Yug Yug

Here's one for all you kids of the '80s. During the early part of that decade, movie-theme-disco-maestro Meco was still cranking out albums offering his own dancefloor-friendly interpretations of the biggest box office hits, and let's just say that if disco hadn't died already, this 1983 album surely would have singlehandedly killed it off. Once again he returns to Star Wars territory courtesy of two, err, "vocal" numbers from Return of the Jedi (both completely omitted from George Lucas' dunderheaded "Special Edition" version years later). First up is "Ewok Celebration," a jaw-dropping dance version of the climactic Ewok song complete with, yes, a Star Wars rap. I really couldn't make this up. Then you get a pop version of that Jabba the Hut number, "Lapti Nek." But wait, there's more! Aiming for every demographic possible, the album also includes a cover of Michael Sembello's "Maniac" (from Flashdance), another extended Star Wars suite, and... well... just look at the tracklist for the rest, and prepare to be amazed.

Soap Gets in Your Ears: Part 4

The indisputable queen of literary trash, Jackie Collins (sister of Joan) ruled the '70s with string of "steamy, yummy bestsellers" (in the words of French & Saunders) with titles like The Bitch and The Stud. Fortunately the movie adaptations are just as OTT and hilarious, and one of the most overripe of the bunch is 1979's The World Is Full of Married Men. Almost a musical, this full-strength wallow in glitzy excess features many on-screen dance performers including a young Bonnie Tyler (who sings the title track, later issued in a different version on CD), Paul Nicholas (still fresh off his turns as Cousin Kevin in Ken Russell's Tommy and Wagner in Lisztomania), and even space-disco Brit-group Hot Gossip, whose one-time lead singer, future stage and vocal chart star Sarah Brightman, also contributes a song (the ultra-rare horror disco ditty, "Madame Hyde"). The "normal" actors in the film include an obviously fearless Anthony Franciosa (pre-Tenebrae), Caroll Baker, and even Story of O's Anthony Steel. The UK-issued double-LP soundtrack ("As Seen on TV!") was released by Ronco, best known for hawking chintzy kitchen utensils on television, who apparently decided to compete with K-Tel in the late '70s and lost. The album quickly disappeared and has become quite a curiosity item thanks to a dizzying roster of songs, most of them pleasingly weird and obscure (just skip past the occasional overworn chestnut like "Copacabana").

The World Is Full of Married Men - Part 1
1. The World Is Full Of Married Men (Bonnie Tyler)
2. Get Down (Gene Chandler)
3. Shame (Evelyn "Champagne" King)
4. Weekend (Mick Jackson)
5. Love Clone (Hot Gossip)
6. We Don't Make Each Other Laugh Anymore (Gladys Knight)
7. Copacabana (Barry Manilow)
8. Woman In Love (The Three Degrees)
9. Boogie Town (F.L.B.)
10. Take That To The Bank (Shalamar)
11. Boogie Oogie Oogie (Taste Of Honey)
12. Makin' It (Paul Nicholas)
13. Snakes Alive (Nona Hendricks)
14. Disco Nights (G.Q.)
The World Is Full of Married Men - Part II
15. Now That We've Found Love (Third World)
16. Contact (Edwin Starr)
17. Lovely Day (Bill Withers)
18. Right Back Where We Started From (Maxine Nightingale)
19. Crazy (The Glass Family)
20. Madame Hyde (Sarah Brightman)
21. Best Of My Love (The Emotions)
22. Mind Blowing Decisions (Heatwave)
23. Every Woman In The World (Billy Ocean)
24. You make Me Feel Mighty Real (Sylvester)
25. Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel (Tavares)
26. Disco Concerto (Jasmin)
27. Loveline (Paul Nicholas)
28. The World Is Full Of Married Men (Mick Jackson)

Get Out Your Handkerchiefs

It's safe to say Hollywood will never again make a movie like Cruising, the infamous 1980 William Friedkin thriller that kicked off a storm of controversy and nearly killed off the career of Al Pacino, who plays a New York cop posing as a leather bar regular to catch a vicious serial killer. Seen today it's a bizarre, fascinating, incredibly skewed depiction of a subculture soon to be threatened with extinction, and the pulsating soundtrack is an equally compelling mixture of early punk, funk, and flat-out weirdness. Included here is the full original song soundtrack (including the immortal "Lump"), plus additional tracks by the Germs recorded for the film but not used in the final cut and a suite of Jack Nitzsche's nerve-jangling score. For extra fun, a few choice dialogue samples (some of them a little raunchy, so be warned) have been added to recapture the distinctive, er, flavor of the film. Friedkin's original cut of this often-mangled curio supposedly runs nearly three hours and now languishes somewhere in the Warner vaults; somebody save it, please!

