Hello!

Why do we plug random stuff?  Because we LIKE it. Back in high school I took a chance on the first London Phase IV LP of Bernard Herrmann’s themes for Alfred Hitchcock, a record I played until the grooves wore out. The Psycho music was a huge hit; Vertigo prepared me for a fantastic screening at a Grauman’s Chinese FILMEX marathon in the Fall of 1970.

Later on, I eagerly invested in the Charles Gerhardt albums with re-recordings of themes from other great Hollywood composers. In many cases I had the music memorized long before seeing the actual movie, as was the case with  Friendly Persuasion by Dimitri Tiomkin,  The Red House by Miklos Rozsa and  The Constant Nymph by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

In my last year of high school arrived Bernard Herrmann’s Phase IV take on Gustav Holst’s The Planets, which ended up being one of the records I played the most. I’m just reading now that it wasn’t well reviewed, that critics complained about Herrmann’s tempo changes to Holst’s music. I found the Herrmann slow-down to be hypnotic. Mars, The Bringer of War had twice the punch, and the final track Neptune, The Mystic was the closest this very square teenager got to a drug trip. As I was never very adept at the art of needle-drop, the three ancient copies of the LP upstairs are in various states of scratch-O-phonic sound.

I bring all this up because I don’t recall there ever having been a CD release of this album, and I always wanted one. Wayne Schmidt just tipped me off that it’s presently being sold by Screen Archives, so I’m taking the plunge on this new restoration and remaster from Quartet Records. I hope it’s good:

The Planets: Conducted by Bernard Herrmann.

This week also gives me a chance to plug the multi-talented Michael Schlesinger, a Trailers from Hell guru by virtue of his directing and producing credits, but also for his good work in studio film distribution, promoting Samuel Fuller and rescuing classics from neglect.

But this week Trailers from Hell just finished posting trailers for a trio of comedy westerns for which Michael Schlesinger did the gab tracks: The Hallelujah Trail, Support Your Local Gunfighter and the Johnny Depp The Lone Ranger. Michael is a natural for this kind of personality-forward speaking. When I once covered TCMFest screenings, I’d make a point of attending Michael’s live introductions, ‘warming up the house’ for pictures like Johnny Guitar and One, Two, Three. In couple of minutes Michael could turn a sleepy, cranky 9am festival crowd back into movie enthusiasts. His many audio commentaries are funny, but also astute and well researched. The place to start is Michael’s marathon track for Criterion’s It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World — you’ll soon discover that it’s his favorite film.

Michael loves comedies … he has a good thing to say about every comedy, no matter how dire. Can he entice me to see The Hallelujah Trail again?  We’ll have to see about that.

We’ll be back with Michael when Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid arrives on 4K early in July — he had a hand in keeping an alternate cut of that film from being obliterated.

Schlesinger’s Hallelujah Trail TFH Commentary …. and CineSavant’s Blu-ray review.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson