The In-Laws (1979) is one of those classic comedies where unlikely characters are brought together around a uniting event, in this case a wedding, but in the case of the fathers, soon are headed off into odd chases and comic misadventures.  Director Arthur Hiller’s film features wonderful comedic turns by Peter Falk and Alan Arkin and is still a guilty pleasure.  The score is by John Morris and comes at the height of the composer’s popularity.  Morris scored practically every Mel Brooks’ comedy from The Producers to Life Stinks.  His career began with the noted theme music for Julia Child’s popular program, The French Chef (1962).  The In-Laws comes right on the heels of scores that had him perfectly imitating some of the great film music of Hollywood from the 1920s (in Silent Movie and The World’s Greatest Lover), to Universal monster music (Young Frankenstein), to Herrmann’s Hitchcock music (High Anxiety).  And it comes before one of his great dramatic scores, The Elephant Man.  More recently many of his classic scores are finally receiving their due on disc.  We have La-La Land to thank for making this one available in a limited edition release.

Morris’ “Main Title” begins with a crime thriller style including some unusual sound effects that waver over the texture.  The use of flutes and xylophone perhaps provide just a slight lighter touch suggesting a more comedic potential in the story, but things are fairly serious as the title plays out in a sort of modern James Bond realization.  Soon a sort of skipping thematic idea, itself a bit off kilter melodically and rhythmically, takes over setting us up to expect a few goofy moments.  This latter style will become a key component that really helps pull the story along with its Mizzy-like energy and comic hits.  Sometimes it feels a little Mancini like (“Bag Chase”). There is even some time for dramatic scoring mixed with Mexican flair that appears (“Too Many Movies—Landing”) as the duo finds themselves in Honduras.  Comic scoring here is heightened by the seamless shifts from dramatic underscoring style to humorous punches and back again.  “Car Shimmies Away” is a track providing the latter contrast of madcap reality to what was only suggested at in the previous track.  It gains great momentum and excitement in “Banana Chase” before we move into the more sinister music of “The General’s Secret Chamber.”  The final wedding sequence features Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus” before getting out of the way to revisit the main title themes.

A few bonuses help make the album a bit longer.  These include some alternate takes of “Bag Chase” and a standalone of the “End Title” music.  The latter helps bring the overall presentation to a satisfying close.  It is preceded by a recording of the orchestra “tuning up” which seems a bit odd to include this, but it is an important moment in the film and it makes the presentation more complete.  The In-Laws is a fun little Morris score that is a nice parallel approach to scoring comedy that comes closer to Mancini’s style at times, but which is one that the composer had already well-honed by this time.

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!