VOTD 12/6/2023

 A. Blonksteiner: Cannibal Apocalypse OST (Death Waltz/Mondo)

Probably ordered by mail from Death Waltz

Cannibal Apocalypse, AKA Apocalypse Domani, AKA Cannibals in the Streets. The only film disowned by John Saxon, a major player in exploitation circles. It is a rather nasty bit of business, but in all it's not a bad horror film. The title was definitely meant to play off the earlier and much harsher Cannibal Holocaust, in classic exploitation form. 

In this case, Vietnamese war vets come back to the US with a disease that compels them to start biting and chewing on other people. It becomes them vs. law enforcement, and, I forget many of the details. I saw it years ago, and it's not exactly the sort of film that turns up on Svengoolie. It also starts Giovanni Lombardi Radice, who gets a drill through the head in Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead, and is also in the other notorious Video Nasty, Cannibal Ferox. I read somewhere he didn't like horror movies, but seems to have built something of a career having appeared in some of the most gruesome. 

Video Nasties was a movement in the 1980s in Britain akin to America's Satanic Panic, and the scapegoating of heavy metal. They were responsible for the ills of society, with no real evidence. Video rental places became the rage, and any twelve year old go pop down to the corner store and rent Make Them Die Slowly  (alternate title to Cannibal Ferox). It was begging to be regulated, but the response was in extremis: titles were banned unless they were cut, titles had to be pulled, and even titles that weren't on the list could be confiscated by the police. This could include something like Night of the Living Dead, which is now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. 

Many of these titles were Italian in origin, including this one. I am a fan of the music in Italian horror films in general, largely due to the works of Goblin (Suspiria, Deep Red, Dawn of the Dead), Fabio Frizzi (City of the Living Dead, The Beyond, Zombi) and Ennio Morricone (Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Autopsy, Lizard in a Woman's Skin). 

A. (Alexander or Allesandro) Blonkmeister isn't a familiar name to me, and it's not surprising. I've looked up his IMDB page, and he only comes up as composer for three titles, another of which is The Erotic Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. (Oh what a time when films were titled The Erotic Adventures of...) His name turns up as conductor on more than a dozen other films (all Italian as far as I can see), and his last credit is "composer: additional music" for Fulci's House By the Cemetery. 

That was 1981, and nothing further. I can't find much information on him, though I haven't looked particularly hard.  There are enough composers and musical figures I want to know more about, minor obsessions, I probably don't need to add him to that list.

The music is reasonably good, fairly typical 70s fair, more funky than the prog leanings of Goblin or even Frizzi. The opening theme, "Jane", is a light melody that borders on lounge or even Muzak. There's a more extreme example of this in Riz Ortalani's soundtrack to Cannibal Holocaust, which has the sweetest of Italian pop themes, followed by a completely grimy, ugly synth cue. This particular work doesn't go to quite such extremes. The music was clearly taken very seriously by the composer, even for a production that surely wasn't very respectable.

Or was it? The horror film scene of the 1970s is notable for its extremes. Fulci, Argento, Deodato, Mario Bava, Lenzi, D'Amato, these guys made some at times pretty extreme films. A few are great, many are trash, some are awful, many play on exploiting large American productions like Alien or Dawn of the Dead. I've become interested in this scene and continue to watch some of the films, but generally fall short of the cannibal film sub-genre. Despite its title, this film has more in common with David Cronenberg's Rabid than the other cannibal movies listed.

Cannibal Apocalypse is largely filled with some funky grooves. Like many soundtracks, they're in part interesting due to the film they're written for. It's a little on the light side, but some good grooves with a turn or too that I didn't predict. There's even a brief bit of saxophone overblowing on the second side.

I've probably written this before, but one of the big unrealized projects I had planned for my band OPEK was a performance of all film score music. I had arrangements already from a number of themes and cues including Last Tango in Paris, The Taking of Pelham 123,  and Godzilla Vs. Mothra. 

Could I arrange something from this? Without question. It would be fun to blow on some of it. Would I? Probably not. There are many great grooves on many soundtracks like this, and I'd sooner find some Morricone to play before this. But who knows?

Also a passing thought, as my fall 2023 semester wraps up at Carnegie Mellon: what would my students think about the depth of my knowledge of gruesome Italian horror films? Not that I particularly care, almost none of them have seen me with an instrument in my hands.