Vampyros Disco

1979 was a huge years for bloodsuckers, including the Frank Langella Dracula, Herzog's Nosferatu, Salem's Lot, and, uh, Nightwing, among others. Weirdest of all, audiences got two vampire disco comedies, though only one broke through and became a hit (one of AIP's biggest, in fact). Love at First Bite managed to revive the career of George Hamilton and kicked off a new wave of monster comedies throughout the following half-decade or so. The soundtrack is goofy horror fun, an early effort from Charles Bernstein featuring lots of tongue-in-cheek violin music and one monster of an extended gothic dance track, the 12-minute "Fly by Night." Note that the original theatrical version (and TV airings) contain Alicia Bridges' "I Love the Nightlife" during the famous disco dancing scene, but the filmmakers neglected to clear it for other use and so the tune is missing from all extant video versions. It was never included on the soundtrack, but you can easily find the song on plenty of bargain-priced compilations and soundtracks.

The success of Hamilton's Dracula easily overshadowed the nearly simultaneous appearance of Nocturna, Compass International's head-scratching follow-up to the successful Halloween. Dancer Nai Bonet had already been trying to break through as a star for over a decade, but this intended star vehicle proved to be the last nail in the coffin for her career as she proved beyond any doubt that she absolutely could not act. At all. Not even a tiny bit. However, she spends most of her time onscreen either rolling around naked in slow motion or disco dancing, so that's not much of a problem. John Carradine and Yvonne De Carlo pop up in glorified cameos as her vampire relatives, and the late Anthony Hamilton made his big-screen debut here before taking over after the death of actor Jon-Erik Hexum on the bizarre CBS show Cover Up. The Nocturna soundtrack received a big push upon its release but quickly wound up in cut-out bins before being forgotten entirely; a shame, really, as it does have some solid tracks including a great 7-minute main theme, "Love Is Just a Heartbeat Away," from Gloria Gaynor (the same year she released "I Will Survive"). Trivia: Nocturna was one of the earliest titles released on VHS, courtesy of Meda Home Entertainment (quickly renamed Media shortly thereafter), but it's been incredibly hard to find ever since.

Love At First Bite
1. Transylvania Moon
2. Fly By Night
3. Castle Interlude
4. Manhattan
5. Dancin' Through The Night
6. Love Theme (Disco Version)
7. Transylvania Moon (Reprise)

Nocturna
1. Nocturna (Chopin's Nocturne, Opus 55 #1)
2. Love Is Just A Heartbeat Away (Gloria Gaynor)
3. Why Do Lovers Come Together (Jay Siegel)
4. I'm Hopelessly In Love With You (Moment Of Truth)
5. Bitten By The Love Bug (Heaven 'N' Hell)
6. Love At First Sight (Heaven 'N' Hell)
7. Whatcha Gonna Do (Heaven 'N' Hell)
8. Nighttime Fantasy (Vickie Sue Robinson)

And on a completely unrelated note, the always excellent DigitMovies has officially announced the September release for the number one Italian film score on my most-wanted list, Lucio Fulci's Sette Notte in Nero (a.k.a. The Psychic) from the incredible Frizzi-Bixio-Tempera. Heck, it inspired the name of this blog, so that should tell you something. Also coming the same day is Trans Europa Express' awesome prog-rock soundtrack to Il gatto dagli occhi di giada, a.k.a. Watch Me When I Kill. Be sure to buy 'em both!

