Twas inevitable that my alphabetically constrained series for #SoundtrackSunday would require addendums along the way. So when I came across two titles at DTLA’s treasure-filled Last Bookstore (@lastbookstorela) earlier this week, both in solid condition and at appealing prices (snagged ‘em for under $10 total), I didn’t hesitate to alter the trajectory while I’m still in the A’s. (This is the first of two such posts today.)
Whether you’ll enjoy ‘After the Fox’ depends a great deal on how much you appreciate Peter Sellers during his most manic phase or get a kick out of campy/spoofy mid-‘60s cinema with European flavor. Neither of those factors has aged especially well yet still has adherents who think one or the other or both are a hoot. I’m on the fence, despite De Sica in the director’s chair and Neil Simon providing the yuks. The accompanying album, however, is worth the quarters it cost to procure the Sellers-enhanced theme song (strangest, some might say dopiest, thing the Hollies ever recorded, with or without Graham Nash) as well as one of Burt Bacharach’s earliest scores, although not all of it bears his signature style. Plays like a blueprint of sounds and styles he improved upon the following year for a similarly kitschy (and more troubled) picture, the James Bond farce ‘Casino Royale.’
#SoundtrackSunday 003.1
‘After the Fox’
United Artists, 1966
d: Vittorio De Sica