Audiences were not quite ready for the antics of Police Squad in 1982.  Or at least, the wry humor and gag-a-minute pace were lost on those coming to a comedy that was absent a laugh track.  Few were able to get in on the joke.  But the (mis)adventures of Detective Frank Drebbin would have their day.  The team of David and Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and  Pat Proft would have a host of similar comic films, one of which, Airplane! made their brand of comic style known to a large and appreciative audience.  Six years after the cancellation of the 6-episode Police Squad, the team returned to bring the characters to life on a wider canvas and thus created a trilogy if hilarious sight gags and plot lines that would endear the straight-faced Leslie Nielsen to a whole new audience and niche market for the actor.  La-La Land Records is releasing a 3-disc set featuring complete scores and source music from each of the films in the trilogy.

The original TV series features an excellent Big Band swing theme that captured perfectly the send up of earlier 1950s/1960s cop dramas.  The structure and melodic content is a perfect parody of Stanley Wilson’s M Squad scores, and Count Basie’s theme to boot.  When the series moved to the big screen, Newborn, who had plenty of comic films to his credit, was brought back to provide the musical canvas for the first film released in 1988.

The first Naked Gun film is really the highlight of this new La-La Land set.  It references the swing theme for its “Main Title” but then shifts very quickly to underscore the “seriousness” of sequences with a sort of modernized Schifrin-esque style reminiscent of 1970s cop dramas.  Even the acoustic of the score here feels a bit like the sound one would expect from those TV cop dramas which works marvelously well.  A more patriotic/heroic theme is used for Drebbin (“Frank the Hero”) which will become more significant in appearance in the subsequent sequels.  The dramatic scoring, often underlining hilarious on-screen antics, is generally spot on with its dramatic underscore taking everything as seriously as Drebbin and the rest of the characters.  Newborn’s skill comes to the forefront in two particular tracks.  The first of these is “Beeper Doc/The Exciting Chase” which feels a bit like smashing together Goldsmith and Schifrin.  The timing of the score to fit the action demonstrates Newborn’s own ability to match the timing so well (heard also in “Drebin the Acrobat” and “Frank Goes Bump-Bump”).  Hands down, the best highlight of the score is “Out on the Ledge.”  Musically, this sequence is simply hilarious spoofin the very action music often used in dangerous scenes like this.  Skittish brass and woodwinds flitter all over the place trying to outdo one another as the sequence plays out.  Alone it is quite an achievement to just hear the way the scene is scored with such perfection.  Another important musical nod goes to modern film noir, (think David Shire’s Farewell, My Lovely) in “The Seduction”.  This is a theme that will follow Priscilla Presley’s character (Miss Spencer).  Finally, La-La Land pulls together a host of source cues from the baseball sequence and adds two album versions (for “The Seduction” and “Out on the Ledge”) as well as two alternate ending tracks.

When The Naked Gun 2 ½--The Smell of Fear appeared in 1991, Newborn chose to essentially revisit his Drebbin theme, and Spencer romantic music.  Throughout the score, these themes are better interwoven into the fabric of the score along with the original Police Squad theme.  The score incorporates a bit more swing and big band style which provides a bit more variety.  Additional material includes a host of source cues among which are one great highlight, “I Guess I’m Just Screwed” and the sequence where Nielsen “sings” “Besame Mucho” (a perfect match for his rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” which appears from the baseball sequence on disc one).  A number of unreleased cues, resequenced and edited into proper film order help provide a greater continuity to the score itself.  The thematic use helps provide an overall more cohesive experience here than the first score, and feels like a good comedic film noir style.

Another three years separated the second Drebin outing from The Final Insult (1991).  There are some interesting moments in this score as well that this time focuses a bit more on grittier music for the seamier characters of Rocco and Mom.  Tanya gets her own seductive sax solo theme.  The score often hearkens back to sequences of cop dramas of the 1970s again with “Prison Fight” standing out.  Sometimes, though, the score feels a bit recycled from the earlier films.  The other interesting comedic approach here are some Hollywood musical parodies, most noticeably in “Thelma & Louise Jane” and some Steiner references in the Academy Awards sequence (music here is given a separate section of source cues.  Four alternate tracks and brief soap opera and lotto source music also is included.

