I got this Brian May score some months ago and liked it, very melodic with a sweeping theme for the female lead and very much in the 70s vein of scoring with lots of romantic piano and flute, lush strings and even some echo'y electric guitar. It even goes to gothic horror in the second half of the movie with some nice choir cues, which at times are not that dissimilar to what Young would do years later for the Hellraiser series.
This Australian movie is about an aristocratic young woman (who has a definite Kylie Minogue vibe going on) who gets abducted by a society of vampires who want to indoctrinate her into their cult. She is said to be an ancestor of one of their major families and they take her to a farm/facility where blood donors supply the vampires with blood. For the major part of the movie she is forced into drinking blood and accepting her faith and role in their society and occult practices. This results in some heavy mind games and -as I said earlier- gothic horror scenes, it even has a spectacular "Omen" like kill in the second half of the movie.
Released in the same year as Salem's Lot, and starring a lot of the same actors from "Patrick" (and even David Hemmings from Argento's Profondo Rosso), I found this Aussie take on vampires very entertaining and the Severin blu-ray I got looks marvelous for the most part, and even boosts an isolated score track for Brian May's excellent score alongside a very informative director's commentary track.
Not only is Thirst my favorite Brian May score, it's also one of my Top 50 soundtrack albums.
I became a fan of Brian May during the early 1980s, when labels such as Varese and Citadel were putting out some of May's Aussie thrillers onto LPs.
Thirst did not get a release during those times, but I wanted it for years. Not until around '93 or so did I get myself a copy of Thirst on CD after learning that an Australian label was issuing much more May music than was ever available before.
You might want to track down the soundtrack to May's Harlequin (which is my 2nd favorite May and I think you would like it, too).
You might want to track down the soundtrack to May's Harlequin (which is my 2nd favorite May and I think you would like it, too).
Cool. It also stars David Hemmings I see. I also still need to see "Patrick", I want to get the blu-ray that has both his score for the english version as well as the Goblin score for the Italian dub. So far I've only heard the Goblin score.
A lot of May's CDs are annoyingly out of print and hard to track down, some of them got vinyl reissues recently (day after halloween & thirst). But the movies are luckily still readily available.
I've had this one for a while. What a nutty flick!
I like my flicks nutty. Yeah, still held up ok considering the hilarious 70s appliances and mustaches and some of the sets did look a tad cheap. Also funny hearing Latin being recited with an Aussie accent.
I've had this one for a while. What a nutty flick!
Here is the trailer for the film, it does use Brian May's score in it
It might be a bit dated by 2015 standards, but it was a really fresh take of vampirism in 1979 and influenced any number of films and TV shows that came after it such as BLADE and the TV Series THE STRAIN.