Recently, the American soundtrack label Dragon’s Domain Records has begun issuing CDs and and digital downloads of the film and concert work of composer Lalo Schifrin (1932-2025). The label has so far issued stand-alone CDs of the previously available The Fourth Protocol (1987) and Return from the River Kwai (1989) and such rarities – and, to be fair, real obscurities – as the score to the 1971 TV film The Mask of Sheba (1970) and Schifrin’s 1968 dramatic cantata The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (notably not the Schifrin-helmed score to the TV documentary of the same name).
This two-disc collection from Dragon’s Domain brings together Lalo Schifrin’s scores for four films, including Richard Lester’s” The Four Musketeers” (1974), Stuart Rosenberg’s “Voyage of the Damned” (1976), John Sturges’ “The Eagle Has Landed” (1976) – all three of which, interestingly, are period dramas – and William Girdler’s “Day of the Animals” (1977). Also here is Schifrin’s concert piece “Continuum” (For Solo Harp), a 1970 composition that was recorded in Hollywood in 1977.
Some of this music has been previously issued in various variations and formats.
Specifically, all 12 tracks here from “Voyage of the Damned” first appeared on the 1977 Entr’acte LP of that name. There was also a Japanese soundtrack LP of “Voyage” released in 1977 on the Seven Seas label that featured a whopping 20 tracks, including Ina Skriver’s version of “Vienna, City of My Dreams” – which was also issued as a single in Japan. Eight of the 12 tracks on the 1977 Entr’acte LP were issued in 1993 on the Label “X” CD titled Continuum Journeys Voyage.
(In 1977, ATV Music Corp. pressed a “demonstration” copy of Schifrin’s “Voyage of the Damned” score as a “For Your Consideration” for “Best Original Score.” That LP contained 17 tracks. Schifrin’s score was, indeed, nominated, but the award went to Jerry Goldsmith for his score to “The Omen” that year.)
Eight of the 10 tracks here from “The Four Musketeers” and the six titles from “The Eagle Has Landed” were previously issued in 1978 on the Entr’acte LP titled Great Adventure Scores.
The 10 titles from “The Four Musketeers” and the six titles from “The Eagle Has Landed” here, as well as seven of the 12 titles from “Voyage of the Damned” were issued in 1987 on the Label “X” CD titled The Four Musketeers. (In 2008, Label “X” would issue another CD titled The Four Musketeers that expanded that score to 17 tracks, omitting the other tracks from “The Eagle Has Landed” and “Voyage of the Damned.”)
The six tracks from “The Eagle Has Landed” that are heard here were previously issued on both the above-noted LP Great Adventure Film Scores and the 1987 CD release titled The Four Musketeers (or, as that CD’s spine would have it, “The Four Musketeers” , etc.). Schifrin himself would re-record the film’s love theme, “Eagles in Love” – a theme not included on the Entr’acte LP or Label “X” CD – for his 1977 CTI album Towering Toccata.
Shortly thereafter, Barbra Streisand brought in longtime friends and collaborators Marilyn and Alan Bergman to add lyrics to “Eagles in Love,” and the result was “On Rainy Afternoons,” a song that features on the singer’s 1979 water-themed album Wet. Schifrin himself arranged and conducted the piece for the vocalist, and would do the same for saxophonist Stan Getz’s instrumental take of the song on the terribly-underrated Schifrin-arranged album Children of the World (1979).
Schifrin himself would issue the full soundtrack to The Eagle Has Landed in 1999 on his own Aleph label, adding a full 13 cues to the six previously-known titles from the film (a French version of this disk would be issued with different cover art and liner notes in 2001). Here, the song Schifrin had previously called “Eagles in Love” is titled “The Swan” (as delivered by the cymbalum) and embedded in the similarly-titled “Eagle Falls in Love.”
What’s really new about this set is “The Day of the Animals” score, which appears here for the very first time ever. But while it has never been previously available, Schifrin turned the recurring melodic motif from his score (here, as “Helicopter Ride,” “Hiking Further On,” “Rescue,” and others) into a fully fleshed-out fusion-era ballad titled “Frances’ Theme” for his 1977 CTI fusion album Towering Toccata.
