Soundtrack Watch: Intrada is "Dressed to Kill," La-La Land Goes to "Rosewood"

Calling all soundtrack enthusiasts: the past week of film score reissues from our favorite soundtrack reissue labels has been a bountiful one, indeed!

Last week, Intrada debuted an expanded edition of the score to Brian DePalma's modern suspense picture, Dressed to Kill (1980). Nancy Allen plays a call girl who witnesses a murder, and Michael Caine is the victim's psychologist, who might have more of a connection to the murder than meets the eye. DePalma's controversial film owed more than a little to Alfred Hitchcock and Psycho in tone and subject matter, but Pino Donaggio's score was worlds apart from Bernard Hermann's fearsome soundtrack to that film. Donaggio commands a full orchestra with an almost romantic main theme contrasted throughout by rhythmic passages representing the suspense and murder throughout.

For this release, Intrada greatly expands upon the original Varese Sarabande LP, featuring nearly an hour of music, nearly all of it newly mixed from the original multitrack session masters, which turned up after years of vault searching. Fans of Donaggio's work for DePalma will not be disappointed by this one.

And La-La Land delivers a special treat for fans of John Williams: an expanded edition of his score to 1997's Rosewood. Comparably obscure to his works for Steven Spielberg, big-budget fantasies or even the dramas of auteurs like Oliver Stone, this John Singleton film dramatized a racially-motivated violent event in Florida in 1923, bringing together Ving Rhames and Jon Voight as an unlikely team who sets out to fight against the racists who are attacking the titular black community. Williams, of course, handled things with typical grace and gravitas, utilizing a choir for the haunting "Look Down, Lord" and infusing passages with period color, including light blues and gospel shadings.

Rosewood's expanded presentation, limited to 3,500 units, includes two discs - one featuring the original mix and edit of the score as heard in the film, the other featuring the original Sony Classical soundtrack album. Mike Matessino, who co-produced with Sony Music's Didier C. Deutsch, masters the disc, and Jeff Bond writes a powerful set of liner notes. Also exciting: Rosewood is first in a planned series of scores from LLL celebrating the 90th anniversary of Warner Bros. Pictures - and it's one of many titles you can get through the label's current dads-and-grads/Memorial Day sale, where everything is 20% off with a coupon code featured on La-La Land's website.

After the jump, you can order your copies of both titles and check out the track lists!

Pino Donaggio, Dressed to Kill: Original MGM Motion Picture Soundtrack - Expanded Edition (originally released as Varese Sarabande STV-81148, 1980 - expanded Intrada Special Collection Vol. 246, 2013)