Game Of Death/night Games

 

 

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As a longtime fan of both Bruce Lee and John Barry i guess buying this CD was something of a no brainer really! The score for "Game of death" is unfortunately ignored on most John Barry compilation albums,why i can't quite fathom, because the score for "Game of death' is quite magnificent and ranks as one of his best scores of the 70's. Barry scored "Game of death" in a busy and fruitful period in his career which was between 1976-80, personally the years between 1976-80 were some of Barry's best and in this time he scored movies like "The Deep" "King Kong" the cult italian Star Wars rip off sci fi movie "Starcrash" the regular Bond outing in "Moonraker" Disney's "The Black Hole" and the 2 movies featured on this CD

In-between scoring lots of big Hollywood pictures during his tenure living in Hollywood, Barry was contacted by Golden Harvest, the Hong Kong studio that made all the Bruce Lee films and was venturing into making movies outside Hong Kong, to see if he would be interested in scoring 2 films for them?, Barry accepted citing his interest especially in scoring "Game of death" as he quoted "It would be fun to do a Bruce Lee" movie. "Night Games" was scored a short while after but i'll get to that in a minute.

"Game of death" is probably Barry's most Bond sounding score that didn't feature 007. Full of heavy action cues it's re-pleat with big brassy motifs and soaring strings and pounding drums! It even features a song Barry composed which is sung by actress Colleen Camp during the end credits, the melancholy "Will this be the song i'm singing tomorrow" which is quite lovely. The album ( in somewhat typical Barry fashion) is somewhat repetitive with the main theme or the song i just mentioned being featured to some degree in the bulk of the tracks but "Game of death" is still a brilliant piece of work all round. Bruce Lee was lucky to have 3 great scores for the 5 films he made - This one, the equally magnificent score for "Enter the dragon" by Lalo Schifrin and "The Big Boss" scored by the Peter Thomas orchestra which is very funky indeed! ( all available on CD i might add)

"Night Games" is a lovely Barry bonus ! This is the first time the score has been available, either on LP or CD! Due to the films critical and commercial failure there seemed little interest in releasing the soundtrack and plans for a release were quickly shelved. This in hindsight was a great shame as although the music for "Night Games" won't touch Barry's best work it really is quite a lovely piece of work. The names of the tracks don't inspire much confidence in the quality of the music but songs like "The wet spot" and "Water sports" are highly melodic and really quite beautiful. It's a shame the music was buried underneath a garbage movie like "Night Games" as if it was used for another film it would have gained much more attention.

The main point of interest to most here would be the "Game of death" score as it's a brilliant score all round. "Night Games" will be just a bonus for most but an extremely welcome one and adds to the overall value of the package.

The sound quality is largely excellent and silva screen give excellent liner notes on both scores. Sadly the CD seems to be out of print so prices for it are uniformly high but i'm sure at some point it will get another outing.

Knowing that John Barry didn't want to score Game Of Death, and named an outlandish fee that was accepted, much to his surprise, I didn't expect much from this score. I was wrong - he's provided a great action score that shows how he could easily have taken a different direction with the Bond films to that which he did. Punchy and brassy (albeit with a slightly irritating percussion effect like a ticking clock that pervades nearly all the tracks), it's a natural evolution of his style in another way.

As for Night Games - the title tracks didn't provide me with much hope, but, again, I am proved wrong, as Barry provides a lush and romantic score. Perhaps not quite as famous, or, indeed, quite as good, as his scores to Out Of Africa or Somewhere In Time, but very much that kind of thing, and very enjoyable.

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