Gonna Have a Good Time

Better known to Something Weird viewers as Jennie: Wife/Child, the 1968 drive-in oddity Albert Peckingpaw's Revenge offers a bizarre take on the hillbilly sex comedies popular at the time, as a cuckolded husband decides to take revenge on his nymphet bride and her lover by, uh, threatening to bury them alive. Future award-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (Deliverance) and director James Landis made this after their earlier partnerships on The Sadist, Deadwood '76 and Rat Fink, while the score and songs were written by Harley Hatcher, who went on to Satan's Sadists, A Bullet for Pretty Boy and Soul Hustler, among others. Some of the hottest numbers are performed by Davie Allen and the Arrows, with most of the vocal duties are handled by actor/singer Don Epperson. Some of the more choice ditties include "Gonna Have a Good Time," "Tender Grass," and the future Catanooga Cats bubblegum tune, "My Birthday Suit."

Jackie-a-Go-Go

One of those deliriously great "with it" mod movies, 1970's The Grasshopper stars Jacqueline Bisset as a globetrotting free spirit who beds her way from one man to the next when she's not busy skywriting obscenities. Jim Brown and Joseph Cotten co-star, but perhaps most interestingly, it was directed by Jerry Paris, better known as the next-door-neighbor on The Dick Van Dyke Show! Extremely underrated '70s TV composer Billy Goldenberg (Columbo, Night Gallery, Duel) chips in with a silky-smooth score ranging from light psychedelic rock to lilting pop, with a handful of vocal variations, too.

Don't Panic!

Here's another obscure musical goodie from the AIP vaults, this time with Les Baxter's hoppin' score for the post-nuke drive-in favorite, Panic in Year Zero, a rare directorial feature for star Ray Milland. Jean Hagen (Lina Lamont from Singin' in the Rain) and Frankie Avalon co-star in this grim look at the havoc unleashed on a Los Angeles family forced to run for the hills when the bomb drops, with utter social degradation soon following among the survivors. Les' score is mostly source cues (i.e., instrumental jukebox-style rock 'n' roll and jazz music) and robust dramatic cues, taken here from the complete isolated music and effects track (which means no dialogue, but you'll hear an occasional gunshot or screeching tire).

Link removed - score now commercially available.

Charge!

Generally regarded as one of the best cinematic treatments of its subject, 1968's The Charge of the Light Brigade from director Tony Richardson features a fascinating cast (David Hemmings, John Gielgud, Vanessa Redgrave, Trevor Howard) and a beautiful, effective score by John Addison (Sleuth, Torn Curtain) that's never really been given its due. Perhaps of most interest to readers here is the theme song, an eerie, haunting, semi-psychedelic rendition of the famous poem performed by none other than Manfred Mann!

Link removed - commercial CD now available.

The Charge of the Light Brigade
1. The Charge Of The Light Brigade (Manfred Mann)
2. Main Title
3. The Six Hundred
4. Nolan's Theme
5. Waiting For The Charge
6. Go Gently
7. Sebastapol
8. War Fever
9. Across The Seas
10. Valley Of Death
11. First Kiss
12. Lady Scarlett's Ball
13. March On The Alma
14. After The Battle
15. Anger & Reflection
16. End Title

Basil Poledouris, R.I.P. You will be missed.

The Last Music on Earth

Richard Matheson's classic apocalyptic sci-fi/vampire novel I Am Legend has been adapted for film twice so far, first with Vincent Price as the 1964 Italian-American AIP production, The Last Man on Earth. The film suffered a bad reputation for many years due to awful public domain prints and chopped-up TV screenings, all of which demolished its careful pacing and scope photography; however, in recent years (primarly thanks to DVD and laserdisc) it's finally being appreciated as a chilling, potent visualization of one of Matheson's strongest works. Incidentally, the second adaptation was 1971's cult classic The Omega Man with Charlton Heston, featuring a dynamite score by Ron Grainer (available elsewhere if you check around a bit). A third version is currently in the works, but don't get your hopes up since it already has three huge strikes against it thanks to the star (Will Smith), screenwriter (Akiva Goldsman), and music video-based director (Francis Lawrence). The moody and often striking score for the original film is by Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter, a pair who, in various combinations, also underscored Vincent Price in The Fly series.

