Kelly’s Heroes (Limited Edition CD Soundtrack)
Sound: B Music:
B
Like The Dirty Dozen, Brian G. Hutton’s Kelly’s
Heroes (1970) is one of the War genre films that was really a Professional
Western dressed up in fatigues. That is
to say that all the “cowboys” at this point were just in it for the money. Done with a bit more humor than the
Peckinpah classic, the film had the fortune to also be out the same time as
Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H and took advantage of both hits. His hit Where Eagles Dare (contained
on FSM CDs reviewed elsewhere on this site) made him an obvious choice to helm
this project.
Though we will look at the film down the line, this review
is focusing on the limited edition CD soundtrack that includes two versions of
Lalo Schifrin’s score. The feature
film’s original music debuts for the first time ever on this FSM label CD,
issued at only 3,000 copies by Film Score Monthly’s amazing in-house soundtrack
label. Then, the original vinyl record
music is included, along with the usually rich and informative booklet. The big bonus, besides all the painstaking
research to pull this together and running time of 30 tracks at about 80
minutes, are tracks by Schifrin that were never used for the film, though
intended as such. So many of these
soundtrack exclusives offer this and you would never hear such material on a
DVD release of just about any film.
Especially for a film that is at least a minor classic of several
genres, this is a terrific CD release indeed.
The military/Jazz combo is interesting, while the sappy vocal songs are
the most aged pieces offered.
The PCM CD 2.0 Stereo comes from the two sources, the
first set of tracks off of the ½” 3-track stereo masters, the same source that
was also used for the 70mm blow-ups of the film. That would give the film 5 channels of sound behind the screen,
plus an ambience mono surround track, but whether that mix exists or not will
only be known when the DVD version is further investigated. The second set of tracks is from the vinyl
record album rerecording issued by MGM Records, but since the master tape is
shot in places, FSM had to literally take it from a mint vinyl record copy
among other sources. Good thing they
found one, as good vinyl is getting harder to find and a famous store many
record companies turned to for their catalog (The Attic in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania recently were part of a disastrous flood that destroyed 4 Million
+ albums!) and lost a big chunk of their collection. It points to the many levels of crisis our film music heritage
that is in jeopardy, but labels like FSM are doing what they can to preserve
and issue the best and they succeeded again here. Go to www.filmscoremonthly.com
for more information on this release and how to order it and many other
exclusives.
- Nicholas Sheffo
