VOTD 01/14/2025

 Fabio Frizzi: Manhattan Baby OST (Sub Ost)

Purchased at Double Decker Records in Allentown, PA

Here's where I am: It's a Tuesday afternoon, 23 degrees F outside and lightly snowing. My spring semester classes began yesterday. I'm writing again for the discipline of writing, unsure if I've essentially run out of things to say.

Soundtrack recordings have been a major component of the running narrative of this blog. I think Fabio Frizzi has produced two especially good (if similar) soundtracks, for Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead (AKA Gates of Hell) and The Beyond (AKA Seven Doors of Death). Fulci's films are a guilty pleasure of mine; you don't go in for the story, that's for sure. I suppose he directed a wide variety of genre films, including Westerns, some comedies, Giallo thrillers. He's best known for his horror films, particularly Zombie (AKA Zombi AKA Zombie Flesh Eaters), House by the Cemetery, The New York Ripper, A Cat in the Brain, and those mentioned above. They're marked by extreme gruesomeness. Even some of his less violent films, such as The Psychic (AKA Seven Notes in Black) and Don't Torture a Duckling have at least one really graphic effect in them. The latter shows a face being ripped off; obviously fake but still rather shocking.

Manhattan Baby (AKA Eye of the Evil Dead) is a terrible title. It's a lesser Fulci effort among trashy, disreputable movies anyway. It's mostly a possession tale with a tiny smattering of Raiders of the Lost Ark thrown in. I guess the title is meant to play on Rosemary's Baby, released more than a decade before this. It's not bloody enough to satisfy the real gorehounds, not creepy or interesting enough for anyone else. 

I feel like I've seen enough Italian horror movies that I can recognize one on sight, whether I know the director or not. Is it that Fulci reflects what other directs do, or is there a definable Italian aesthetic? Manhattan Baby is recognizably Italian, despite the location. It's just not a particularly good example.

So too the music is ho hum, and repeats itself more than other Frizzi efforts I've heard. His music has been mistaken for that of Goblin, more Italians making music for Italian horror movies. They in the same neighborhood, although Goblin's music tends to be louder and more intense. 

Once in a while there are solo tenor saxophone breaks. They're processed in an early-80s kind of way, subtle, but not to my liking. 

I bought this at Double Decker Records in Allentown, during one of my visits to my parents in eastern Pennsylvania before they relocated permanently to Portland, OR. Double Decker has since gone out of business and I guess sold out their stock to a store in New Kensington, so I must pay that a visit soon.