Smile on Your Brother

One of the goofier "hip" counterculture films from Europe, Cometogether (1971) was the first and only directorial effort for oily action star Tony Anthony, who appeared in Blindman the same year and went on to infamy by kicking off the '80s 3-D craze with Comin' at Ya! and Treasure of the Four Crowns. In this film (produced by Ringo Starr!), he appears as a smarmy tourist who hooks up with two hot, groovy chicks (Thunderball's Luciana Paluzzi and Eurosleaze regular Rosemary Dexter) for a swinging time in Italy during the summer. If you find this one, don't miss the priceless "shock" ending that tries to ape Easy Rider but will most likely have you on the floor in hysterics. The catchy, pop-inspired score by Stelvio Cipriani (who was also kicking off his relationship with Mario Bava around the same time) is a lot of fun and comes sprinkled with covers of a few hit songs from the time, with enough versions of "Love Is Blue" (both instrumental and vocal) to put you off that tune for life. Don't miss the choice and (unintentionally?) hilarious dialogue passages, too.

Summer Dreams

And now back to Mr. Carlo Savina again for some more Italian library goodness, this time with a catchy 1979 collection called Summer Dreams. This limited LP contains several tracks he wrote for films and TV shows during that decade, including the first release of his theme for Mario Bava's Lisa and the Devil (here entitled "Theme for You").

Cipriani in '78

One of the busiest Italian composers in the '70s, Stelvio Cipriani wound up on the map thanks to his catchy work on Mario Bava's Twitch of the Death Nerve and the above-average Love Story rip-off, The Anonymous Venetian. This LP I dug up at a little record shop in Rome compiles three standout scores from the busy year of 1978, none of which have seen the light of CD to date. Enfantasme is a rarely-seen Italian/French ghost story with a beautiful, haunting main theme that gets a solid workout through the whole score (and nope, before anyone asks, there is no "Enfantasme Two" on the soundtrack -- I have no idea why). Papaya dei Carabai is a particularly perverse Joe D'Amato sex/horror film (sometimes shown with hardcore-ish inserts) with a wonderfully ghoulish climax; it's the first part of his tropical-sex "Papaya" series that continued for the next year or two. Finally, Sono stato un agente C.I.A. (known to U.S. viewers as Covert Action) features a wild cast including Maurizio Merli, David Janssen, Arthur Kennedy, and Corinne Clery. The delirious funk-and-dance score is not to be missed.


New FLAC lossless Download:
Enfantasme
1. Enfantasme
2. Painful Memories
3. Nino
4. Mountain Cottage
5. Enfantasme Three
6. Enfantasme Four
7. Concluding
Papaya Dei Carabai
8. Papaya Island
9. Papaya Dream
10. Papaya Dream 2
11. Papaya Song
Sono Stato Un Agente CIA
12. Relax
13. Relax 2
14. Un Uomo Programmato
15. Agente CIA

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)