Cinecocktail Calibro 3

Beat Records

Italy was celebrated for its wild crime and cop films during the Seventies. While filmmakers such as Dario Argento may be well known by younger fans for his horror films, his many Giallo titles were what first brought him his first recognition. Indeed, many of his crime films right up to the Stendhal Syndrome and hopefully to his new film, Giallo, stand equal in creativity and innovation to his more horror oriented output.

Giallo was a form of Italian literature which was primarily sold in cheap yellow paperbacks, hence the title – Giallo which means Yellow. It was marked by crime, lurid content and eroticism. The films, like the books, had quirky and convoluted plots and were populated by strange people doing very bizarre things, in most cases, in very violent ways and usually coupled with steaming sexuality of all possible forms.

At the same time one of the things that made the Italian Giallo films so memorable was the music score. In most cases these scores were so superb that they could easily stand on their own as works of musical creativity and indeed many did so. Some of the more impressive soundtracks came from the Seventies action cop genre and this is a great selection of rare tracks. It is beautifully presented in a 3 fold digipack with original artworks and English liner notes.

Cinecocktail Calibro 3 includes La polizia incrimina, la legge assolve - Roma violenta - Napoli violenta - Napoli Spara - Milano rovente - A tutte le auto della polizia - The big game - Il consigliori - Il prefetto di ferro - Liberi armati e pericolosi and many never released before tracks!

This is a rare CD edition indeed and will be greatly enjoyed by both lovers of genre cinema and devotees of soundtracks.

In the same package is a DVD which is a 1h 15min long documentary called Il Genere covering Italian cop films and the music that accompanied them. It includes sections of the Cinevento De Masi 2007 with various filmmakers offering their memories and reflections, intercut with insightful interviews with major composers and musicians. Interviewees include Alessandro Alessandroni, Francesco De Masi and Edda Dell'Orso alongside directors such as Mario Caiano and Umberto Lenzi. There are also live performances and various tracks from the album are also played in the background during various interviews. This is a high quality doco with lots of interesting content, it has English subtitles.