Kritzerland: JUGGERNAUT and THE BED SITTING ROOM von Ken Thorne

[Marcus Stöhr]

Bereits vor einer Woche hat Kritzerland eine neue CD mit 2 Titeln von Ken Thorne angekündigt:

MY NAME IS JUGGERNAUT

Kritzerland is proud to present a new limited edition soundtrack CD two great scores for two great Richard Lester films, on one CD:

JUGGERNAUT and THE BED SITTING ROOM

Music Composed and Conducted by Ken Thorne

By the time of 1974s Juggernaut, Richard Lester was known for his two wonderful Beatles films, A Hard Days Night and Help!, the film version of the Broadway show A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, as well as The Knack, The Bed Sitting Room, and How I Won the War, all of which were suffused with Lesters visual style and humor. Hed also made the drama, Petulia, which was a whole different kind of film for Lester, and just prior to Juggernaut, hed made a boisterous and wonderful film of The Three Musketeers. But nothing Lester had done really could have prepared audiences for the tension-filled, excruciating suspense of Juggernaut. While its sometimes spoken of as a disaster film, its not really in the Irwin Allen mold at all. The set-up comes quickly a man identifying himself only as Juggernaut calls the owner of a shipping line and says there are seven barrels of amatol (explosives) on board the luxury-liner the Brittanic. They are set to explode by dawn of the next day. Any attempt to defuse them will cause them to detonate. If a ransom of 500,000 pounds is paid, Juggernaut will then send instructions on how to defuse the bombs. Juggernaut then gives a little demonstration by triggering a few small explosions. All this happens during the films terrific opening sequence.

From there on out its a game of edge-of-your-seat cat and mouse scenes between RichardHarris as Fallon, a bomb expert, and Juggernaut. Everything about the film works beautifully, and it has a great cast Richard Harris and David Hemmings (as his number one man) are superb, as are Omar Sharif, Shirley Knight, Ian Holm, Lester regular Roy Kinnear, a young Anthony Hopkins, and especially Freddie Jones.

Five years earlier, Lester directed a film version of John Antrobus and Spike Milligans post-apocalyptic comedy, The Bed Sitting Room. Lester brought his unique comic visual style to this very weird comedy, which features an amazing cast (listed in the credits not alphabetically, but by height) Ralph Richardson, Michael Hordern, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Marty Feldman, Mona Washbourne, Roy Kinnear, Arthur Lowe, and fellow Goon Show members, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe.

The scores for both films were written by Lesters frequent musical collaborator, Ken Thorne. Thornes score for Juggernaut is very brief but very effective it is filled with tension, has some great action scoring when the bomb squad is parachuting aboard the Brittanic, and his music heightens every scene in which its used. Theres also a very pretty theme to accompany scenes with Shirley Knight and Omar Sharif, but mostly his music plays the same cat and mouse game that the characters play. Thornes score for The Bed Sitting Room is the polar opposite of Juggernaut whimsical, jaunty, rueful, and filled with one great melody after another. Thorne was really adept at writing comedy scores, in a way that few composers are. And he especially had an affinity for complimenting Lesters visuals.

The source material for both scores came from Mr. Thornes personal tapes. For Juggernaut, those tapes had the entire brief score, save for one cue, the end titles. We were able to take most of that from the DVD (there is a tiny bit of sound effects ocean noise for the first few seconds). The Bed Sitting Room is quite a long score, but Mr. Thorne only had highlights from it on a reel, and weve included everything he had, as no tapes from either film were in the MGM vault.

This release is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98 plus shipping

CD will ship by the end of August however, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (weve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit Kritzerland Records - hard-to-find classics, reissues and new releases.

[BigBear]

Die CD ist bei Kritzerland übrigens scheinbar schon ausverkauft!

Kritzerland: Juggernaut/The Bed Sitting Room

Oder hat das "Sold Out" damit zu tun, daß die CD erst später ausgeliefert wird? Wohl kaum, oder?

[Gast Stefan Jania]

Bereits vor einer Woche hat Kritzerland eine neue CD mit 2 Titeln von Ken Thorne angekündigt

Wohl war. Einige US-Releases werden hier im Board teilweise gar nicht mehr erwähnt. Selbst die letzten beiden schon vor längerer Zeit veröffentlichten Titel von BSX hat keiner gepostet. War mir persönlich aber auch, ehrlich gesagt, selber die Zeit zu schade für. Auch Quartet hat noch eine CD aus der FSM-MGM-Box solo veröffentlicht.

[BigBear]

Na ja, erwähnt wurden sie ja schon. Sogar von dir selber.;)

[Gast Stefan Jania]

Naja, so gesehen. Aber von BSX und Quartet trotzdem nix.

[Bernd Junker]

Die BSX-Klamotten habe ich auch nicht ins Programm mit aufgenommen, da es ja eh wieder Ladenhüter sind.