A review by JAMES SOUTHALL

Jerry Goldsmith's first important directorial collaboration was with John Huston; the pair worked together on two of the composer's earliest films, Freud and The List of Adrian Messenger, which were also two of his most important projects to that point.  Freud provided Goldsmith with his first Oscar nomination; The List of Adrian Messenger was the first "event" movie he scored.  A very odd, quirky film, it's essentially a murder mystery starring George C. Scott, but also features bizarre cameos from big name stars in disguise, with the audience supposed to struggle to identify them through the film.  Unfortunately, the disguises are about as effective as trying to stop a stampede of dinosaurs with a baked bean, and the likes of Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum and Burt Lancaster would have been less recognisable if they'd just worn curly wigs and bears.

The film is enjoyable enough; Goldsmith's score is excellent, by far his best to that point.  Somewhat jazzy but with many flourishes of action music, the main theme is, surprisingly enough, a tango.  Extremely catchy and with just the right amount of sleaziness and intrigue for the movie, it's certainly repeated a lot on the CD, but always with variation, and hence always seeming fresh.  There is also some suspense music which distinctly recalls Bernard Herrmann, with stinging brass and low, low woodwinds.  Amongst the action music is a brief section which is very similar to what later, famously, became the airplane music in The Twilight Zone: The Movie.  This CD is sequenced very oddly, with various tracks lumped together to make arbitrary suites.  The second of them features an absolutely gorgeous romantic melody, the most impressive thing about which is how unmistakably Goldsmithian it is, even at such an early stage of his career.  The absolute highlight of the score - and it still remains one of the most impressive pieces of the composer's glorious career - is a fox hunting cue heard in the third suite, with horns blaring, percussion blasting and all.  An exceptional piece of music.

This is one of the final really important Goldsmith scores never to have been properly released on CD.  The only way to get it at the moment is, unfortunately, on this bootleg which, as well as the illogical grouping together of unrelated tracks into longer suites, suffers from poor sound.  As a strange moment, there is a fifteen-minute suite from (according to the album cover, in several different places) "The Challenger".  Of course, it means The Challenge, but even so, those familiar with that score will scratch their heads at what music they are actually hearing towards the end of the suite.  It certainly isn't from The Challenge.  Apparently it's actually some music Goldsmith's friend Morton Stevens wrote for Outland, for a scene Goldsmith just didn't have time to score.  So now you know!  The album might be a disappointment, but the music is not; this is a first-rate Goldsmith score.

Tracks

1. I (15:41)
2. II (6:07)
3. III (5:14)
4. IV (9:49)
5. V (3:06)
6. The Challenge (15:32)