Something Is Sexy In The State Of Denmark

More '60s sexploitation, this time with one of the earliest and most popular Danish sex comedies, 1965's Sytten, released in the U.S. in 1967 as Eric Soya's 17. (Novelist Soya is best known for his book Jenny and the Soldier, incidentally.) The plot is the usual coming-of-age fodder about a turn-of-the-century youth arriving from Copenhagen to a small town where he loses his virginity, and lots of women run around giggling, showing off their lingerie, and luring men into their bedrooms. After this film and I Am Curious (Yellow), Denmark and Sweden basically started a competition to see who could turn out the dirtiest "mainstream" films, which lasted well into the late 1970s. The score by sex-com veteran Ole Høyer is light and elegant, with an emphasis on period flavor and romantic love themes.

Psychopathia Musicalis

In the 1960s, the popularity of psychotherapy revived a number of influential books including Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, an 1886 study of aberrant sexual behavior. Swiping the title and little else, exploitation veteran Albert Zugsmith (Sex Kittens Go to College, Dog Eat Dog), who's far better known now for producing Touch of Evil and High School Confidential, decided to write and direct a 1966 "case study" involving the history of a nutball whose shooting spree on a highway is linked back by his girlfriend's testimony to a strange floral fetish. Due to copyright considerations, the film's title was changed to On Her Bed of Roses in many territories and remains its name on the soundtrack, a wild beat-influenced concoction by composer/songwriter Joe Green ("And Her Tears Flowed like Wine") that also reveals occasional hints of the approaching psychedelic music wave.

The Idol

In this mod '60s relic you don't see mentioned too often, Jennifer Jones (filling in at the last minute for a departed Kim Stanley) and Michael Parks star in the oh-so-edgy tale of a beautiful matron who starts having an affair with one of her son's best friends (a plot later rehashed in the '80s as Class). The ultra-smooth score comes from library music favorite John Dankworth, who was busy at the time scoring lots of Joseph Losey films (The Servant, Modesty Blaise, etc.) as well as bits of studio fluff like Fathom. His wife, vocalist Cleo Laine, gets to sing two songs, and the whole score has a fun Mancini-style vibe perfect for a lazy weekend. (Note: sorry for the occasional distortion in some of the early tracks, but this was taken from the rare stereo LP pressing and sounds as good as I could make it.)

The Idol
1. Empty Hands And Empty Heart (Vocal: Cleo Laine)
2. The Idol (Vocal)
3. The Seducer
4. The Party
5. Empty Arms And Empty Heart (Instrumental)
6. Title Music
7. Won't You Believe Me
8. There's A Fight Outside
9. The Houseboat Set
10. The Idol
11. End Title Music

Barry Go Boom!

Here's the first in a triple-post salute to one of the all-time great film composers, John Barry. This classy, subtle score was written for the not-so-classy, not-subtle-at-all 1968 Joseph Losey film, Boom!, a wildly excessive adaptation of Tennesse Williams' play, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore. A scenery-devouring Elizabeth Taylor stars as "Sissy" Goforth, an ailing drama queen whose life is turned upside down by the arrival of mysterious poet Richard Burton at her remote island estate. One of John Waters' favorite movies (watch for the prominent poster in Pink Flamingos), it's screaming out for a widescreen DVD release. Get on it, Universal!

Boom!
1. Boom
2. Urgentissimo - Like Everything This Summer
3. Of A Year Unknown
4. Pain Gone Til Tomorrow
5. Have I Changed Very Much Since You Last Saw Me?
6. You've Got More Things Going for You than Teeth, Baby
7. Mister Death Angel Flanders
8. Through Caverns Measureless to Man
9. Capito
10. Which Way Is The Sun?
11. A Mobile Called "Boom"
12. The Shock Of Each Moment Of Still Being Alive
13. Hideaway (Georgie Fame)

