Santa Claus: The Movie
Reissue

Back in stock! Last pressing of 500 units for Henry Mancini’s complete and marvelous score for this 1985 Christmas movie.
 
The film, directed by Jeannot Szwarc, starred Dudley Moore, David Huddleston and John Lithgow. An ambitious and expensive project produced by Alexander Salkind, it was not the box-office hit it was expected to be.
 
One of the most important aspects of the film was its soundtrack, for which Salkind hired the great Henry Mancini. The composer was deeply involved in the production, composing more than 85 minutes of original music for the 109-minute film. This soundtrack is surely one of the biggest efforts of his career, written during the same period as Lifeforce and The Great Mouse Detective.
 
Mancini’ score is so beautiful, diverse and emotional, it is not strange that it has become the film’s most remembered and appreciated feature. Recorded at CTS Studios in London with The London Metropolitan Orchestra, the score also features The Ambrosian Children’s Choir performing several charming songs written by Mancini and Leslie Bricusse.
 
For the original album, released in 1985 by EMI America, Mancini prepared a program of highlights: 13 tracks lasting only 37 minutes (from an 85-minute score!). Some themes were modified for their album version—with different durations, slightly different mixes or the addition of pop elements. Almost all of Mancini’s symphonic effort was missing.
 
After a long search for all the source material and an effort to bring together the different rights owners (the film was a complicated coproduction), we can now present Mancini’s masterful score in its entirety, remixed from ½̋ 3-track stereo and 2̋ 24-track session masters vaulted in mint condition at Abbey Road Studios, London (where the EMI album was mixed). In addition to the complete score, it has been great to discover a lot of extra material that Mancini recorded for the film: songs with alternate lyrics, different orchestrations, etc. Courtesy of Capitol Records, we have also included the original 1985 album version, mastered from first-generation master tapes stored in the Abbey Road vaults.
 
This deluxe, 3-CD release includes a 32-page full-color booklet with liner notes and track-by-track analysis by Jeff Bond.