The Costandinos Beat

Though his name doesn't ring too many bells today, Egyptian-born composer/producer Alec R. Costandinos hit it big on the charts in '78 with his high-concept disco opus, Romeo & Juliet on Casablanca Records, performed with his "Syncophonic Orchestra." Along with masterminding a few semi-successful pop groups (Sphinx, Love & Kisses), he made a name for himself in the clubs in Paris, where he got a gig writing the epic disco score for Trocadéro Bleu Citron, a delirious skating musical revolving around a bunch of Parisian kids. It's all upbeat, catchy stuff, highlighted by the massive, 15+ minute "Trocadero Suite."

As if that wasn't enough to fill out a busy '78, at the end of the year he also released a very unusual concept album, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a discofied adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel. Yep, it's a dark, gothic, romantic danceathon, and though it technically isn't a soundtrack, the approach is very cinematic throughout. Not surprisingly, the gypsy Esmeralda gets a sassy, Latin-flavored theme that's highly reminiscent of fellow disco-ers Santa Esmeralda (heard most famously in Kill Bill Vol. 1), but the rest is equally fascinating.

Lipstick

Guess what I've got this week? Disco fever! First up, critics had a field day ripping apart Lipstick (or "I Spit on Your Grave with Stars"), a 1976 rape-revenge sickie from Paramount about a fashion model (the late Margeaux Hemingway) who, along with her preteen sister (Mariel), becomes the target of a wacko music teacher (Chris Sarandon) and fails to find justice in the courtroom. Featuring a finale that puts most male-driven vigilante movies to shame, this is way more effective as drive-in trash than as a serious social statement. The music from French pop figure Michel Polnareff is truly schizo, starting off with a dance-driven main theme and a long disco-style score medley; then everything switches as we get two heavy (12+ minutes!) doses of Sarandon's berserk electronic experimental music, best described as Tangerine Dream on crack.

The Musical World of Menahem Golan

Okay, back to Cannon Films for a minute. One of the two founders, Menahem Golan, was a producer/director who got his start directing films in Isreal, as well as the 1969 British sexploitation film What's Good for the Goose during his directorial training in England. Upon returning to his homeland, he decided to mount a big-scale musical in the tradition of Fiddler on the Roof; the result was 1974's Kazablan, which was shot in both Hebrew and English versions and was picked up by MGM for international distribution. Future Cannon composer Dov Seltzer (The Ambassador) wrote the music, and while the vocal numbers are pretty standard musical fare (upbeat and moderately catchy), the real standout is three funktastic intstrumentals: "Chassidic Rock," "Getting Dressed Ballet," and especially "Construction Rock Ballet," which could have easily come from a top-rung black action or Bollywood film from the period.

After officially buying Cannon Films from its British founders in 1979, Golan stepped behind the camera again for another colorful, widescreen musical spectacular, this time shot in Germany with a bizarre international cast including newbie Catherine Mary Stewart (Night of the Comet), future BBC staple Grace Kennedy, Joss Ackland (Lethal Weapon 2), and the wonderfully hammy Vladek Sheybal (From Russia with Love) as Mr. Boogalow, a satanic record producer who controls the world of pop culture in the futuristic year of 1994. The end result, The Apple, appalled audiences worldwide with its glam-rock fusion of biblical symbolism, dirty disco, and dieties descending from the sky in pimpmobiles, though it has more recently become a perpetual revival house and midnight movie favorite. The, uh, unique songs are the brainchild of Israeli popster Coby Recht and American composer George S. Clinton (who also appears onscreen as a mind-controlled reporter), later known for much bigger titles like Austin Powers, Wild Things and Mortal Kombat. Xanadu ain't got nothin' on this one, baby.

Kazablan
1. Overture
2. Men Of Respect
3. We Are All Jews
4. Chassidic Rock
5. There's A Place
6. Democracy
7. Construction Rock Ballet
8. Jaffa
9. Hey, What's Up!
10. Rosa, Rosa
11. Kazablan (Get Off My Back)
12. Getting Dressed Ballet
13. Brith Milah Pageant



The Apple
1. BIM
2. Universal Melody
3. Made For Me
4. Showbizness
5. The Apple
6. How To Be A Master
7. Speed
8. Where Has Love Gone
9. Cry For Me
10. Coming
11. I Found Love
12. Child Of Love
13. Creation