Enemy Below, The (1957)

Composer(s):
Leigh Harline

Released in:
1957

Reviews

Harline Is A Lot More Than
by Thomas Kiefner (July 22, 2004)
When I first saw that "The Enemy Below" was being released by Intrada I almost immediately put in an order for a copy of the limited release. It was a favorite film of mine growing up but honestly I remembered nothing about the score. I only remember the cat and mouse game that Mitchum and Jergens played in the movie.

From the very first track The Enemy Below Main Title, a good military theme used in several tracks, sets the tone for an excellent soundtrack. Without becoming too dissonant or harsh, Leigh manages to achieve a great underscore for the tense moments and action scenes. He uses an effective lower register (mainly trombones) to score the submarine movements in the cat and mouse game with the destroyer. Harline even created a radar effect using percussion to mimic the sound. So effective were the submarine underscores they were later written into several episodes of the television series "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea."

The remastering of this soundtrack is done superbly by Douglass Fake at Intrada. It has a nice full sound that you sometimes don't get with recordings from the 1950's.

Since this release is part of the Intrada Special Collection it is limited to 1000 copies. If you are interested in getting this don't wait too long as I am sure it will sell out quickly.

Reviews on other sites:

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suggested by:
Jeffrey Graebner

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