CD REVIEW - Diamond Head/Gone With the Wave


Diamond Head/Gone With the Wave
Music by John Williams/Lalo Schifrin
Film Score Monthly Vol.9 No.9 (U.S.)
23 Tracks 63:14 mins

This disc sees two Colpix LPs get the FSM CD treatment. The first, Diamond Head from 1963, an early entry in the John Williams catalogue, starred Charlton Heston as a wealthy Hawaiian plantation owner, whose political ambitions are threatened when his sister becomes involved with a full-blooded Hawaiian man, incredibly played by James Darren, who incidentally also sings the film's title song. Similarly miscast is George Chakiris as Darren's brother.
As was customary at the time, the soundtrack album was rerecorded, but sadly only presents four score cues from the film which, whilst revealing something of Williams' future style, are pervaded by the use of Hugo Winterhalter and Mack David's aforementioned title song. Other tracks on the album include some easy listening source cues and a couple more instrumentals, one based on the France Nuyen character's theme, the other not even present in the film. Overall, the album is a pleasant listening experience, but will be of little interest to hardcore film score collectors.
Even less interesting to them will be the other selections on the disc, composed by Lalo Schifrin for the 1964 surfing documentary Gone With the Wave. These eleven pieces weren't even composed to the film, but were added later. All of them are source-styled cues, mostly jazzy in nature, the most interesting of which are possibly the catchy, oriental flavoured "A Taste of Bamboo" and the Mexican-styled "Taco-Taquito.
As always, an informative booklet, accompanies the disc, with notes on the films and their scores by Lukas Kendall, complete with a track-by-track guide.