Commentary and breaking news regarding the golden age of jazz soundtracks that supplied a swing backdrop for the suspenseful adventures of secret agents, private detectives, cops, spies and heist-minded criminals: rediscovered genre entries, new films and TV shows graced with action jazz scores, and classic soundtracks making their long-awaited debut.
Riding on the momentum of his two performances as Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe — in 1975’s Farewell, My Lovely , and 1978’s The Big Sleep — well-seasoned Robert Mitchum was a logical choice to play the similarly world-weary former-cop-turned-reluctant PI in 1982’s One Shoe Makes It Murder , a modestly enjoyable TV movie adaptation of Eric Bercovici’s So Little Cause for Caroline , which had…
Aside from jazz-oriented film and television soundtracks, I’m also constantly on the prowl for previously undiscovered compilation albums that focus on this vibrant genre. A recent visit to Bandcamp uncovered two releases by a Southern California combo appropriately dubbed M Squad, fronted by veteran guitarist/composer “Burnin’ Mike Vernon.” He’s my kind of guy. “As a kid,” Vernon recalled, in the…
I enjoyed this film. The conclusion packs an unexpected punch, and portions of Han Zimmer’s score certainly qualify as suspenseful jazz ... but those portions are fleeting. When it became necessary to trim my final two manuscripts, both of which had outgrown their word-count limits, the logical (and easiest) deletions involved scores that are only partially jazz ... no matter how entertaining the…
Big-screen jazz scores clearly have become an endangered species, but good grief; I’ve not been able to showcase a new film release since Confess, Fletch came out in October 2022. Thank goodness for director Steven Soderbergh and Belfast-born DJ-turned-composer/musician David Holmes, who’ve worked together since 1998’s Out of Sight , which was followed by Ocean’s Eleven and its two sequels. All…
As I discussed in this blog’s previous post, Dragon’s Domain finally rewarded the patience of those who enjoyed Showtime’s film noir anthology series, Fallen Angels , by releasing the full scores for the initial 1993 season’s six episodes. I concluded that post with the hope that the label intended similar treatment of 1995’s second season; that wish has been granted with the release of Fallen…
I covered Showtime’s marvelous film noir series, Fallen Angels , in my second volume. This anthology show delivered six episodes in the summer of 1993, followed by another nine in the autumn of 1995. Each playlet was adapted from a story by a famed noir author, and was blessed with a phenomenal attention to detail appropriate to post-World War II Los Angeles: a heavily stylized depiction of the…
I was a fan of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series from the moment I purchased 1978’s The Judas Goat , fifth in the series. I immediately snatched up its four predecessors, and then eagerly awaited each new release: ultimately 40 novels, one per year, until Parker died in 2010. (Although Ace Atkins has been doing an excellent job of continuing the series, he isn’t quite up to Parker’s unique style.)…
This droll 1962 British item is a 69-minute music video disguised as a film. That’s overstating the case, but not by much. The Lyn Fairhurst/Harold Shampan script is a threadbare excuse for a dozen lengthy “live” (diegetic) performances by clarinetist/vocalist Acker Bilk and his Paramount Jazz Band, as the modest story proceeds. Bernard Stanley “Acker” Bilk and his combos were known for “trad…
Film music journalist/historian Jon Burlingame has been an invaluable resource over the years; he’s also a thoroughly entertaining writer. I’ve long followed his Los Angeles Times and Daily Variety articles, and I often refer to his books: 1996’s TV’s Biggest Hits , updated and expanded last year, as Music for Prime Time ; and 2012’s The Music of James Bond . His just-published newest book is the…
Despite a varied and extremely busy film scoring career that stretched from 1941’s Under Fiesta Stars to 1972’s The Cremators , Albert Glasser (1916-98) is best known these days for the bombastic scores he delivered for low-rent 1950s “creature features” such as Monster from Green Hell , Beginning of the End , The Amazing Colossal Man and The Spider , among many others. He was remarkably prolific…
Thanks to the ongoing efforts of labels that specialize in soundtracks — and the fans who purchase their products, thereby maintaining the pipeline — quite a few scores have received enhanced treatment since my two books came out in April 2020. Taking them in the order of release... Music Box Records released an expanded version of Philippe Sarde’s score for 1977’s Mort d’un Pourri (Death of a…
Michael Caine was born to star in spy thrillers, which became obvious during his career-making portrayal of Len Deighton’s Harry Palmer, in The Ipcress File . (Deighton’s protagonist actually remains unnamed in his 1962 novel and its six sequels. But film audiences expect characters to have names, so Caine and producer Harry Saltzman came up with a moniker that they felt was boring and ordinary,…
