Tuesday, April 22, 2008

GLI AMANTI D'OLTRETOMBA (The Faceless Monster) (Nightmare Castle) - Ennio Morricone - "Nightmare" (1965)

The real name of this film is Italian, "Gli Amanti D'oltretomba" and is an early outing, and one of a handful of films between "A Fist Full Of Dollars" and "For A Few Dollars More" that composer extraordinaire Ennio Morricone composed the music for on his way to almost 500 titles!!! Wow!!! He was just getting warmed up!!!! The film opens with this ponderous organ music that if it went on much longer, would start getting under your skin! Ennio's version of "Phantom Of The Opera" music!! 
 
The music in this "Nightmare Sequence" sounds like a cross between "2001" and "The Mask!" Yeah, it's that weird, and not to forget you still get more of those wraithlike soaring angelic voices from above, to top it all off!! 
 
This movie really needs to be seen to be fully appreciated, and since you have so many titles to choose from, it should be easy to find, unless you don't have a face!! 
 
I do believe Barbara is really starting to look like Morticia right about here, and her boyfriend, well, he's just sick!! 
 
Sometimes we obsess over Barbara Steele, but it's simple, she was the best!! 
 Tabonga and I were talking for about 20 minutes one night about this movie, I was telling him how I had just watched this movie called "The Faceless Monster" and that Barbara Steele was in it again, and that she looked good as a blonde, and he proceeds to tell me how he just saw another movie in which she was blonde called "Nightmare Castle." Well, when we started talking about how there was a scene in both movies where they get electrocuted on a bed, we knew something wasn't right.

2 comments:

Tim Mayer said...

Was Babs ever in a bad movie?

Anonymous said...

Any chance of posting another piece from this movie? It's the recurring piano & strings theme that gets played near the beginning when brunette Barbara Steele is going to meet her lover and later when the blonde Barbara Steele is wandering the castle in a trance.

Monster Music

Monster Music
AAARRGGHHH!!!! Ya'll Come On Back Now, Y'Hear??