Well, partly. The argument re scripting language + C is that mostly, the run time is in a small part of the code. Measure to find that part (NYTProf etc for Perl), then rewrite it in C. (I.e. inner loops, not reading config files.) The inefficiency of scripting languages is then irrelevant for many use cases which don't even involve databases.

My experiences of using Lisp compilers is very much out of date, I never saw any Lisp jobs I wanted after university.

Edit: Clarity