Roberto Faenza's Escalation (1968) is another one of those nonsensical and wacky, class satire films that were common at the time. Despite Claudine Auger (a top ten Bond girl, imo), being in the film, she can't do much to alleviate it from being a dud. Fortunately, the late great Ennio Morricone blessed it with one of my favourite deep cuts which hasn’t been plundered by Quentin Tarantino.
Had been familiar with Dies irae psichedelico prior to seeing Escalation thanks to an old soundtrack blog that's no longer around. Not knowing anything about the film at the time, I pictured some biblical scenario like the Rapture occuring given its chanting and church organ sounds. Lo and behold, it was another drugged up, hippie party scene with the doe-eyed Hammer actress Maddie Smith looking high as a kite. Nowhere near as fun as Valmont's Gogo Pad scene from Mario Bava's Danger: Diabolik (1968), sadly.
Not sure how Morricone became the go-to guy for scoring hippie raves, but il maestro also produced Adonai from the film Il giardino delle delizie AKA Garden of Delights (1967). This particular piece sounds like an early forerunner to what he would compose for The Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977); namely the utterly insane Magic and Ecstasy.
2 comments:
Magic & Ecstasy and the main theme are probably the only good non-comedic things about Exorcist II.
Terrible film. Richard Burton and Morricone’s soundtrack were both wasted on it. 🥴
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