Book Excerpt of the Day

Bruno Nicolai was clearly on a roll with the genre and delivered another fascinating score for La Dame Rossa Uccide Sette Volte (Red Queen Kills Seven Times or The Corpse Which Didn’t Want to Die, ’72). Starting with a little girl’s solo voice, the theme unfolds like a nursery rhyme or folk melody played on harpsichord and guitar with pop orchestra supplying a lift. It is yet another paradoxical example of a lovely, feminine melody for a brutally bloody film where violence against scantily clad women is a part of its entertainment value. Another winsome track is “In Automobile,” a bossa nova that expresses sunny seaside drives. The suspenseful material also is top flight. Nicolai uses strings to create a veneer of tension as lone instruments (harp, harpsichord, etc.) sound out figurative “bumps in the night.” During the second half, a rock sensibility creeps into the rhythm section with frantic cymbals accompanying insistent drums, forceful bass and the metallic texture of a jaggedly strummed electric guitar as fast arpeggios race across this uneasy surface. This approach serves several tracks as the plot clearly reaches its climax. This is Nicolai at his most frantic, but even when he slows the orchestra and stops the rhythm section he never loses sight of the suspense.

– from Chapter 6: A Fearful Earful of Kristopher Spencer’s Film and Television Scores, 1950-1979

Book Excerpt of the Day

Ennio Morricone’s Gli Occhi Freddi Della Paura (Cold Eyes of Fear, ’71) features Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, an improvisation ensemble founded in ’64 and made up entirely of composers. It also explores dissonant sounds but displays a more aggressive avant-garde jazz style. On “Seguita,” busy drums and walking bass provide an anchor for wah guitar and electronically enhanced trumpet interplay worthy of Bitches’ Brew-era Miles Davis. Morricone may be the trumpeter. Elsewhere, one can hear such bizarre sounds as ashtrays in pianos, bowed cymbals, scraping metal alongside the more typical but still jarring jittery horns and string drones. Although Cold Eyes’ cacophonous and abstract sounds discourage casual listening, its strong jazz and psychedelic aspects will engage listeners who are more attuned to experimental, exploratory music genres. No self-respecting avant-garde music or Morricone fan should be without a copy.

– from Chapter 6: A Fearful Earful of Kristopher Spencer’s Film and Television Scores, 1950-1979

Book Excerpt of the Day

"Piero Umiliani delivered a thoroughly groovy score for Mario Bava’s Five Dolls for an August Moon, which presents a series of grisly murders in a story line similar to Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians. Never before has a group of people been knocked off one by one to such an absurdly breezy, fun-loving musical backdrop. …a mood so light it is tempting to think that Umiliani never even saw the film when he delivered the music."

– from Chapter 6: A Fearful Earful of Kristopher Spencer’s Film and Television Scores, 1950-1979

Book Excerpt of the Day

“Stelvio Cipriani’s sensuous and sinister score for The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire is typical of the Italian thriller genre. The theme musically describes the carefree existence and ultimate vulnerability of the story’s leading lady. Gentle guitar and keyboard figures sprinkle over swaying strings, swooning female vocalisms and a sexy Latin rhythm, suggesting sunny days of shopping on the plaza and nights of passionate love by a crackling fire. What she doesn’t know is that her life soon will become a nightmare of sinister strangers, drug-induced hallucinations, raging paranoia and knife-wielding maniacs."

– from Chapter 6: A Fearful Earful of Kristopher Spencer’s Film and Television Scores, 1950-1979

Book Excerpt of the Day

“Spasmo’s centerpiece is ‘Stress Infinito,’ a masterful slab of experimental suspense music. Dissonance and discord lead to disorientation in this diabolically designed labyrinth of despair. If that sentence seems overwrought you can blame it on the music, which is impressively single-minded in its mission to undermine sanity wherever it may be sequestered. At the onset Morricone summons jarring electronic sound effects that pierce the writhing orchestral discord before setting down a simple beat offset by angular brass and keyboard lines. Eventually the volume and tempo verge on hard rock, but in the least conventional sense possible. Easy listening it is not…”

– from Chapter 6: A Fearful Earful of Kristopher Spencer’s Film and Television Scores, 1950-1979