In the second volume of its Lalo Schifrin Collection series, the Dragon’s Domain label has paired two of the composer’s lesser-known outings, the soundtrack to “Escape to Athena” (1979) and the never-before-issued score to the 1984 film “Tank.”
Aside from both boasting the talents of composer Lalo Schifrin (1932-2025), the two films would seem to have very little in common. The former is a WWII-era adventure comedy set in Greece, while the latter is a light-hearted family drama set in a contemporary Georgia backwater that hosts a military base, but run by a corrupt sheriff.
Additionally, the star-studded “Escape to Athena” was a critical and box-office bomb, while “Tank,” featuring the always amiable James Garner and Shirley Jones, proved to be something of a modest hit, and later a cult favorite on cable TV and VHS.
But if there is a link between these two films, it is probably a spiritual one they both share with the earlier “Kelly’s Heroes” (1970).
Like “Escape to Athena,” “Kelly’s Heroes” is a WWII-era adventure film rife with moral ambiguity and comedic elements, featuring an all-star ensemble cast – both casts even include actor Telly Savalas. “Kelly’s Heroes” also shares “Tank”‘s action-orientation, with its spotlight on rebellious military men and the two films’ reliance on the WWII-era M4 Sherman tank.
Significant to all three features is, of course, Lalo Schifrin’s music. His Kelly’s Heroes soundtrack album was released on MGM Records in 1970, while the full score to that film was issued on CD in 2005 by the great and sadly-defunct Film Score Monthly label. But several elements that informed Schifrin’s score for the earlier film make return appearances in both “Escape to Athena” and “Tank,” as well.
“Escape to Athena” was the third of four films – following “Voyage of the Damned” and “The Eagle Has Landed” (both 1976) – Schifrin scored for the British producer and impresario Lew Grade (1905-98 – the last of these, “Something to Believe In” [1998], was among Grade’s final film productions).
For “Escape to Athena,” – known as “The Golden Raiders” when it made its NBC-TV debut in December 1981 – Schifrin eschewed the Golden-age revival music (of the sort he composed for “Voyage” and, to a large degree, “Eagle”), shrewdly favoring more folk-oriented themes appropriate to “Athena”‘s Mediterranean locale. It makes for an especially memorable score and a distinctly notable soundtrack in the composer’s discography.
Schifrin brings the score to life by featuring the bouzouki, the long-necked string instrument that animates so much Greek and Mediterranean folk music, as the primary voice of the music throughout.
The bouzouki‘s wooden, pear-shaped body and its metal strings unite to create an ancient, though timeless sound so perfectly evocative of the film’s exceptionally beautiful Greek locales. Here, Schifrin crafts a lovely and, quite often, exciting score, a work of great depth, well-considered passion and intellectual beauty.
The “Escape to Athena” soundtrack was recorded, but, surprisingly, never issued on vinyl at the time in America or anywhere else in Europe. The 40-minute soundtrack album was, however, released in Japan in 1979 on the Seven Seas label as “Offside 7,” the Japanese film distributor’s retitling/rebranding of the otherwise unchanged fiasco that was “Escape to Athena.”
The soundtrack was recorded – as were Schifrin’s other scores for Lew Grade productions – at England’s CTS Studios, Wembley, probably with the ever-reliable Royal Philharmonic Orchestra performing the musical duties. (It would have been nice to know who played the dominant bouzouki parts, though.) All 13 tracks of the Seven Seas LP welcomingly appear as is on the Dragon’s Domain disc.
Unfortunately for Schifrin, he crafted music of a pedigree production for a real dog of a film. Perhaps that’s one reason so few have heard this terrific soundtrack. Its highlights are many, and include Schifrin’s delightful and enchanting “Main Titles” theme (a.k.a. “Escape to Athena”) – a terrific piece that I am surprised, or unaware, did not recur elsewhere in the composer’s extensive discography. It’s a real winner and beautifully sets the tone for a film that, soon afterward, goes right downhill.
The remainder of the “Athena” score includes such highlights as the synth-driven “Water, Fire and More,” yet another one of the composer’s superlative action themes, “Rat Tat Tat” (featuring the cymbalom, which was Schifrin’s dominant instrument in “The Eagle Has Landed” score), “The Kite Over the Tower” (employing a motif Schifrin first used in the 1977 song “To Cast a Spell”), and the enchanting, though dark and brooding “Dance of Athena.”
Schifrin varies the instrumentation enough not to let the bouzouki overwhelm the score. At times, the stringed instrument carries a cue’s melody, while at others, it is used to accent a dramatic line – or not at all). The dynamic orchestration – which is notable on the three cues noted above – will sound familiar to anyone who has heard more than one or two Schifrin action scores.
The occasional percussion is appropriately kept on the primitive side – in keeping with traditional Greek folk music – with the players either manning the authentic Greek toubeleki or dauoli or more Western-oriented approximations (and, in one case, the tabla).
Schifrin also adapts – rather beautifully, in fact – two unapologetically American themes here, the spiritual “When the Saints Go Marching In” and the patriotic anthem “Battle Hymn of the Republic” – as though they were Greek: “The Saints Go Greek,” in the case of the former, and “Battle Hymn of Athena,” in the latter.
It’s worth remembering that Schifrin first used “When the Saints Go Marching In” as part of his 1965 score to “The Cincinnati Kid,” while “Battle Hymn of the Republic” factored (rather sardonically) in the aforementioned “Kelly’s Heroes.”
Schifrin revisited “Battle Hymn” again in 1993, in the first of seven outings in his “Jazz Meets the Symphony” series and would keep the song in the JMTS repertoire and would later factor as “Glory, Glory Hallelujah” on the composer’s Jazz Mass in Concert (1998).
The film’s end-titles – set in contemporary Greece – are scored to a disco ballad called “Keep Tomorrow for Me,” by the uncredited late-70s hitmaker Heatwave (“Boogie Nights,” “Always and Forever,” “The Groove Line”). The song was not composed by Schifrin, but rather co-written by the group’s lead songwriter, Rod (“Rock With You,” “Off the Wall,” “Give Me the Night,” “Stomp,” “Thriller”) Temperton, and producer Barry Blue.
While “Keep Tomorrow For Me” was never issued as a single – nor has it ever factored on any other Heatwave release – the Japanese Seven Seas label issued a single of “Escape to Athena” backed with “Dance of Athena.” in a picture sleeve that matched the Japanese LP cover.
There is a sense about the “Tank” score that Schifrin went into this knowing there would be no soundtrack released. He crafts a playful, martially-oriented main theme – recalling the “Kelly’s Hero’s” (albeit not as sarcastic) – that wouldn’t exactly work outside the context of the film. And the only two “songs” in the score are both source cues (background music), both of which are disparate to distraction: one a country ballad, the other an era-appropriate disco rocker.
But it is also true that Schifrin soundtrack releases were becoming far less frequent in the eighties than in the previous two decades. At that point, the record companies were only going for sure things: big-budget releases, box-office hits or soundtracks with songs by pop superstars like Kenny Loggins, Phil Collins or Madonna. It would be another decade or so before specialty film-music labels would start releasing film scores by Golden Age and Silver Age composers.
Not surprisingly, Schifrin’s music for “Tank” works especially well for the film. But as stand-alone music, the score – which amounts to about 37 minutes of music – is neither notable, nor particularly interesting.
“Tank”‘s whistled “Main Title,” again recalling “Kelly’s Heroes,” kicks things off (just as it concludes in the “End Credit”). The light-hearted martial cue, “Last Post, Tough it Out,” is repeated often throughout the score (“Tank Joyride,” “Let’s See That Cracker Try to Stop a Tank,” the second part of “End Credit,” etc.) and gets a little wearying by the end. The cartoonish hillbilly chase music “You Assholes Better Move” is, unfortunately, too much of a comic cliche.
The few highlights here include the flute-led “Retirement,” which accompanies a sweet scene of James Garner and Shirley Jones (who share a very good, realistic chemistry with one another) in one of their very few scenes together here, “Go Get the Tank” (with a horn motif mirroring a vocal effect Schifrin employed in his Rock Requiem‘s “Introit”) and the heroic “Mudbath/Finale.”
The two songs/source cues heard here are “Saturday Girl,” a country song used as source music in the bar where James Garner’s character first meets the deputy sheriff, and the strangely-credited “NCO Disco (source),” which is heard as dance music in a very brief scene at an NCO dance.
“Saturday Girl” (this film’s “All for the Love of Sunshine”?) was composed by Lalo Schifrin, with lyrics by wife Donna, and sung by Gene Morford (1935-2005), a studio vocalist who sang on many pop and country records, film soundtracks (“Little Shop of Horrors,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Home Alone”) and co-wrote the theme to the TV show “Diff’rent Strokes” (1978-86).
“NCO Disco (source)” is actually a song called “Girl’s Got a Hold On Your Hand,” with lyrics by Eliot Tucker (who’s had a few brief credits with Italian film composers Guido and Maurizio De Angelis) and music by Lalo Schifrin. The vocalist, who is miked way back in the mix, is unknown to me.
“Tank” is not the unreleased Lalo Schifrin score this particular listener was waiting for. I would have voted for something like “St. Ives” (1976) or “Black Moon Rising” (1986) instead. But if it helped to make “Escape to Athena” available again, then I’m all for it.
In closing, I would just like to add that the Dragon’s Domain label should be commended for devoting themselves so thoroughly to resurrecting cult TV and film or film-related music by such Golden Age and Silver Age greats as Lalo Schifrin. This is one grateful listener.
Thus far, the label has given us such Schifrin titles as The Lalo Schifrin Collection (with music from “Voyage of the Damned,” “The Four Musketeers,” “Day of the Animals,” and “The Eagle Has Landed”), The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and The Mask of Sheba.
Dragon’s Domain is obviously going to the proper sources for the music and presenting these in the best possible light. But something in the presentation suggests a low-budget operation that offers none of the research that goes into what other film-score labels like Film Score Monthly, La La Land or Quartet Records do for their releases.
Even the label’s cover art – especially in the case of these “Lalo Schifrin Collection” sets – suggests a bootleg, which these are not! I hope Dragon’s Domain continues its Lalo Schifrin releases. But one can hope they do more moving forward.