King of the Khyber Rifles was a tale of military derring-do with a Kiplingesque setting. Based on a jingoistic novel by Talbot Mundy, the movie was actually a remake, having previously been filmed under the title The Black Watch in 1929. It starred Tyrone Power (in the twilight of his career) and a sour-faced Terry Moore, who had provided the love interest in Beneath the Twelve Mile Reef. Despite the studio's attempts to market the film as an epic adventure, it was greeted with indifference by the public and was one of Fox's least successful releases of the year.
The film's director was Henry King, who had made The Snows of Kilimanjaro, and when original choice of composer Hugo Friedhofer withdrew from the project, Herrmann seemed like an obvious replacement. Looking back on the assignment in 1961, the composer remarked that "Everybody's life has some rain in it." The score he produced was a serviceable accompaniment to the onscreen action. There's a military march for the British soldiers on horseback, some strident brass and cymbal crashes for a violent windstorm and a love theme for the lovers. For a sequence entitled "Attack on the Mountain Stronghold" Herrmann provides a magnificent set piece of pounding percussion, which may well have influenced Jerry Goldsmith's score for The Wind and the Lion.
Herrmann's score is not well represented on disc. There are six cues on Bernard Herrmann At Fox Volume 2 (VSD-6053), and three minutes and eleven seconds of those pounding drums on The Spectacular World of Classic Film Scores (RL 42005) - a smorgasbord of the best of the RCA discs with some additional unreleased pieces. It's not a score that I listen to much, but perhaps a full re-recording would change my mind.
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