Sunday, July 21, 2024

Not Quite Morricone

Roberto Pregadio - The Forgotten Pistolero II
The Forgotten Pistolero OST, 1969
 

What really set Ennio Morricone apart from other great soundtrack composers was how he dipped into multiple musical genres without sacrificing quality. A jack of all trades; master of all. Therefore, it was hardly a surprise he was called Il Maestro.

It would often come as a surprise that a film's soundtrack would contain a distinctive style, which would have you thinking it was composed by Morricone. For the longest time Roberto Pregadio's music for The Forgotten Pistolero (1969) had me completely fooled.

Here are a bunch of themes which had me fooled into thinking they were by Il Maestro:

Bendetto Ghiglia - Wanted [Adiós, Gringo] 1965
Bruno Nicolai - Main Title [Django Shoots First] 1966
Michele Lacerenza - Johnny's Theme [Blood at Sundown] 1966
Luis Bacalov - Motorcycle Circus [Summertime Killer] 1967
Bruno Nicolai - Duel [Run, Man! Run!] 1968 
Bruno Nicolai - Indio Black [Adiós, Sabata] 1970
Lalo Schifrin - Quick Draw Kelly [Kelly's Heroes] 1970 
Bruno Nicolai - Sequence 6 [Have a Good Funeral, My Friend... Sartana Will Pay] 1970
Bruno Nicolai - Sequence 1 [Apocalypse Joe] 1971
Bruno Nicolai - Sabba Sequence 2 [All the Colours of the Dark] 1972
Riz Ortolani - Quei Giorni Insieme A Te [Don't Torture a Duckling] 1972
Stelvio Cipriani - Main Theme [What Have They Done to Your Daughters] 1974
Stelvio Cipriani - La polizia ha le mani legate [Killer Cop] 1975
Berto Pisano - Main Theme [Strip Nude for Your Killer] 1975
Pino Donaggio - Main Theme [The Black Cat] 1981

No surprise his old mate and fellow peer, Bruno Nicolai, would feature so heavily.

Switchin things around, how uncanny is it that Morricone's theme for John Carpenter's classic, sci-fi horror The Thing (1982) actually sounds like something Carpenter would have composed for his film? 

Ennio Morricone - The Thing (Theme)
The Thing OST, 1982

4 comments:

  1. I was a fan of The Thing for years before I realised Carpenter didn't do the theme.

    Nicolai is definitely the Davy DMX to Morricone's Larry Smith, and plz believe that's a compliment.

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  2. Didn't find out about Morricone scoring The Thing until a mate at school told me. For whatever reason, I never really paid attention to film credits back then.

    Bruno Nicolai might be the only soundtrack composer to outdo Morricone when he produced four of my favourite giallo soundtracks - all in the very same year.

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  3. On the subject of soundtracks, what's the deal with Tarantino taking shotz at at the Herrmann's Taxi Driver soundtrack in his book?

    "Minimalist car noise - asshole with a sax - score that Herrmann pawned off on Scorsese."

    Piss off, dickhead.

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  4. 😀

    He described Hitchcock’s Frenzy as “a piece of crap” in his chapter on De Palma’s Sisters.

    ReplyDelete