In 1983, Viva Records released the soundtrack to Sudden Impact, which also contained music from two other scores written by
Lalo Schifrin for
Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry series of detective thrillers, Magnum Force and The Enforcer. (There were five Dirty Harry films in all, and
Schifrin wrote the music for four of them.) The Dirty Harry Anthology, issued on
Schifrin's own label, presents his newly recorded versions of music from the first film, Dirty Harry (1971), as well as Magnum Force (1973), and Sudden Impact. The earlier scores contain typical elements from their time, including the plucked bass and wah wah guitar sounds typical of
Shaft and other scores of the time. As action movies, of course, the soundtracks require a fair amount of music to support and complement tense action sequences, and
Schifrin delivers, mixing jazz and rock elements with other styles. From the start, with
Eastwood's famous "Do you feel lucky?" speech from the first movie, the series is effectively evoked, and the music holds up, maybe even better than the frankly politically incorrect films do. ~ William Ruhlmann