No soundtrack release yet, but the little-seen 1966 U.S. independent production DIMENSION 5 will be coming to Blu-ray on September 26th from Kino Lorber. The film was scored by old stalwart Paul Dunlap. Jeffrey Hunter starred as secret agent "Justin Power" of Espionage Inc.
A MAN CALLED DAGGER by Steve Allen and Ronald Stein. Not on CD, but...
Available from amazon as an mp3 download is an expanded version of the soundtrack of A MAN CALLED DAGGER (1967). The music is by Steve Allen. Ronald Stein composed additional music, and arranged and conducted the score. It's a great jazzy spy-spoof score, with numerous tongue-in-cheek references to the Barry Bond scores.
This expanded edition contains the 12 tracks from the original MGM LP, in stereo, plus an additional 29 tracks (!) in mono. All for $7.99
Would love to see Johnny Keating's superb score for INNOCENT BYSTANDERS (1972) come to light. Very much in the vein of Barry's THUNDERBALL.
INNOCENT BYSTANDERS is a 1972 espionage drama released by Paramount. The plot involves shifting loyalties among American, British, and Soviet spies. Conflicting Variety news items in December 1971 noted that Sagittarius Productions president Harry S. White and producer George Brown were considering both Ron Cook and Peter Collinson as director for INNOCENT BYSTANDERS. Collinson ended up as the directorial choice. Collinson had directed British television until making his feature film debut with 1967’s THE PENTHOUSE. He was experienced in the action genre, having already helmed THE ITALIAN JOB (1969) and YOU CAN’T WIN ‘EM ALL (1970).
Screenwriter James Mitchell had actually written the script’s source novel, under the pen name James Munro. In fact, the film is an adaptation of the final novel in a quartet that James Mitchell wrote under that pseudonym, all featuring Department K's "John Craig" character (played by Stanley Baker in the film). The novels are: "The Man Who Sold Death" (1964), "Die Rich, Die Happy" (1965), "The Money That Money Can't Buy" (1967), and “The Innocent Bystanders” (1969).
In addition to Stanley Baker, the film starred Geraldine Chaplin, Dana Andrews, and Sue Lloyd. Just before production began, INNOCENT BYSTANDERS went through a major cast change. Orson Welles was originally cast in the film, but he was forced to withdraw due to illness and was replaced by Donald Pleasence. (In the film, Pleasence plays a character called “Loomis,” the same name as the character he would later play in the HALLOWEEN films.) On 18 February 1972, the film went before the cameras. Shooting continued through late April 1972 in London, with interiors at Pinewood Studios, and at Costa Del Sol, Spain. The film was scored by John Keating, his final score, and a film of his so obscure that even Soundtrack Collector does not list it among his credits. Keating also wrote a song for the film, "What Makes the Man," with lyrics and vocal by Hurricane Smith.
INNOCENT BYSTANDERS opened first in London in October 1972. It had its American premiere in Los Angeles on 10 January 1973. Most of the critical jurors judged INNOCENT BYSTANDERS guilty of several cinematic misdemeanors. Not mincing any words, New York’s Judith Crist labeled the film “crap,” noting that the abundance of “bone-crushing and head-cracking and body hurtling and general mayhem” made the film “as unappetizing as it is incredible.” Cue’s William Wolf rejected the movie as a compendium of “secret agent clichés.” Time’s Jay Cocks blamed director Collinson for attempting to “slick up” the “spy hokum stuff,” adding that “its dizzying intrigue of counterplots and triplecrosses” came about through “a lot of addled editing.” And in the San Francisco Chronicle, Paine Knickerbocker found the film to be “incredible, predictable and unimaginative.”
A few critics, however, found the film to be “a fast-paced, exciting secret agent melodrama” (Variety’s “Whit”), particularly some reviewers who compared it to the James Bond films. But even on that point, there was disagreement. In his Los Angeles Times review, critic Charles Champlin wrote that Stanley Baker looks “for all the world like a mustachioed Sean Connery," noted that Geraldine Chaplin’s character is "a Bond variation" and called John Keating's musical score "pure Bond." But taking the opposite view, The Los Angeles Herald Examiner called INNOCENT BYSTANDERS "001 ½ ...a James Bond ripoff down to the zingy music." In all, the overwhelming majority of critics agreed with Newsday’s Joseph Gelmis that “INNOCENT BYSTANDERS looks like something left over from the low point of spy movies in the 1960s. It is a slick, totally undistinguished foreign intrigue flick.”
