Here are the first two Kritzerland releases of 2012. I really feel there's no need to announce early here anymore, since all of three to four people are the only ones buying this stuff - so, it's easier to just order directly from the site.
Kritzerland presents its first two new limited edition soundtracks for 2012:
THE MOLLY MAGUIRES
Music Composed and Conducted by Henry Mancini
and
INVASION USA/TORMENTED
Music Composed and Conducted by Albert Glasser
The Molly Maguires was a big-budget drama from Paramount Pictures, with powerhouse stars, Sean Connery, Richard Harris, and Samantha Eggar, a terrific director, Martin Ritt (Hud, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and many others), and the screenwriter of Fail Safe and John Frankenheimer’s The Train, the great Walter Bernstein. The film takes place in the Pennsylvania coal country in 1876 and is loosely based on the true story of a small band of Irish coal miners/terrorists called The Molly Maguires.
For the film, composer Henry Mancini composed one of his finest scores, filled with lush melodies and expert evocative themes. Whether depicting an early morning at the mines (the astonishing opening cue), or the terrorist activities, or the blossoming love between Eggar and Harris, Mancini’s score is right up there with his greatest, including such masterpieces as Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Charade, Days of Wine and Roses, Hatari!, Two For The Road, and many others.
The Molly Maguires was originally issued on LP, and made its CD debut on Bay Cities in the early 1990s. For this new release, we had access to the original multi-track tapes stored in the Paramount vault. We are thrilled to present the entire score as recorded by Mancini, newly mixed in superb sound, and which features several cues that were left off the original album.
When the tapes were pulled for The Molly Maguires, we were delighted to find that the tapes for Charles Strouse’s original score were there – after a disastrous preview, it was decided his score would be replaced. Strouse, most well known for his Broadway musicals, had dabbled in film scoring with Bonnie and Clyde and The Night They Raided Minsky’s. Strouse’s complete score is included on the CD. The music is very interesting, and it’s fascinating to hear Strouse’s completely opposite approach to the one Mancini would ultimately take. There is some truly lovely music here.
The Molly Maguires is limited to 1500 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
INVASION USA/TORMENTED
We’re pleased to present a deliriously wonderful double bill of Albert Glasser scores. Invasion USA was made in 1952, when the Commie scare was in full bloom, the film is a nightmare (literally) vision of WHAT COULD HAPPEN HERE. The film is indescribable in its weirdness and exists in a whole other movie universe. It is a completely unique and classic B-movie, featuring a great B-movie cast, including Gerald Mohr, Peggie Castle, and Dan O’Herlihy. The film also has the distinction of having both TV Lois Lanes in the same movie – Phyllis Coates and Noel Neill. Even William Schallert makes a brief, uncredited appearance.
Eight years later would come another wild, weird and wacky movie called Tormented, made by the wonderful Bert I. Gordon. It was a story of death and jazz and love and a nasty female ghost come back to haunt and torment. The cast included Richard Carlson, Juli Reding, Lugene Sanders, and the adorable Susan Gordon (Bert’s daughter). Also making an appearance is Joe Turkel, who did several films for Gordon and who would ultimately give his most memorable performance as bartender Lloyd in the Stanley Kubrick film, The Shining.
Naturally, the perfect person to score these films was Albert Glasser, and he delivered exactly what was expected of him and which no other composer could have delivered in quite the same way. For Invasion USA he created a blaring, driving, crazy-quilt of a score, with screaming, dissonant brass. One simply cannot imagine a more perfect score for the movie. For Tormented, since the film’s leading man is a jazz pianist, Glasser naturally wrote a jazzy score – but this is not your normal jazz, this is TORMENTED jazz – jagged and crazy and somehow perfectly capturing the visuals of the film.
The two scores were mastered from Mr. Glasser’s personal tapes. While there are occasional sound issues, our wonderful mastering engineer, James Nelson, has done Herculean work to make both scores sound as good as they’re ever going to.
Invasion USA/Tormented is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
Both CDs will ship the second week of March – however, never fear, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit
www.kritzerland.com.
