June 29, 2009

  • Review: Sky Riders (Schifrin)

    Sky Riders is a forgettable 1976 20th Century Fox thriller starring Robert Culp and Susannah York as husband and wife.  York and the children are kidnapped and taken to a high aerie-esque crag where an ancient monastery sits seemingly impregnable.  That is until the ex-husband, played by James Coburn, arrives with a plan involving hang-gliding to the rescue.  It receives its debut here on the composer's Aleph label.

    The most striking thing about Schifrin’s score for Sky Riders is its circus atmosphere and sound (scored for brass, percussion, and glockenspiel) which pervades the opening track.  “Flying Circus,” is a light, jazzy waltz reminiscent of the one for Rollercoaster.  “Climbers,” moves quickly into a typical tension-filled underscoring style for mid-1970s Schifrin, but with added Greek-flavored instrumentation mixed in amidst the eerie music.  This sense of ethnic instrumentation receives additional nods in the lighter “The Riders” with beautifully lyric string writing providing a fine contrast to the asymmetry of the Greek melody—all before we return to more tense held notes.  Schifrin does a fine job ratcheting up tension with astringent harmonies and angular thematic lines in “The Terrorists”—sounds reminiscent of his Mission Impossible scores but with more depth and a wild, accomplished abandon that often hints at continual piano ostinato lines but which come and go freely.  What helps the presentation of the score are the elongated tracks (compiled from several cues) themselves that provide an ample opportunity to experience long stretches of score.  This allows the listener to be drawn in to the music far more quickly and one gets to also hear how Schifrin must work to vary the thematic elements and orchestration to keep things moving.

    While seemingly unimportant, Sky Riders holds a special transition for Schifrin from the funky styles of jazz underscores provided for a host of early 1970s films to a shifting more purely dramatic style.  Of the five other films he scored in 1976, this is the last of its kind until 1997’s Enter the Dragon.  Schifrin’s career would take a fascinating turn in his Oscar-nominated score for Voyage of the Damned (worth a re-issue itself) that would find him exploring more typical orchestral writing.  The final track is listed as the “original version” of the end credits—which begs the question why was the alternative one included, there was plenty of room.  That said, this is easily recommended for fans of good 1970s scoring and of the composer’s work when it appears towards the end of July.