A review by JAMES SOUTHALL

Not particularly well-remembered today, this 1976 action comedy was the first pairing of Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor (it's difficult to imagine that the pair was once box office dynamite).  Arthur Hiller's movie followed a journey on a train with various twists and turns, probably designed to evoke the same kind of feeling as Hitchcock's classic North by Northwest.  For the music, he brought on board Henry Mancini, who contributed a humorous, mostly laid-back score mixing elements of jazz and vintage action music.

It opens with a loungey presentation of the main theme, catchy and fun if somewhat disposable.  The score's real highlights are probably elsewhere - "This is Terrific" is a much punchier, more vibrant version of the theme played by harmonica.  "The Fun of Flying" sees some synths added for a flying sequence, quite an exhilarating cue.  A couple of brief cues in the middle of the album introduce the action music, with Mancini ditching the jazz for some considerably more potent music - "I'll Try" and "Gold Tooth" are both marvellous.  The finale "Runaway Train" is undoubtedly the highlight, six minutes of propulsive, rhythmic action music that shows the composer at his finest.

The fifth release in Intrada's Special Collection series, the score is presented first in complete form in mono (running to just over 45 minutes) and then the surviving 30 minutes or so of stereo cues are presented afterwards.  It's a pity the complete score didn't survive in stereo (considering the movie was only from 1976, it's worrying that tapes could have deteriorated so much so rapidly, and one must wonder how many great scores we will never hear, for this very reason) but the sound is perfectly good enough.  There are excellent notes by Roger Feigelson, Joe Sikoryak and Douglass Fake and this is a good example showing the two different sides of Mancini - potent, thrilling action music, and light jazz.