I’m willing to bet that no other film has turned a jazz trumpet player into an amateur sleuth. During the decade before the innovatively gruesome Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958) prompted Britain’s Hammer Films to embrace horror and science fiction more aggressively, the studio was better known for a string of crime, detective and film noir thrillers. Most were modest,…
Director Michael Winner’s melancholy noir entry quietly smolders amid an atmosphere of casual debauchery enhanced by Otto Heller’s gorgeous monochromatic cinematography. The early 1960s Ladbroke Grove setting is laden with sleazy diners, street food and junk stalls, and post-war Victorian walk-ups transformed into boarding houses occupied by wayward young men and women who casually hop into bed…
The British were decades ahead of us, with films that thoughtfully explored race relations; 1959’s Sapphire is an excellent example. Director Basil Dearden’s tidy drama initially unfolds like a standard police procedural, but Janet Green and Lukas Heller’s intriguing script soon moves in directions twisty enough to earn that year’s Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Foreign Film. Sapphire also was…
Plenty of television pilots failed to attract network interest, over the years — for which we can be grateful, in many cases — but this probably is the only one that was bumped off. With prejudice. (About which, more in a bit.) Based on its quite watchable 1961 debut episode, Las Vegas Beat could have become a decent series. Creator Andrew J. Fenady’s script is solid; Bernard L. Kowalski’s…
The television component of my two-volume series focuses on shows that successfully landed on network schedules … if only for a month or two, in some cases. With one exception, I didn’t even try to delve into unsold and/or unaired pilots that never made it to series. (I did briefly cite writer/director Blake Edwards’ failed 1954 attempt to turn Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer into a series, with…
Talk about being lucky enough to hit the ground running: Composer Gerald Fried’s first three big-screen assignments were for Stanley Kubrick’s first three features: Fear and Desire (1953), Killer’s Kiss (1955) and The Killing (1956). Fried then switched to the creature feature genre, with a score for The Vampire (1957). But it wasn’t much of a stylistic shift; as an isolated listening experience,…
One would assume, given a soundtrack album laden with iconic classics by Horace Silver, Chet Baker, Dexter Gordon and many others, that this film score is saturated with jazz. Well … not exactly. But more on that in a bit. Beloved literary characters rarely get a second chance, if their debut leap to the big screen is sabotaged by arrogant studio execs catering to the whims of a Hot Star Of The…
This film is a total hoot, and Daniel Pemberton’s fizzy score has much to do with the merriment. Director Tom George’s mischievous period “whodunit within a whodunit” is a murder mystery thriller married to a character comedy; it’s also a valentine to Agatha Christie, and a cheeky send-up of theatrical storytelling conventions. Mark Chappell’s tongue-firmly-in-cheek script misses no targets. This…
On the very early morning of August 21, 1961, somebody broke into London’s National Gallery and stole Francisco Goya’s painting, “Portrait of the Duke of Wellington.” The carefully calculated crime baffled police investigators, who assumed that the caper must have been masterminded by a professional gang of experienced and well-funded Italian art thieves. Four years later, the painting was…
This was a tough call. The story certainly is ideal; this is a brooding crime drama in the classic all-will-not-go-well mold. But “brooding” also is an apt description of the bulk of Quincy Jones’ score: far more orchestral gloom than actual jazz cues. On top of which, the minimal jazz elements are further obscured by the numerous gospel and R&B tunes that director Robert Alan Arthur seems to…
Whether by personal choice or director Helmuth Ashley’s insistence, Peter Thomas’ approach to this fourth Jerry Cotton adventure differs from the way he scored its predecessors. Most of the music cues in 1966’s Die Rechnung: eiskalt serviert — known in English-speaking territories as Tip Not Included (a title that makes absolutely no sense) — are short, staccato bursts of action jazz, often little…
Jerry Cotton’s third adventure is a corker, despite the lamentably excessive use of stock footage and rear projection (always a distraction in this series, but much worse here). 1966’s Um Null Uhr schnappt die Falle zu — released in English-speaking territories as 3-2-1 Countdown for Manhattan or The Trap Snaps Shut at Midnight — finds Jerry and his FBI colleagues racing against time to find a…
Lalo Schifrin’s jazzy and occasional cheeky score kept this film on the list during several editing iterations, but ultimately I had to admit that — although the bonkers script spends a lot of time feeling like a low-rent crime and/or spy flick — the resolution shatters that notion. So, into the reject pile it went. ******** Precisely a year before he achieved heartthrob fame on television’s It…