Foul Play (2CD) (Charles Fox)

Intrada announces the revisit of a classic Charles Fox score, the 1978 Paramount Pictures film Foul Play. This new edition is a 2-CD set, remixed from the original 16-track sources stored at Paramount.The first disc features the complete score, including selections of The Mikado recorded for the film and assembled with the score as they appear in the film. Fox carefully constructed the score to seamlessly weave in and out of the operetta, as the film intercuts back and forth between the San Francisco street chase and a performance of the Gilbert and Sullivan classic. Disc 1 concludes with source music heard in the film and a few alternates (including the unassembled chase music from the end of the film for those that want it Mikado free) and film versions, including the film version of "Ready to Take a Chance Again." Disc 2 features the original album program, rebuilt from the newly mixed masters as well as the complete suite of cues recorded for The Mikado.

Charles Fox collaborated with lyricist Norman Gimbel to create a melancholy yet empowering song, "Ready to Take a Chance Again," sung by Barry Manilow during a visually sweeping opening sequence. Fox incorporated the song's melody into the body of the film as an instrumental "Love Theme." Though director Colin Higgins was saluting Hitchcock, Fox drew his musical style from the tense, orchestral sound of 1940s and '50s film noir. While Fox's score reaches unusually dark heights, its menace is countered with a harmlessly hilarious action theme that pops up periodically and the tongue-in-cheek chase sequence at the end of the film.

Foul Play stars Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase and is a salute to Alfred Hitchcock, most notably the grand assassination plot of The Man Who Knew Too Much. Hawn plays Gloria Mundy, an innocent victim of knowing too much (or at least thought to know too much) about a plot to kill the Pope, and she becomes a target of an albino gunman and a nefarious "dwarf." Chase plays a handsome, glib detective who believes Mundy's seemingly tall tales when no one else will. Together they make an effervescent screen couple like hip updates of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, in a San Francisco-set film that affectionately references Hitchcock classics.


- Intrada