Continuing the Goldsmith Collection Expansion Chronicles with some odds and ends.

First up: The Detective and Von Ryan’s Express. Both were reissued by La-La Land as part of the label’s Black Friday batch, but since I already had satisfactory versions of their companion scores (The Flim-Flam Man for the former and The Blue Max for the latter) I tracked down a reasonably-priced used copy of the 2013 Intrada release that paired both scores.

Like a number of other thrillers Goldsmith scored in that era, The Detective boasts a truly knockout jazz-influenced main theme (this time with some Elmer Bernstein-like swagger) that the composer was able to twist in a number of different ways. However, as the score’s fairly brief (yes, I recognize some tracks are missing), it does end up feeling a bit monothematic, and there are a number of weird effects (that rippling synth sound, for example) that aren’t always easy to listen to. Surprisingly, we hear the genesis of the goofy main titles piece from Escape from the Planet of the Apes in this score’s ‘Beach Scene’. In short, if you like Goldsmith’s other crime/spy music from the era (e.g., The Prize, Warning Shot, the Flint series), you’ll probably like this one.

Von Ryan’s Express features a decent march theme, though in ‘Fire Sale’ it roughly approximates what it would’ve sounded like if Goldsmith wrote Patton or MacArthur while drunk on Italian wine. The jagged opening with its nervy percussion sounds like proto-POTA music. The bouncing tones and abrasive brass in the Rome tracks are close cousins of Goldsmith’s stomping Western action music and The Blue Max. In fact, you hear a lot of the tense, martial style resurrected on a more massive scale in the subsequent year’s score. Effective and occasionally quite entertaining, but there’s an “oh, that’s it?” feeling when the score ends.

*** for both. If you’re gonna buy the recent LLL Goldsmith at Fox albums, do it for the other two featured scores.

Next: The Challenge. One does get reminded of a lot of other, better Goldsmith scores written around this time. I’ve read reviews saying this is like a Rambo score with some of the evocative majesty from Poltergeist, and those are fairly spot-on as the main theme’s interludes are definitely close cousins of the supernatural film’s music. If anything, it’s perhaps a bit TOO dependent on its main theme, with numerous stretches coming off as a bit too sedate/familiar.

But even if Goldsmith’s action sequences aren’t his most memorable, they still manage to enthral, with some tracks channeling the booming intensity of his percussive 1970s works (the ascending timpani motif brings to mind Damnation Alley). Plus, the sonic palette fascinates; Goldsmith was a master of tailoring the entirety of a score around East/West fusions, an aspect brought out by the terrific recording.

***½. Please note that this rating is not impacted by the nipple visible on one of the pages of La-La Land’s liner notes.

Last, but certainly not least: Total Recall. I had the Varèse Deluxe edition. In 2020 I threw down for the 30th Anniversary Edition by Quartet after missing out on the label’s 2015 release of the same content.

There’s not much “new” to the Quartet album relative to the Varèse one; the primary musical upgrade is probably having the finale piece without the brief source music extra at the end.

But my god...WHAT AN ALBUM COVER.

*****