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.

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.

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)

Two Evil Cats

Meow! Here's a strange anomaly in film score history -- an Italian composer who scored the same horror story twice within a decade. It all started when Pino Donaggio (taking a break from his stampede of Brian De Palma films) was hired by the very busy Lucio Fulci in 1981 to score his "freely adapted" version of Edgar Allan Poe's short story, "The Black Cat." Patrick Magee stars as a grizzled old coot who records ambient noises in graveyards and owns a malicious pussycat capable of instigating gory deaths in a small Scottish village. Enter nosy reporter Mimsy Farmer and detective David Warbeck, who try to put a stop to all the feline antics before they're next. It all ends with some impromptu masonry and a yowling kitty, of course. The string-heavy score is highlighted by a terrific main title theme that nicely evokes the Scottish setting and features some of Donaggio's strongest suspense work. Though it was never released, the complete score is presented here from the original recording sessions; sound quality is a bit erratic here and there, but hey, where else are you gonna hear it?

Fast forward to 1990, as Dawn of the Dead producer Dario Argento decided to reunite with George Romero for a two-part Poe anthology film, Two Evil Eyes. While most viewers agree that Romero's "The Facts in the Cast of M. Valdemar" is a sluggish mess, Argento's version of "The Black Cat" succeeds thanks to an avalanche of wild Poe references and a solid performance by Harvey Keitel. Not surprisingly, Donaggio's score is divided into two halves with the much stronger Argento segment coming first. Highlights include the main kid's choir theme ("Dreaming Dreams"), a spooky medieval piece ("Adust Sponsus"), and even a swirling cue inspired by Philip Glass ("The Gothic Town"). Argento must have been pleased with the results, as he used Donaggio again for Trauma and Do You Like Hitchcock? Incidentally, at least one other Italian composer has performed the same twice-in-a-decade feat with one horror story; can you name him?

Scream Amen, Somebody

Here's another super-rare goodie from the AIP vaults -- the unreleased jazz-horror score for 1969's Scream and Scream Again, the bizarre Gordon Hessler cult horror/sci-fi favorite featuring mad scientists, enforced limb removals, a mad vampiric serial killer, and much, much more. Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are all featured (but never together) along with an odd supporting cast including Uta Levka (Carmen, Baby) and Yutte Stensgaard (Lust for a Vampire). The wild music (which was inexplicably dropped on the first few video releases back in the VHS days) is an early effort from David Whitaker, who would go on to provide Hammer Films with two of its best '70s scores (Vampire Circus and Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde), not to mention that enduring fan favorite, The Sword and the Sorcerer. As with Pit and the Pendulum, this is taken from a music-and-effects track, which means you'll hear an occasional sound effect in the mix which hopefully won't detract from your enjoyment.

Les Baxter Swings

A while back some rare isolated music and effects (M&E) tracks for a handful of AIP and Filmways titles fell into my hands; here's the first of those forbidden fruits for your listening pleasure: Les Baxter's freaky, atonal score for Roger Corman's Pit and the Pendulum (1961), one of the best (and scariest) Vincent Price/Edgar Allan Poe outings. Here's every note (53 minutes' worth) of Baxter's original score off the isolated track; you'll hear an odd sound effect here and there (creaking feet, closing doors), but hopefully that will just add to the ambience. Track titles are my own, assigned to give you some idea of the music's chronology.