Here’s a television spot for the film:
Paramount finally licensed the film out to Olive Films for release on DVD and Blu-ray in February 2013.
A MAN CALLED DAGGER by Steve Allen and Ronald Stein. Not on CD, but...
Available from amazon as an mp3 download is an expanded version of the soundtrack of A MAN CALLED DAGGER (1967). The music is by Steve Allen. Ronald Stein composed additional music, and arranged and conducted the score. It's a great jazzy spy-spoof score, with numerous tongue-in-cheek references to the Barry Bond scores.
This expanded edition contains the 12 tracks from the original MGM LP, in stereo, plus an additional 29 tracks (!) in mono. All for $7.99
BARAKA SUR OVER X-13 is a 1966 spy film also known as "Baraka X 77" and "Agent X-77 Orders to Kill." In the film, a French secret agent (Gerard Barray) needs the help of a nurse (Sylva Koscina) to infiltrate a clinic where a scientist is being held captive. Here's the main title of the unreleased score by Georges Garvarentz, which admittedly doesn't hold a lot of promise.
In BLINDFOLD, a New York psychiatrist (Rock Hudson) is solicited by government agents in connection with a former patient of his who also happens to be a scientist wanted by certain foreign powers. This 1965 espionage film was curiously absent from American home video, without even a VHS release, until 2013 when Universal released it as a made-on-demand DVD as part of its Vault Series. Lalo Schifrin's score has not had a release. Here is the film's main title:
The 1969 drama THE FILE OF THE GOLDEN GOOSE isn't so much of a spy movie as one about counterfeiting. Yul Brynner plays the undercover agent traveling to London to crack the case. In any case, Sam Wanamaker directed the film, and the unreleased score was by Harry Robinson. Here's the main and end titles:
THE LIMBO LINE never had a U.S. release. In the 1968 film, Craig Stevens plays a British agent who tracks down the Soviet spies responsible for kidnapping defectors who reside in England. Johnnie Spence provided the unreleased score. Here is the not-half-bad main title:
A MAN CALLED DAGGER by Steve Allen and Ronald Stein. Not on CD, but...
Available from amazon as an mp3 download is an expanded version of the soundtrack of A MAN CALLED DAGGER (1967). The music is by Steve Allen. Ronald Stein composed additional music, and arranged and conducted the score. It's a great jazzy spy-spoof score, with numerous tongue-in-cheek references to the Barry Bond scores.
This expanded edition contains the 12 tracks from the original MGM LP, in stereo, plus an additional 29 tracks (!) in mono. All for $7.99
Probably because it too difficult to acquire the rights. As you yourself noted in another thread on the subject earlier this year, "I can't find Demon S&C Records on the interwebz."
In checking into the rights regarding A MAN CALLED DAGGER, it looks as if the film itself is controlled by Warner Bros. But as far as the music rights go, in 2009, Harlene Stein (Ronald's widow) assigned copyright to the music to Bug Music, Inc.
Bug Music is a music publisher that manages copyrights for Wilco, Ryan Adams, and the estates of Johnny Cash, Muddy Waters, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, among many others. In 1975, founder Dan Bourgoise decided to manage the music copyrights and career of his friend Del Shannon, and Bug Music was born. In 2007, the company acquired the Windswept Music and Trio/Quartet catalogs, adding about 250,000 copyrights, including the songs Fever, What a Wonderful World, and The Real Slim Shady.
The fact that Warners doesn't control the music rights is also probably what has kept the film off of home video all these years.
Here's the list of Italian productions. Likely only a few for which tapes exist. But there's hope, as Agente 3s3 massacro Al Sole was just released in 2017 and presumably a few more Umiliani, Lavagnino and Savina might be possible to release? I presume that Nicolai's "Da Berlino l'apocalisse" is lost?