Funky Sonny

<Don't let the Sonny and Cher connection fool you; this is a prime 1969 AIP freak-out soundtrack similar to Billy Strange's De Sade and Les Baxter's The Dunwich Horror. (Not surprisingly, all three films also feature wild, very similar "trippy" animated opening sequences.) After starring together in Good Times, Sonny and Cher took on this unorthodox mixture of juvenile delinquent sleaze and arty pretension, with Cher starring as a young runaway who hops from one bad relationship to another while hitching her way across the country. Sonny produced the film and wrote the score, whose "Band of Thieves" theme song (sung by Cher) is the only normal pop concession on the album. And yes, their gay-rights-activist daughter was named after this movie. Composer Ken Thorne did the arranging and conducting hot off his work on the amazing The Touchables, and the psychedelic influence definitely shows.

You'll Dig Dagger

Another would-be spy franchise made in the wake of James Bond and The Man from U.N.C.L.E., this surprisingly sick espionage tale from 1967 was the third film for wonderfully insane director Richard Rush, who went on to Psych-Out, Freebie and the Bean, The Stunt Man, and of course, Color of Night. The story follows a wheelchair-bound megalomaniac's plans to revive the Third Reich, funded by his human-meat-packing business. The score is the only one ever credited to songwriter/TV personality Steve Allen, complete with a shameless faux-007 theme song crooned by Maureen Arthur; however, judging from the sound of the music, it's likely the credited "arranger," the great and underrated Ronald Stein (The Haunted Palace, Demenia-13), had more than the usual hand in the final product.

Italian Blend

Here's a little project I've been tinkering with for a while, and it's a bit different than past posts. Given the huge amount of great film music never commerically released in any format, I decided to cut together a series of suites of some outstanding titles that deserved some notice; here the spotlight turns on some of the great (well, in most cases) Italian composers whose work has often never gotten the credit it deserves. Taken from a variety of sources (video, M&E tracks, or whatever's handy), these have been tweaked to sound as good as I can make 'em; hopefully you'll discover a few new gems in this three-part collection, entitled Italian Blend. Running times have also been included to give you an idea of how much music to expect. Any comments on this one would be especially welcome -- thoughts on any particular likes (or dislikes), composers you'd like to hear more, etc.

NEW LINKS:

Italian Blend: Vol. 1
1. The Witches (Piero Piccioni) (10:41)
2. Images In A Convent (Nico Fidenco) (9:04)
3. Baba Yaga (Piero Umiliani) (2:16)
4. A Virgin Among The Living Dead (Bruno Nicolai) (12:42)
5. Queens Of Evil (Angelo Francesco Lavagnino) (9:34)
6. Knife Of Ice (Marcello Giombini) (2:56)
7. Burial Ground (Elsio Macuso & Burt Rexon) (3:00)
8. Death Smiles At Murder (Berto Pisano) (7:02)
9. A Blade In The Dark (Guido & Maurizio De Angelis) (5:26)
10. Beast With A Gun (Umberto Saila) (4:15)
11. Plot Of Fear (Daniele Patucchi) (2:59)
12. The Great Alligator (Stelvio Cipriani) (4:11)
13. Do You Like Hitchcock? (Pino Donaggio) (3:26)

Italian Blend: Volume Two
1. Eugenie De Sade (Bruno Nicolai) (8:27)
2. Footprints (Nicola Piovani) (8:51)
3. 2019: After The Fall Of New York (Guido & Maurizio De Angelis) (3:55)
4. A Whisper In The Dark (Pino Donaggio) (13:41)
5. Yellow Emanuelle (Nico Fidenco) (8:30)
6. Waves Of Lust (Marcello Giombini) (2:05)
7. Orgasmo Nero (Stelvio Cipriani) (15:42)
8. Caligula: The Untold Story (Claudio Maria Cordio) (2:08)
9. Patrick Still Lives (Berto Pisano) (2:37)
10. The Man From Deep River (Daniele Patucchi) (5:35)
11. Zeder (Riz Ortolani) (1:30)
12. Body Count (Claudio Simonetti) (1:57)

