One such film was The Split (1968), like Point Blank an MGM adaptation of a Richard Stark "Parker" book - here The Seventh - but without the arty aspirations. Jim Brown stars as "McClain," who leads a ragtag group of underworld thugs (including Ernest Borgnine, Jack Klugman, Warren Oates and Donald Sutherland) in a robbery of the L.A. Coliseum during an NFL game - but while the caper goes as planned, dividing the proceeds up afterwards leads to bloodshed and strife. Gene Hackman appears late in the film in a pivotal role as a detective.

Quincy Jones was famously the first African-American composer to have a major career in the previously lily-white world of film scoring - and remarkably resisted typecasting inasmuch as he scored many important films where race was a non-factor. Still, urban settings (with their racial implications) brought out some of his most dynamic work, and The Split soundtrack is a pulsating, funky and tuneful score with a riveting array of jazz and modernist effects. It is Jones in full-fledged They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! territory - angular, funky and irresistible, with several vocal source and score cues to boot.

Film Score Monthly's premiere CD of the complete score to The Split is mastered from the original 1Ž2" three-track stereo masters for excellent sound quality.

Packaging & Liner Notes
Standard jewel case. Superb colour booket. Copious liner notes by Scott Bettencourt and Alexander Kaplan give a thorough background on the literary world of Richard Stark (a pseudonym for Donald E. Westlake) and this film adaptation.