Lalo Schifrin (1932-2025)

It was 1991. It might’ve been August. I’m not exactly sure. The cable channel Encore specialized in movies from the 60s, 70s and 80s. It was on this channel that I discovered the 1977 thriller Rollercoaster; not something a 10-year-old should’ve been watching, perhaps, but hey there you go. However, the music - a weird sort of calliope-type melody appropriate for the amusement park setting(s) - got my attention. That music was composed by Lalo Schifrin, who passed away the other day.

A few years later, I happened upon a creepy lullaby-like melody. This was from The Amityville Horror. (Clearly, I would watch anything even if I shouldn’t have been.) The composer? Schifrin again. This guy had a way with getting to the heart of a movie.

His orchestrations were quite clever: whistling (Kelly's Heroes, The Big Brawl), cimbalom (Love and Bullets, Joe Kidd) and electronics (the synthesizer tones in the opening of Golden Needles when the title comes up, to represent the needles at the center of the story, will never not amaze me), for instance.

I still maintain that his creative peak was from roughly 1976 to 1982. So many great scores from that time period (St. Ives, Day of the Animals, Rollercoaster, Telefon, Return from Witch Mountain, The Manitou, The Cat from Outer Space, Love and Bullets, The Concorde: Airport ‘79, The Big Brawl, Caveman, Amityville II: the Possession) and need I even mention “Mission: Impossible”?

Vaya con Dios, Maestro. You shall be missed.