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Romeo and Juliet at sea? Such was the premise behind 1953’s epic adventure Beneath the 12-Mile Reef. Only the third film shot in the widescreen CinemaScope process, the Twentieth Century Fox film starred Robert Wagner and Terry Moore as the star-crossed lovers from warring families on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Adding luster to the picture was the score by Bernard Herrmann. By 1953, Herrmann was already well-known for his Oscar-winning score to The Devil and Daniel Webster and nominees Citizen Kane and Anna and the King of Siam; his career-defining triumphs with director Alfred Hitchcock were still ahead of him. Kritzerland has recently announced a new 1,000-unit limited edition reissue of Herrmann’s score to Beneath the 12-Mile Reef.

In its press release, the label offers that “Herrmann’s score, in thrilling stereophonic sound, immediately drew audiences into its unusual musical soundscape, weaving an evocative spell with its incredible orchestral colors. The film may be standard issue drama, but it was those underwater sequences that held audiences in thrall. That and the completely unique Herrmann score. To evoke the underwater world of Beneath the 12-Mile Reef, Herrmann employed nine harps, each with its own separate part. The score perfectly captures the mysterious underwater world – sinuous, hypnotic, flowing – a spellbinding tone poem that even today mesmerizes with its intense beauty. Since this was his first score to be recorded in multi-track stereo, Herrmann went so far as to include diagrams for instrument and microphone placement on his manuscript for the score. Needless to say, the resulting score remains one of Herrmann’s greatest.”

Beneath the 12-Mile Reef was released on CD in the early days of the Film Score Monthly label, and was later included in Varese Sarabande’s Bernard Herrmann at Fox box set. For that presentation, the score was extensively restored and remixed by Mike Matessino. Kritzerland’s reissue makes Matessino’s sterling work available on stand-alone CD for the first time.  It follows the label’s similar reissue of Herrmann’s score to the sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Though scheduled for release in the first week of May, Beneath the 12-Mile Reef will likely arrive earlier for those who pre-order directly from Kritzerland. (Pre-orders typically arrive an average of two to four weeks early.) The link to order is just below!

Bernard Herrmann, Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (Kritzerland, 2015)

1. Prelude
2. The Undersea
3. The Boat
4. The Homecoming
5. The Reef
6. The Glades
7. The Quiet Sea
8. The Airline
9. The Conch Boat
10. The Harbor
11. The Search
12. Flirtation
13. The Departure
14. The Marker
15. The Undersea Forest
16. Elegy
17. The Fire
18. Sorrow
19. The Dock
20. Escape
21. The Lagoon
22. Consolation
23. The Grave
24. The New Boat/The Buoy
25. Descending
26. The Sea Garden
27. The Octopus
28. The Hookboat
29. The Fight
30. Finale