This disc’s liner notes correctly indicate that there is no such character named Frances in the film. But Frances happens to be the name of Schifrin’s eldest child, who would have been 17 at the time that this song was recorded. It’s more than likely that the composer simply dedicated this hopeful theme to his own daughter, who had nothing whatsoever to do with the film.
Rounding out The Lalo Schifrin Collection is the concert piece “Continuum” (For Solo Harp), composed in 1970 as a commission from the American Harp Society and premiered that year at the group’s convention in Houston, Texas, in a performance by Anne Stockton. Stockton recorded “Continuum” in 1973. But this rendition of the somewhat cinematically-inclined “Continuum” was performed by harpist Dorothy Remsen and recorded in Hollywood in 1977. Its first appearance on disc was on the aforementioned 1993 CD Continuum Journeys Voyage (the “Journeys” part of the title references a 22-minute solo piece composed in 1973 for percussionist Ken Watson, that is oddly omitted from this set).
This collection opens with Schifrin’s Academy Award-nominated score to the all-star drama “Voyage of the Damned” (1976). Based on the true story (chronicled in a 1974 book) of the strange voyage in 1939 of the German ship, the MS St. Louis, which departed from Hamburg, carrying nearly 1000 Jewish people from Germany, bound for Havana, “Voyage” is, even with its star power, little-remembered or much-regarded today – despite a resonance that exists in our currently similar hostile environment.
Schifrin’s “Main Title” theme evokes wartime menace, with its alternating cymbalom and martial drums. Unfortunately, it never really coheres into something particularly memorable.
The film’s principle motif is first heard in the score’s “What’s Past is Past” (part “The Sting,” part “The Godfather”), and here scored for a mournful clarinet. That motif is carried out in various iterations throughout (and as a weirdly jaunty sort of dance theme in the “End Credits” theme).
The score’s single greatest moment, however, is Schifrin’s infectious “Hotel Nacional,” one of the composer’s tremendous Latin themes, meant to represent the brief-lived and mistaken joy the ship’s passengers feel as they finally arrive in Havana, outside of the Nazi’s retaliation. Surprisingly, this one track isn’t better known.
Schifrin’s magnificent score to “The Four Musketeers” – another all-star period extravaganza from the period, though much lighter in tone – is surely the most exciting (and successful) of the four film scores featured here. Blending a Baroque formality with a light-hearted whimsy, Schifrin crafts an absolutely perfect complement to Richard Lester’s enjoyable film.
This score’s “Overture,” “Athos Story” and “Milady’s Theme” are all excellent, and reminiscent of Schifrin’s go-for-Baroque jazz album, Marquis de Sade (1966). Motifs from the “Musketeer” score would later be interwoven in to Schifrin’s stirring “Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra” (1984 – a.k.a. “Guitar Concierto”), recorded by Angel Romero, who originally commissioned the piece, and Juan Carlos Laguna in 1996.
“Chase To the Convent” was surprisingly featured on the 1998 CD compilation The Reel Lalo Schifrin, while three tracks from this score were incorporated into the 16-disc set The Sound of Lalo Schifrin (2024).
The odd 1977 film “Day of the Animals” was also a star-studded disaster (both literally and figuratively), but peopled by a cast of B-listers including Christopher George, Lynda Day George, Leslie Nielson and Ruth Roman. Directed by the ill-fated William Girdler, who died in a helicopter accident shortly after completing the filming of “The Manitou” (also scored by Schifrin) and helmed the previous year’s similarly-staged “Grizzly” (allegedly a “Jaws” rip-off), “Day of the Animals” gets a typically classier-than-the-film-deserves score by Schifrin
It is another orchestral score that mirrors Schifrin’s earlier animal-oriented score, the bug-infested “The Hellstrom Chronicle” (1971 – particularly in this score’s “Arachnid”) and is similar to the composer’s other disaster-film score of the period, “When Time Ran Out” (1980).
While none of the cues from “Day of the Animals,” even the main theme, stand out in any particular way, Schifrin’s singularly masterful touch really makes for a compelling listen even so. There is nothing here that is catchy, like in the composer’s TV themes, or especially captivating, as in so many of Schifrin’s action cues. But the dramatic sound portrait Schifrin presents here allows the music to stand on its own, apart the cheesy film it’s meant to be accompanying.
Kudos to Dragon’s Domain for making it available.