Soundtrack and remakes
- Realistic: Score is Hitch’s canny exercise in minimalism
- Back at sea: Film’s star returns for the only radio version
- Sci-fi: Three quasi-remakes transpose story to outer space
- Another, based on a tragic true story, has a future A-list cast
Note: this is part of an ongoing series of 150-odd Hitchcock articles; any dead links are to those not yet published. Subscribe to the email list to be notified when new ones appear.
Lifeboat: Writing on a Classic; Collectors Guide, Pt 2: Shorts and controversies, Pt 3: Home video, Pt 4: Soundtrack and remakes
Tallulah Bankhead, star of both versions of Lifeboat
Contents
- Soundtrack
- Remakes
- On the radio
- Lifepod (1981)
- Lifepod (1993)
- Circuit Breaker (1996)
- Dead Calm (1989)
- Related articles
Soundtrack
Hugo Friedhofer, – best years of our lives, body and soul – one of the top film composers of Hollywood’s golden age, did the very brief scoring duties on Lifeboat, as it only features music during the opening credits and a brief orchestral cadence at the end. That’s also the case with Jamaica Inn and Rear Window (apart from a piano tune progressively ‘composed’ onscreen), while The Birds goes one further and has no score at all, instead featuring abstract electronica overlaid with bird sounds. Coincidentally, Friedhofer’s very next released work was for the second remake of The Lodger and he eventually went on to score the fourth remake too, retitled Man in the Attic.
- Hitchcock’s Music (2006) – Jack Sullivan | interview, podcast, video | review/#2/#3/#4
- The Musical Function of Sound in Rope, Lifeboat and Rear Window – Helen Cox and David Neumeyer
An oft-repeated anecdote, again recounted by musicologist Jack Sullivan writing in Hitchcock’s Music, has it that Hitch was asked by Friedhofer why the absence of a full-length score. As the entire film takes place in a lifeboat in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, Hitch replied, “Where would the orchestra come from?” To which the composer is said to have retorted, “The same place the cameras came from!” A 1995 retake of Lifeboat’s opening cues, Twentieth Century Fox Fanfare/Disaster, was recorded for soundtrack specialists Silva Screen and appears on their most comprehensive Hitch collection, among various others.
- Silva Screen 2-CD/MP3 Psycho: The Essential AH (1999) City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra cond. Paul Bateman (3:03)
On the radio
From ocean waves to airwaves. Rather oddly, especially given its literary pedigree and natural fit, I can’t any reference to Lifeboat having been adapted for the stage and it appears to have been recorded only once as a radio play. Nonetheless, it’s a great one, with Tallulah Bankhead reprising her film role alongside Jeff Chandler with direction from Hitch, who also provides a brief intro.
Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip paid tribute to the film in “Dire Wolf“, a track on their 2002 album In Violet Light, with recurring elliptical references to “Tallulah Bankhead and Canada Lee“, who are “Somewhere far-off, peaceful, sleeping and done with acting.”
Lifepod (1981)
An interstellar pleasure cruise turns into a nightmare when a computer takes control and issues an emergency evacuation order. The lives of the passengers are suspended in an overcrowded life pod as a classic battle of good versus evil takes place on the luxury ship. – US DVD
- Prime Video | YouTube
- US: VCI DVD (2012)
- VCI 2-DVD Sci-Fi 4-pack (2020)
The first of three sci-fi quasi-remakes shares its name with the second and likewise, both transpose the action to a spaceship and its escape pod carrying a handful of disparate, and desperate, souls. A low budget affair, Lifepod 1981 doesn’t credit its source material yet clearly owes it a heavy debt. These are its only releases to date.
Lifepod (1993)
Prime Video artwork (alt)
From the producers of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves & Backdraft
Alone. Alive. And stranded with a killer.
An ominous adaptation of Hitchcock’s thriller Lifeboat.
“A tough, scary roller coaster… a handsome, taut thriller.” – USA Today
This futuristic adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Lifeboat packs intense action and thrilling suspense into a human drama of courage and heroism. Lifepod features a top-notch cast including Academy Award-nominee Robert Loggia (Jagged Edge, Big) and Emmy-nominee Ron Silver (Blue Steel, Enemies: A Love Story) in the dual role of star and director. A lone lifepod drifts helplessly through space light years from the nearest sup port station. With scarce food, water, oxygen and communications, nine survivors on this ill-equipped spacecraft fight for their lives.