Italian Blend: Volume Three
1. Suspected Death Of A Minor (Luciano Michellini) (8:30)
2. House On The Edge Of The Park (Riz Ortolani) (4:06)
3. Strip Nude For Your Killer (Berto Pisano) (6:04)
4. The Pyjama Girl Case (Riz Ortolani) (7:18)
5. Nightmares Come At Night (Bruno Nicolai) (9:35)
6. The Lickerish Quartet (Stelvio Cipriani) (11:45)
7. Porno Holocaust (Nico Fidenco) (22:13)
8. Porno Shop On 7th Street (Bruno Biriaco) (9:27)
9. The Big Racket (Guido & Maurizio De Angelis) (6:11)

Pass the Waffles

Two years before they unleashed one of the greatest "family" films ever with Willy Wonkia and the Chocolate Factory, director Mel Stuart and composer Walter Scharf teamed up for If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium, a slight and sunny comedy about the havoc caused by a boorish busload of American tourists across Europe with an oddball cast of character actors including Suzanne Pleshette, Ian McShane (decades before Deadwood), Norman Fell, Murray Hamilton, Michael Constantine, and much more. The soundtrack ranges from the memorable theme song penned by Donovan and sung by J.P. Rags (doing his best Donovan impression) to a fun psych-out piece ("Rockhouse") and lots of pleasant, romantic instrumentals depicting the various locales.

Fun with Roger and Jane

It's debatable whether controversial director Roger Vadim (And God Created Woman) is more famous for his films or his astounding string of female conquests he married, dated or bedded. One of his most fruitful partnerships was his marriage to Jane Fonda, leading to Barbarella and one-third of Spirits of the Dead. However, their first film together was 1964's La Ronde, a remake of the Max Ophuls classic better known to English-speaking viewers as Circle of Love. The plot is that old sexy chestnut about a string of lovers all connected by the wily coincidences of l'amour, with French-speaking Jane as an unfaithful wife who apparently doesn't have much use for clothes. Busy composer Michel Magne contributes the score, a string of romantic melodies appropriate to the period Parisian setting.

After getting married, Roger and Jane returned again in '66 with The Game Is Over, an updated, sexed-up adaptation of Emile Zola's La Curée. Jane plays an unfaithful wife (again) given to scantily-clad aerobics who dallies with her stepson, only to unleash some nasty psychological punishment from her husband. The highlight (both musically and cinematically) is easily the finale in which a nutty, sopping-wet Jane crashes the family's "Green Ball" party. The oh-so-mod, sitar-tinged music comes courtesy of Jean Bouchéty and Jean-Pierre Bourtayre, who also deliver some funky songs mixing psych and soul ("Baby You Know What You're Doing," "Don't Tell Me").

Circle of Love
1. La Ronde
2. Retour De Guerre
3. Bal Champêtre (Valse)
4. Le Soldat Et La Soubrette (Polka)
5. La Soubrette Et L'Étudiant
6. L'Étudiant Et La Femme Du Monde
7. Sophie, "À Coeur Ouvert"
8. Tendresse Bourgeoise
9. Maxim's Grande Époque
10. Salon Particulier
11. Pygmalion Et Galatée
12. Le Tzigane Mène La Ronde
13. Le Tango Des Folies Douces
14. Rêveries Orientales
15. Générique

The Game Is Over
1. Générique Debut
2. Un Certain Regard
3. Scène d'Amour
4. Renée
5. La Serre
6. Scène Du Lac
7. Attente
8. Avant Toi
9. Baby You Know What You're Doing
10. Don't Tell Me
11. Départ De Renée
12. Bal Vert
13. Générique Fin

Master Baxter

At the height of his frantic gig writing scores for American-International Pictures, Les Baxter was mostly busy rescoring European import and doing Roger Corman's great Poe series. However, 1961's Master of the World is a bit of a change of pace, obviously designed to cash in on the recent success of Around the World in 80 Days (which is mentioned no less than twice on the back sleeve notes). Vincent Price and Charles Bronson star in the tale of a megalomaniac determined to enforce world peace, even if it means dragging a bunch of people across the sky in an airship and bombing everyone into submission. This was one of AIP's earliest multi-channel releases (in four-channel "StereoSonic Sound!"), so ol' Les really gets to cut loose with the right-left channel separation here. The music is really lush and grand with a nice old Hollywood feel, crammed with soaring themes and tons of crescendoes.

