-fi/horror twist. The first few tracks continue in this dramatic, but brooding vein, but for the central cues Young pulls out some slightly more familiar horror licks. The middle cues are perhaps rather less satisfying and the album does start to drag ever so slightly. Equally, there are some fine examples of intense horror scoring that are equally engaging as music. Despite the title, Bartok Barbaro has nothing to do with the 20th century classical composer, but again demonstrates Young's gift for making what, in the hands of some composers, could be cacophonous and unyielding, into something that is both of those things, but written with enough style as to also have plentiful musical merit.

What's the Magic Word returns to the epic drama of the opening and, together with the mournful but quite lovely Dad, brings the album to a fine conclusion. The omission of one or other of the central tracks would have resulted in a tighter album and they just put it a shade under Shore's original. However, there is more than enough striking and memorable material elsewhere to compensate. It's such a pleasure to be able to recommend a horror score and it amply demonstrates that the film for which it is written doesn't even have to be great for the music to stand out. As re-released with Howard Shore's score to the original, fans of either composer need not think twice.