 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Posted: |
Jul 29, 2016 - 11:21 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Jim Doherty
(Member)
|
Good Lord, there's a ton of great music in Mexican horror/sci-fi films from the 1950s/1960s, and it appears that none of it ever appeared on LP or CD (exceptions listed below).
The films THE BLACK PIT OF HORROR (MISTERIOS DEL ULTRATUMBA), THE BRAINIAC (EL BARON DEL TERROR) THE VAMPIRE (EL VAMPIRO), EL ATAUD DEL VAMPIROand LA ISLA DE LOS DINOSAURIOS have excellent scores by
Gustavo Cesar Carrion. Also Raul Lavista wrote some great stuff, including the U.S./Mexican crossover production of THE BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN. Another composer that should be included in this post is Antonio Diaz Conte, who wrote the fine score to CURSE OF THE DOLL PEOPLE (MUNECOS INFERNALES).
These truly are all scores worthy of release if the tapes exist. An LP was released within the last few years of EL VAMPIRO/EL ATAUD DEL VAMPIRO, but it was taken right off the film soundtrack and often contains sound effects. All of these scores deserve to be heard on their own, right from the music tracks, with no effects to mar them.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
Jul 29, 2016 - 4:24 PM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Graham Watt
(Member)
|
Jim - I wouldn't like your post to sink without trace, without any paltry reply. So I shall contribute, albeit paltrily (gr?) and offer up some rabbits, albethem mixed up with toasties.
I should know the scores for Mexican-shot movies a bit more than I do. Dear old Boris Karloff made a few films "in Mexico" (California) towards the end of his career, and I think I've seen them all. Alas, they are not the greatest of shakes, and I don't recall any particularly brilliant music scores. In fact nowt, brilliant or mediocre or downright terrible. Come to think of it, if there were terrible ones, I'd have remembered them more than the "mediocre" ones... mibbe.
But YOU HAVE SPARKED A DISTANT MEMORY FROM MY CHILDHOOD, A CHILDHOOD SO HORRIFIC THAT NOBODY COULD.... (to be continued)... I have to go to the toilet, and sometimes my computer just shuts down, so see you later.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
Jul 29, 2016 - 4:58 PM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Graham Watt
(Member)
|
So, I've told this story before, but when Gramps starts ramblin' on the porch...
Antionio DÍaz Conde.... Right Jim, you mention him but I don't know that film. The one I do know is very much part of my formative years (actually, I was a bit too old for it to be "formative", but I was nevertherless a late developer) - NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES. That was made in '69, but I saw it in Scotland on a double bill with NIGHT OF BLOODY HORROR (actually a USA film I believe) in about 1976. I was fourteen years old. My schoolpals were smoking and drinking but I was engrossed in the world of taboo cinema. NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES was an "X" Certificate where I lived, so seeing it on the big screen at the age of fourteen nearly made my gonads burst. And I think I saw the titless censored version.
The music certainly stayed with me. I remember the "horror" theme (twelve or thirteen notes, depending on whether or not the last two were played with minimal interval), and the "father and son" theme (sixteen notes, a bit like Gerald Fried's sweetest music for Star Trek). That was in 1976. In the intervening years I thought that my memory must have been playing tricks. Nobody can see a film once and recall entire themes forty years later. Surely not...
And yet, there on the wonderful world that be YouTube, is NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES, and the music is exactly as I had remembered it all those years.
I know that that was more about me than Mexican horror film scores, but your (Jim's) post has whetted my appetite. I feel compelled to do a nocturnal YT search for Main Titles at least. Not sure if I have the stamina for the films themselves.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
These truly are all scores worthy of release if the tapes exist. An LP was released within the last few years of EL VAMPIRO/EL ATAUD DEL VAMPIRO, but it was taken right off the film soundtrack and often contains sound effects. All of these scores deserve to be heard on their own, right from the music tracks, with no effects to mar them.
Most of the ones I've seen were made at Estudios Churubusco Azteca, Mexico City.
Whether their film music recording sessions were also done at Churubusco Azteca or not isn't known by me. Even if they were, the recording elements (if they continue to exist) would be the property of the successor to Churubusco Azteca.
As there is no soundtrack specialty record label in Mexico that we're aware of, any surviving Mexican tapes/acetates would need to be attractive enough to U.S. producers in order for any sort of release onto disc to materialize (unless a fledgling Mexican label would care enough to mine this niche market).
|
|
|
|
|
|
The films THE BLACK PIT OF HORROR (MISTERIOS DEL ULTRATUMBA), THE BRAINIAC (EL BARON DEL TERROR) THE VAMPIRE (EL VAMPIRO), EL ATAUD DEL VAMPIROand LA ISLA DE LOS DINOSAURIOS have excellent scores by Gustavo Cesar Carrion.
Carrion also did El Espejo de la Bruja. This movie was released about 10 years on the CasaNegra label with the title The Witch's Mirror:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