With some three hours of Newborn’s scores, there is a lot to cover and the booklet notes by Dan Schweiger are superb.  The first film receives the best score with the second one allowing more time for themes to be heard within some of the goofy context.  The final score feels a bit tired at times, but still has some interesting moments.  Comedic scoring rarely gets its due and is very hard to pull off.  Here is a perfect example of how it should work and why Ira Newborn was so very good at supporting films like this.  One can hope that it opens the door for fans to hear some of his other equally important music.  La-La Land has sequenced the bonus tracks well so that they play fine.  One wonders if some will wear thin over time.  It is a hard call to decide whether all of the source cues should have been on a single disc with just scores compiled together, but this way, one can get a better sense of the thrust of the score by reinserting them sequentially.  This is an excellent set!

Among many great shows of the 1960s, one must place The Addams Family.  The iconic characterizations by John Austin, Carolyn Jones, Ted Cassidy, and Jackie Coogan made Charles Addams’ New Yorker drawings come alive.  Unlike The Munsters whose comedy tends to play up the immigrant family carving out a life in America, the Addams’ tended to focus on the eccentric behavior of the upper classes.  Both series provide interesting historical snapshots of the period through very unique lenses and work because the humor at its core is somewhat universal and relatable to its audiences.  Barry Sonnenfeld would direct the film which appeared at a time when both TV adaptations to the big screen and more unusual stylized Gothic comedies (a la Tim Burton) were doing well at the box office.  The story returned to the roots of Addams’ drawings choosing to highlight a family who was “right” while the rest of the world seemed wrong to their way of thinking.  With great costuming and sets, and a very good cast (including a young Christina Ricci), the result was an appropriately off-kilter dark family comedy.  Though Danny Elfman might have seemed like the perfect choice for the project, the score responsibilities ended up being taken on by Marc Shaiman fresh off his fun western comedy score for City Slickers.  The result is one of his many great scores of the 1990s.  La-La Land Records is releasing a 4000 copy limited edition CD that should be a must have for fans of the composer.

The original theme for the television series, by the very talented Vic Mizzy, would serve as an opening reference and source for Shaiman’s score.  He would find the perfect gothic and romantic musical approaches to the film including a wonderful waltz theme.  And like similar Gothic horror comedies, he would take some cues from Eastern Europe for musical inspiration with Gypsy-like melodies and musical gestures.  The film opens at Christmas as a group of carolers make an unfortunate decision to share their gifts at the Addams mansion and are “rewarded”.  The “Main Title” provides the Mizzy motif and then moves into Shaiman’s really gorgeous melancholy romantic waltz idea.  A harpsichord and skittering pizzicato strings provide another “suggestion” of the series and often serves to accompany Thing as “he” scurries through the house and which appears in “Morning’.  The cue perfectly captures both the sense of the story and the oddness of the family’s life.  The waltz theme casts its shadow across the music with Gypsy-violin and beautiful romantic leanings (perhaps reminiscent of Morris’s Young Frankenstein approach).  The parent Addams’s  have a very “close” personal relationship and the sensuality comes across especially in the tango theme that follows Gomez (and is introduced in “Chess” as a source cue).  The Eastern European styling comes to the fore in “Mamushka”.  While one might think the score would be a quirky listen, it turns out to work very well in its combination of comedic underscoring, romantic gestures, hints of danger, and nostalgic references.  Perhaps it shows most how well Shaiman was able to pull these elements together.  In “A Party…For Me?” these ideas get a chance to be featured across five minutes of music for one of the score’s highlights.

First we must give thanks that La-La Land did not include the wretched MC Hammer end credits “Addams Groove”.  Instead, they have included some wonderful bonuses with plenty of unreleased sequences, unused musical segments, and a alternate/album tracks.  The “Playmates” music from a slide sequence with Fester and Gomez heading to the vault appears as does a complete performance of Ellington’s “The Mooche”—a perfectly nostalgic take (an interesting choice similar to Elfman’s use of ragtime/jazz in his gothic comedy scores) that is referenced stylistically later in “Thing Gets to Work”.  One of the big highlights of the film, the “Mamushka” sequence, gets heard in its entirety (featuring Raul Julia and Christopher Lloyd) and in two separate versions as well.  There is also a demo of waltzes and even the theatrical trailer music.  The result is a fairly complete presentation of Shaiman’s memorable scores from those early days when his film career was just beginning to take off.  The waltz theme is perhaps worth the price of the disc alone, but then you also get a great deal of delightful orchestral ideas to boot.  Perhaps its sequel score will serve as a great companion soon.