Alessandro Alessandroni 1968 Hello Ward!... e furono vacanze in sangue
Gioacchino Angelo 1967 Un colpo da re
Alessandro Brugnolini 1965 Da Istanbul ordine di uccidere [DVD]
Pino Calvi 1959 Tunisi top secret
Bruno Canfora 1966 James Tont operazione D.U.E. [DVD]
Mario Capuano 1967 Tom Dollar
Gianni Ferrio 1967 Il raggio infernale [DVD]
Nico Fidenco 1964 Appuntamento a Dallas
Italo Fischetti 1966 7 donne d'oro contro due 07 1966 Agente 070 - Thunderbay missione Grasshopper 1967 Un épais manteau de sang
Giovanni Fusco 1966 Nostro agente a Casablanca
Benedetto Ghiglia 1965 077 spionaggio a Tangeri
Marcello Giombini 1964 FBI chiama Istanbul 1965 James Tont operazione U.N.O. 1965 A 001, operazione Giamaica 1966 Tiro a segno per uccidere
Angelo Francesco Lavagnino 1964 Hot Enough for June [DVD] 1965 A 008, operazione Sterminio [DVD] 1966 Le spie amano i fiori 1966 Un milione di dollari per sette assassini 1967 Delitto a Posillipo 1967 Assalto al tesoro di stato
Lelio Luttazzi 1957 Agguato a Tangeri
Egisto Macchi 1967 LSD - Inferno per pochi dollari [DVD]
Marcello de Martino 1966 Agente segreto 777 - Invito ad uccidere 1965 Agente segreto 777 - Operazione mistero
Francesco de Masi 1965 Agente Z 55 missione disperata [DVD] 1966 Missione apocalisse 1966 Le spie uccidono in silenzio [DVD] 1967 Come rubare un quintale di diamanti in Russia 1967 Strategic command chiama Jo Walker [DVD]
Mario Migliardi 1964 La sfinge sorride prima di morire - stop - Londra
Bruno Nicolai 1967 Da Berlino l'apocalisse [DVD]
Nora Orlandi 1966 L'affare Beckett [DVD: yes]
Riz Ortolani 1965 A 009 missione Hong Kong [DVD] 1966 Operazione Goldman [DVD] 1966 The Spy with a Cold Nose [DVD] 1966 Cifrato speciale [DVD]
Gino Peguri 1967 Silenzio: Si uccide 1968 Sigpress contra Scotland Yard
Carlo Savina 1965 Le spie uccidono a Beirut [DVD] 1966 Operazione Goldsnake [DVD] 1966 A 077, sfida ai killers [DVD] 1966 Furia a Marrakech [DVD] 1967 Si muore solo una volta
Felice di Stefano 1966 Sette donne d'oro contro due 07
Stefano Torossi 1966 Un brivido sulla pelle
Piero Umiliani 1964 002 agenti segretissimi [DVD] 1965 Agente 3S3, passaporto per l'inferno [DVD] 1966 Un colpo da mille miliardi 1966 Inferno a Caracas 1966 Che notte, ragazzi! 1966 Password: Uccidete agente Gordon [DVD] 1966 Tecnica di una spia 1966 Duello nel mondo [DVD] 1966 Ray Master l'inafferrabile [DVD] 1966 Rififí ad Amsterdam [DVD] 1967 Tecnica per un massacro [DVD] 1967 Come rubare la corona d'Inghilterra 1967 Morte in un giorno di pioggia 1967 L'uomo dal pugno d'oro 1967 Per 50.000 maledetti dollari
Teo Usuelli 1965 Agente S 03: Operazione Atlantide [DVD]
And here's a cover version of the main tune from OPERATION: LOVEBIRDS, which is heard throughout the film's trailer:
I don't know the film, but that melody is clearly an ironic treatment of Victor Young's famous song 'When I Fall in Love'. The first ten notes there with a different time signature and note lengths.
Probably this was intentional and obvious at the time.
I'm really focusing on the classic mid- to late-60s period.
How about a Japanese spy comedy from 1967?
THE AGE OF ASSASSINS by Sato, Masaru Original Soundtrack from the 60's Japanese Spy Comedy film directed by Kihachi Okamoto. Complete Original Soundtrack by Masaru. Sato. Search Keyword: CINK-50
