Paura Nella Citta

Dei Morti Viventi

Music by Fabio Frizzi

 

Living Dead at the

Manchester Morgue

Music by Giuliano Sorgini

 

 

The splatter films, specially the Europeans, was a landmark of its era, early 80's. With its graphic excesses of violence it confrontated standards and submerged viewers in aesthetic nightmares. The pornography of violence – as have been called spaghetti westerns of the early 60s!

Even with good technical production values – photography, art direction and makeup – the rough narrative was the main ingredient of the show. There was no room for subtlety nor need: everything was explicit and bloody in splatter movies. Naturally the musical commnets also followed this formula, without depth or suggestion, supporting the scenes in circular, climate and an exaggerated soundscapes. Fabio Frizzi was one of the masters of this sub-genres being Gates of Hell (Paura Nella Citta Dei Morti Viventi, 1980) one of the best examples of his work in the area. The dense pinkfloydian march that opens Gates of Hell can easily remarked as one great themes of horror cinema. The influence of the Goblin group is visible and well assimilated into the pop / rock instrumentation (as in Verso L'Alba). But Frizzi only refers to the instrumental, the content is original and fits nicely in the explicit movie of master Lucio Fulci. Other moments detaches choral performances as in apocalyptic Apoteosi del Misterio.

Some editions with soundtrack of Gates of Hell also included the music for The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974) another great moment of the Euro-horror. A rarity from Giuliano Sorgini, composer of short relation in film music. Sorgini did some exploitation in the 70´s (nazi-erotic, for example). His soundtrack for this cult zombie-flick directed by Jorge Grau is quite unusual with its dispersed wind instruments, organ and vocal whispers that places on the threshold between music and sound design atmosphere. The experimental dare is almost anti-musical in its succession of layered voice whispers and wind instruments that are really scary. The bassoon and voices in Spectral is one example. Occasional organs and electronic effects complete the eerie climate as in Aggression (bass and organ) and abstraction in The Raisen Dead. On the extreme opposite, its main theme, John Dalton Street, is a great rhytmic jazz / soul typical of the period, but with a difference: the basis of bass and drums works as support to strings running the melody. Surely, The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue is the one of the most bizarre sound creations for a horror movie.