The Shadow (Album Review)
 
 

Enjoyable, but flawed, big screen outing for a popular super hero from the 1930's, both presented on Radio and in comic book form. The Shadow was an attempt to cash in on the interest in movies like Batman but sadly failed at the box office.

Jerry Goldsmith's grand orchestral score captures the darkness of the character and source material over the opening credits where the composer states his main theme (The Poppy Fields). Goldsmith's theme hits Elfman like proportions but is without doubt quintessential Goldsmith. Along with the ominous brass lead theme there's some polished electronic percussion and atmospheric manipulations for the Shadow's mind control abilities, along with love theme for warm strings. Sadly the album track misses out on the Challenge like knife fight that follows.

The Sanctum expands upon the darker opening with a frenzied workout for orchestra as the Shadow's convoluted messaging system, made up of drain pipes connected across the New York skyline, is shown delivering a message. This arrangement gets a further workout during the film's finale and takes on a slightly more comical twist.

Who Are You? is a brilliantly understated cue for a confrontation between the Shadow and his nemesis; a reincarnation of Genghis Khan. Essentially a dialogue piece, Goldsmith captures every nuance of the exchange with trembling strings and subdued horns.

Chest Pains introduces some action with a classy Goldsmith stop/start action cue. It's here Goldsmith gets the first opportunity to give his dark theme an heroic workout, powerfully presented by the brass section, with plucked strings and crashing cymbals. This cue also introduces a secondary theme for a plethora of metallic and wooden percussion. A rousing workout for your speakers that reminds the audience of the Shadow's violent beginnings in Tibet.

The middle section cues are more downbeat but nonetheless suspenseful with both The Knife and The Hotel offering further arrangements of Goldsmith's theme and show casing the incredible electronics that were integrated into the dense orchestral elements. Sadly, the exciting battle in the Hotel is missing and it's The Tank that's the album's finale. Here Goldsmith builds a massive suspense cue for a silly sequence in which the Shadow is locked in a water tank slowly filling with water. Goldsmith again releases his wild percussion lead Tibetan theme as the Shadow takes a bullet but is still able to use his mental powers to call on Margo to come and rescue him. As the tension mounts the composer piles on the pressure with stabbing strings and cymbal crashes before brass triumphantly closes the cue.

The score ends with Frontal Lobotomy, which takes a whirl wind tour of Goldsmith's themes. First a lighter rendition of the Tibetan theme for Khan's incarceration in a mental hospital, before moving onto a beautiful rendition of the love theme for Margo and Cranston, and a final workout of The Shadow theme with musical exclamation.