Stu Gardner In Night Club Scene From Point Blank Movie

John Boorman's Point Blank has been described by Tom Supten in Illusion Travels By Streetcar Old and New Writings on Film as:

one of the most brutal works of poetry in film history

One of the most memorable scenes of brutality in the film is the night club sequence which included a demented performance by an uncredited black singer which adds to the tension of the action.

Last night, I checked out You Tube and found the above clip. A quick check of IDMB stated that it is Stu Gardner. The track is called Mighty Good Times and draws heavy influence from James Brown of the 1967 period. You can find it on the soundtrack of the movie.

Here is a review of the soundtrack from Screen Archives:

The character of Parker has endured in the crime novels of Richard Stark (a pen name for Donald E. Westlake) for 40 years: a relentless, unstoppable thief typically seeking money owed him by the Mob. The character was most recently portrayed on screen by Mel Gibson as "Porter" in Payback (1999), adapted from the first Parker novel, The Hunter (1962). However, The Hunter was first filmed in 1967 as Point Blank, starring Lee Marvin as "Walker" under the direction of John Boorman (Deliverance, Excalibur).

Point Blank is a landmark of 1960s American cinema, a neo-noir thriller set amidst the steely, impersonal architecture of Los Angeles. The film was influenced by the French new wave, turning the book's simple story into a kind of avant garde fable that is possibly a revenge fantasy: Walker, shot and left for dead by his friend Reese (John Vernon), awakens to wreak havoc through the criminal organization that has wronged him.

Scoring Point Blank was Johnny Mandel, a widely acclaimed composer and arranger whose film credits include The Sandpiper and MASH. Mandel's score is a singular achievement: he uses the twelve-tone system of atonal composition not for shocks but for emotion in the style of Alban Berg, creating a type of trance-like cage in which Walker mechanically but artfully tears through the underworld. Combined with chamber-style accompaniments particularly for woodwinds (a Mandel trademark) and gorgeous, tonal variations for Walker's romantic relationships, the score has virtually no peers. FSM's premiere presentation features Mandel's complete work (including unused cues) along with source cues and Stu Gardner's "Mighty Good Times" from the film's nightclub sequence.

Stu Gardner had releases on a number of labels including Revue and Volt as well as being Bill Crosby's band leader for years.

Check out a previous post on Stu Gardner on IDR from last year.