Deadly meteors and asteroids threaten from the outside, but the real enemy will come from within. In the dangerously damaged confines of the lifepod, it’s come down to survival of the fittest. Supplies are dwindling, tensions are mounting, and people are dying. Suspicions grow that one of them is responsible for their disastrous predicament. Trapped with a killer, a new battle for survival begins. – US Cabin Fever VHS and LD (1993)
- US: Echo Bridge DVD (2005), also in Triple Feature
- Echo Bridge 3-DVD 12 Action Films (2013)
- Platinum Disc 2-DVD (2005) w/Last Lives (1997)
- Prime Video
This 1993 TV movie, though clearly inspired by its namesake, strangely (almost) comes full circle by crediting Hitch and Harry Sylvester for their rewrite of Steinbeck’s original Lifeboat story. While there are a handful of LaserDiscs and DVDs from Asia, and at least a dozen VHSs from around the globe, the primary home video releases all hail from the States. Note that all DVDs of both Lifepods are NTSC and region 0, so will play anywhere.
Circuit Breaker (1996)
Hard wired for destruction.
From the deep realms of space emerges this thriller about an experiment gone wrong… terribly wrong. When a spaceship maintenance specialist named Foster Carver (Corbin Bernsen) and his wife encounter a distressed spaceship, they find only one surviving crewmember onboard. Little do they know that the survivor (Richard Grieco) is a cyborg who seeks to destroy the Carver family and create a new breed of humanity. – US VHS
Mirroring the Lifepods’ settings, Circuit Breaker (titled Inhumanoid on its initial US broadcast) is a 1996 TV movie that steals shamelessly from just about every decent sci-fi flick made over the previous 50 years. It’s only been released on a solitary 1997 US VHS but is up on YouTube. Check out the detailed B&S About Movies review of all three sci-fiers.
Dead Calm (1989)
US poster
“Spine-tingling. A top-notch thriller in the Hitchcock tradition.” – Neil Rosen, WCN Radio, NY
“An imaginative thriller full of surprises. Will send your pulse sky high.” – Rex Reed, At the Movies
Remember the shower scene in Psycho? The terror-filled leap from the deep of the great white in Jaws? The rollercoaster frenzy of Glenn Close’s Alex in Fatal Attraction? If you loved those popcorn-spilling thrills, sit tight. Dead Calm has so many nerve-jangling moments it just might blow out your corn popper. Filmmaker George Miller (the Mad Max series, The Witches of Eastwick) and thriller specialist, director Phillip Noyce (The Hitchhiker, Patriot Games) send you on an ocean voyage of full-masted fright in Dead Calm, “a spare, smart, seductive piece of real moviemaking with… enough tension to keep us all hyperventilating for hours.” (Sheila Benson, LA Times).
The suspense begins on the high seas when John and Rae Ingram (Sam Neill of A Cry in the Dark and Jurassic Park; and radiant newcomer Nicole Kidman, To Die For) rescue a half-delirious stranger (Billy Zane, Titanic). He says he’s the only surviving crew member of a crippled schooner, but he’s really a demented killer. And he’ll soon plunge his rescuers into a terrifying battle of cat and mouse. And life or death. There’s danger dead ahead. So chart your course for an evening of suspense-packed entertainment. Enjoy this shocker nominated for Best Film plus seven more Australian Film Institute Awards (Down Under’s Oscar equivalents) — and keep a sharp lookout! Just when you think it’s over, more terror erupts from Dead Calm’s glassy waters. – US Warner VHS and LD (1990) LDDb
Alternate style US poster
Also owing a heavy debt to Lifeboat, and another ocean-bound thriller, Dead Calm is easily the best “remake” of the lot and the only theatrical release but there are surprisingly few home video options, given the pedigrees of all involved. And class: Neill later expressed regret at the fact he and Kidman, playing a married couple, were aged 39 and 19 when filming commenced. So it’s also like Hitchcock – and much of Hollywood – in that regard, where leading men are routinely much older than their female counterparts. It’s based on the eponymous 1963 novel by Charles Williams, itself based on a horrific true story, and is also notable as one of Orson Welles’ many unfinished projects.
- Prime Video HD | YouTube Movies
- US: Warner BD (2009) and DVD (1999, reissued 2017), also in 3-DVD Suspense Thrillers
- 2-DVD/4-film Cult Thrillers
- Canada: DVD (2009)
- UK: DVD (2009)
The exact same region-free BD has been released in North America, Australia and Japan; with the trailer, 2.0 surround stereo audio and a Japanese dub; and English, French and Japanese subtitles. The Italian BD has an optional Italian dub and subs. The identical US and (more common) Canadian DVDs also include the trailer and optional pan and scan transfer, while PAL editions are barebones. The latter has just two variants: one, issued mainly in Spain, Germany and Scandinavia, is to be avoided as it cuts the 96:20 film by over six minutes for violence and nudity. There are no such issues with the second, listed here, and it features Spanish and German subs, among others.
- Italy: Warner BD (2018) and DVD (2001, reissued 2005)
- Australia: Warner BD (2009) and DVD (2000)
- Japan: Warner BD (2010, reissued 2010) and DVD (2000)
Lifeboat: Writing on a Classic; Collectors Guide, Pt 2: Shorts and controversies, Pt 3: Home video, Pt 4: Soundtrack and remakes
Related articles
This is part of a unique, in-depth series of 150-odd Hitchcock articles.
