Morning, all —
Last night I caught up with “Cattle Annie and Little Britches” which I enjoyed well enough even if it felt like maybe 2/3 of a good movie. Amanda Plummer and Diane Lane are fantastic, as is the great Burt Lancaster doing the gentleman outlaw thing the way only he could. Not that I know anything about it, but it feels like the idea was originally to make a movie about the two outlaw girls but then the producers found they had to artificially and maybe hastily beef up the younger guys’ parts to attract dudes like John Savage and Scott Glenn and the result is that after a first third in which the girls are the story, they fade into the background for most of the middle. The balance felt wonky in any case, as good as everyone acquits themselves. The movie apparently got no release at all at the time, which I guess I can understand if the presence of the young girls led the studio to expect “The Apple Dumpling Gang” but even in the late ‘70s to early ‘80s, a kids movie this is NOT.
The music was a similarly mixed bag. There’s a nice ersatz folk song thing that they do for maybe half of the running time that I liked a lot, with lyrics commenting on the action in an oblique way, as though through a haze of legend. There was one slightly unhinged, more orchestral-sounding action cue that played up the ramshackle nature of the band of outlaws and that was great, but toward the end we’re in “Dukes of Hazzard” territory which made me sad. This was after a single viewing so my perceptions might be off but it felt like they had two different musical approaches executed and then ended up picking and choosing between them. The song writers (I think, Sahn Berti and Tom Slocum) get the main music credit on the movie up front but there is a very prominent “additional music” credit (Richard Greene) at the end, so maybe that’s what happened?
I looked up the title on Soundtrackcollector.com and much to my surprise found a listing for a rejected score by none other than Alex North. Anybody know the story with this? If anyone could have pulled off the tonal juggling act this movie required it would have been him. Could be North did his thing, then someone had the brilliant idea of adding folk songs (which might have driven North up the wall precipitating his exit from the project but they actually work okay as far as they go) then decided the songs themselves weren’t going to be enough, hence the additional composer and the patchwork music quilt that’s in the movie now? But I’m totally making stuff up. Anybody know for sure?
More importantly, might there be another lost Alex North western score waiting to be discovered?
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