Schifrin's Thief

For his first big American film score, Argentinian-born Lalo Schifrin scored a direct hit with his smoking hot jazz-action score for 1965's Once a Thief, a stylish B&W heist yarn whose colorful cast includes Ann-Margret, Alain Delon, Van Heflin, Jack Palance, and Tony Mustante. The director, Ralph Nelson, got his start in TV but struck it big in '64 with Lilies of the Field; unfortunately, the relative obscurity of this film and other future projects (including the notorious Soldier Blue) kept him off the A-list. For some reason Schifrin's score has been buried for decades apart from an occasional rerecording of the main theme popping up on compilations. Here's the original '65 release version in beautiful stereo; the entire score is a bit short, so it's rounded out with a bonus track from Joy House ("The Cat") and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. ("Roulette Rhumba" and "The Man from Thrush"). If you're a regular viewer of Turner Classic Movies, they occasionally show a great vintage 10-minute short about the creation of this score, so keep an eye out for it. Sit back and enjoy, hep-cats!

No Way To Treat A Lady

William Goldman's oddball horror/comic novel No Way to Treat a Lady was made into an even odder 1968 cult film, starring Rod Steiger as a psycho strangler who goes after New York women in a variety of disguises (even in drag) while taunting Jewish cop George Segal. The wonderful score is one of the earlier efforts from the late and underrated Stanley Myers (The Deer Hunter, The Martian Chronicles), mixing some spooky whistling, a lilting main theme, some fun "swinging" bits, a great psychedelic track ("St. Matthew Fashion"), and even a goofy tribute to the Tijuana Brass entitled "Alpert Memorial."

Feeeed Me!

Roger Corman's quickie 1960 horror-comedy has since gone on to become the stuff of legend, mainly for being shot in two days (kind of), featuring a young Jack Nicholson as a masochistic dental patient, and kicking off the careers of legendary Disney songwriting team Alan Menken and Howard Ashman with their hit musical adaptation and the subsequent movie version. The original tale about a downtrodden floral shop employee who nutures a blood-slurping plant, Audrey Jr., into a population-threatening monstrosity still holds up as a model of black comedy on an impoverished budget, still popping up time and time again on home video. The wild score comes courtesy of Fred Katz, who had just dabbled in beat jazz with the previous year's A Bucket of Blood and was busy doing other simultaneous Corman films like The Wasp Woman. Naturally this soundtrack comes with a handful of choice Audrey Jr. audio clips, perfect for playing at the dinner table.

Privilege

The best '60s British film no one seems to remember, Privilege is a wild rock and roll/political statement from uncompromising director Peter Watkins (The War Game) in his only major studio film. One of the film's stars, Mark London (To Sir with Love), chipped in on the songs with composer Mike Leander ("Do You Wanna Touch Me"), while star Paul Jones (from Manfred Mann) offers great vocals as a charismatic singer manipulated by the government into luring the youth in a variety of disturbing directions. Catchy, haunting, and definitely gutsy (check out "Onward Christian Soldiers" and "Jerusalem"), it's ripe for rediscovery. For some insane reason, Universal has never bothered to release the film on home video in any format. However, anyone in the Los Angeles area can catch it on the big screen on Saturday, July 15 at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, as part of the incredible, annual Mods & Rockers Festival (on a double bill with the equally hard-to-see Stardust); click here for more information.

The Swedish Fanny Hill

The scandalous novel of an English girl's sexy misadventures went super-mod in 1968 courtesy of Swedish director Mac Ahlberg, who went on to become the cinematographer on Hell Night and pretty much every Stuart Gordon and Full Moon title. The original Swedish version featured a score by Pippi Longstocking composer Georg Riedel, but American distributor Cinemation opted for something a bit groovier and brought on composer Clay Pitts (who would do the incredible Female Animal two years later). Much of the soundtrack consists of Pitt-composed pop and rock numbers performed by "Oven," with a whopping 16-minute number, "Please Touch Me," closing it out. The bubblegum charms of "Sail a Boat" are hard to resist, too.