Organic Intelligence XXXVI: Under-the-Radar Italian Pulp Film Soundtracks

While it should come as no surprise that a large volume of music was being written for the booming Italian motion picture industry after the Second World War, the quality of so much of it, as well as its deployment in some of the most lurid films of its day, is still pretty startling. A huge expansion in cinema audiences had created a demand for more and more films, which had led to Italian studios desperately pumping home produced movies into the cinemas in an effort to cash in on whatever the New Thing happened to be that week.

This Italian propensity for shameless cash-ins led to wave after wave of different genres finding box office success, before being eclipsed by whatever fad came along next. Westerns, sword and sandal epics, crime movies, screwball comedies, cannibal films and that peculiarly Italian prospect, the giallo, all came and went, each represented by hundreds of inexpensively made, quickly completed, blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em efforts from directors of wildly varying abilities. These ranged from masters such as Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci and Fernando Di Leo, to basically anyone with two eyes and a cravat who could yell “Taglio!”. 

All of these films needed soundtracks. Composers such as Ennio Morricone, Bruno Nicolai and Riz Ortolani, as well as hundreds of more obscure talents, found themselves with work scoring a flood of films, good bad and indifferent, often in extremely short spaces of time. It was inevitable that such talented composers – some of the cream of the post-war European avant-garde – would create some indelible work, but also just as inevitable that some of the best pieces created in this period would become hopelessly obscure, released only on long out-of-print soundtrack albums until their reissue in the last few years by dedicated labels such as Death Waltz or Sonor Music Editions. 

Any attempt to cover the length and breadth of such an absurdly profligate period of creativity in five selections is doomed to failure, so for this list I’ve concentrated on some lesser known soundtrack cues from Italian horror and Giallo films of the 70s and 80s, which were often notable for their extreme and experimental approach to sonics. Goblin are here – it would be a bit churlish not to include them seeing as how their contributions to Dario Argento’s films of the period are such influential touchstones – but the rest of the names are, I hope, a bit less familiar, and the selections should provide a good basis for further investigation.

A word of warning though, Italian exploitation cinema is renowned for its, ahem, ‘full blooded’ nature, so maybe do a bit of reading around before committing yourself to watching the films in question. Anyway, avanti!   

Bruno Nicolai – ‘Servizio Fotografico’ from The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972).

Probably the most well-known piece on this list due to its deployment in Michael Mohan’s delightfully blasphemous Immaculate from earlier this year. This is the only selection that involves the most emblematic instrument of the Italian soundtrack boom, the harpsichord, whose sophisticated tinkles can be heard on scores of releases from the period. It’s an instrument that made for a good fit with the stylish, sophisticated and bloody Giallo subgenre, an atypical example of which is Emilio P. Miraglia’s The Red Queen Kills Seven Times. Though the film is something of a curate’s egg and perhaps not the best place to start for those interested in navigating this most particular and eccentric genre, it’s soundtrack is a lush and swooning slice of romanticism, perfect for driving an open topped sports car through the winding hills of Tuscany before getting stabbed in the eye by a pervert in leather gloves.

Goblin – ‘Buio Omega’ from Buio Omega (1979)

It’s a good problem to have, but it’s a shame that Goblin’s work with Dario Argento tends to overshadow the rest of their contributions to Italian cinema, such as this prog-disco stomper from the soundtrack of Joe D’Amato’s astoundingly disgusting Buio Omega (AKA Beyond The Darkness). While the film is one of the most repulsive ever made – an absurd riot of over-the-top splatter and aberrant sexuality, seemingly created in an effort to offend everyone who watches it – Goblin’s soundtrack is one of their finest, and holds up nicely when compared to their more famous output for Argento. For those interested in some of the less celebrated work of the Italian prog titans this is a great place to start, maybe followed up with their soundtrack to Luigi Cozzi’s bonkers gut-flinger Contamination (1980). 

Libra – ‘The Shock’ from Shock (1977)

Have there ever been a people more naturally gifted at being funky in odd time signatures than the Italians? What with Libra featuring a couple of ex-members of Goblin it’s perhaps not surprising that their soundtrack to Mario Bava’s late-period 1977 oddity Shock hews close to that band’s template and continues their mix of prog audaciousness, warbling synth experimentation and tight, murderous funk. But there’s a loose and jammy eccentricity to the Shock soundtrack that sets it apart, and nicely offsets what was to be horror legend Bava’s last film before dying of a heart attack in 1980. Bombastic and propulsive, and drenched in moody synthesized choir, ‘The Shock’ is as compelling a slice of Italian progressive rock as you’ll find on or off the screen.

Nico Fedenco – ‘Zombie Parade’ from Zombie Holocaust (1980)

A lame effort to combine the flavours of two genres popular with the Italian film-going public – the cannibal flick and the zombie movie – Marino Girolami’s Zombie Holocaust is primarily remembered for its brilliantly lurid American release title, Doctor Butcher M.D., than for anything particularly exciting that happens in front of the camera. The soundtrack, however, is another story. Composed by former Italian pop singer Nico Fedenco, who would go on to score a whole bunch of films by trash auteur Joe D’amato, the Zombie Holocaust soundtrack is a moody delight, suppurated with droning synths and revelling in a distinctly occult atmosphere. The whole album is recommended for avant-synth heads, but ‘Zombie Parade’ is the standout track, an ominous string motif setting the scene for more lowing synths and the kind of clattering, propulsive drumming that would provide sampling gold for crate-diggers in the years to come.   

Daniele Pattuchi – ‘Wild Beasts Main Theme’ from Wild Beasts (1984)

I refuse to make any apologies for the sax-basted cheesiness of this final selection, and I’m not going to go down the road of apologising for the film it’s from either, in which a bunch of PCP maddened animals escape from a zoo and start frantically mauling, chomping and stomping the panicked population of Frankfurt. This Italian entry in the nature-runs-amuck subgenre is definitely not for everyone, given the lax attitude towards animal safety typical on Italian movie sets from the period, and given that it’s director is Franco Prosperi, semi-notorious for pioneering the Mondo documentary genre and being co-responsible for the extraordinarily offensive (although arguably well-intentioned) slavery mock-doc, Goodbye Uncle Tom. All that being said there are scenes in Wild Beasts – a woman driving a sports car being pursued through the streets by a cheetah, a herd of wild horses stampeding through a department store – that are amongst the most primally unnerving ever put to film and the soundtrack is pure late-night-in-the-hot-city sleaze. When that sax kicks in just try and stop yourself from nodding like the Man From Del Monte.