Greetings, programs. It's been a few months since I delivered a "Let's Score Todd to Death" column — and in fact, I had previously announced its retirement. But some gentle prodding by the wonderful folks at FANGORIA, and the recent news that leadership at Mondo/ Death Waltz Records, including Spencer Hickman, Mo Shafeek, and Shannon Smith, were exiting the company, necessitated a return to celebrate the music, and collectible format, to which I have devoted a significant portion of my adult life (both personally and professionally).
FANGORIA's experts about horror and genre filmmaking are peerless; the only capacity in which I would even presume to qualify to be in their company is in the realm of soundtracks, and only as a direct result of the efforts of individuals like Hickman, Shafeek and Smith, who fed my addiction for records, and then nurtured my interests and appetites by inviting me to discover soundtracks I hadn't yet appreciated or didn't know at all before they poured their music onto slabs of wax and sild those slabs into beautifully-appointed sleeves. So even though the records I include in this column from other labels are all imminently worthy of canonization — much less purchase — it feels appropriate to start with a list of my favorite Death Waltz/ Mondo releases to pay tribute to their tremendous impact.
It seems genuinely impossible to overstate the impact these two labels have exerted — not just on my wallet/ record collection but on the industry as a whole. Armed initially with little more than the impulse to release soundtracks to movies that Hickman and Shafeek loved, they facilitated a renaissance of vinyl as a format, cultivated it as a collectible buy creating packaging that was itself as artistic as the music it accompanied, and maintained an unflinching and impeccable standard of quality to which the rest of their industry fought to maintain.
By no means is this list meant to be definitive — I'll probably feel differently tomorrow — but here are a handful of titles I'd consider essential to my musical education/ collection if no one else's.
Fabio Frizzi — Zombi 2/ Zombie Flesh Eaters — The record that, for me, started it all: after obsessing about Frizzi's theme for the film for a good ten or fifteen years, Hickman put it out there. I had been collecting records for several years by then, but its relative obscurity at the time fed a thirst for deep-cut classics that still hasn't been fully sated.
John Carpenter & Alan Howarth — Prince of Darkness — John Carpenter's scores, of course, are (or should be) a cornerstone of any genre fan's musical diet, but this was one of DW's earliest and a personal favorite among so many classics.
Cliff Martinez — Drive — Hepped up on Nicolas Winding Refn's neon-drenched style and the intoxicating combination of Cliff Martinez's score and music by artists from Los Angeles record label Italians Do It Better, this record helped rekindle an interest in synthesizers, but it also vacillates between haunting emotion and effortless cool.
Franco Micalizzi — The Visitor — A movie that must be seen to be believed, the only thing other than sheer outrageousness that holds this fever-dream non-sequitur of a story together is Micalizzi's music, which combines mood pieces with funk and disco.
Jeff Grace — House of the Devil — This record would make the list just for including Mike Armstrong's amazing title theme, but Grace's piano-driven score is beautifully understated, and Death Waltz' cover art and packaging make this feel like some sort of ancient textbook, used to conjure Satan himself.
Jerry Goldsmith — Alien (Complete Motion Picture Soundtrack) — Mondo's LP for James Horner's Aliens score is almost as good as this one, but Goldsmith's iconic music gets the package it deserves, including every cue created for Ridley Scott's film, all in one place on vinyl for the first time.
Angelo Badalamenti — Twin Peaks — As a fellow fan of this series, Hickman once told me that this was one of the titles that he was proudest of, and justifiably so, resurrecting Badalamenti's unforgettable themes from the series in a new package that captures not just its themes but its oddball energy.
Goblin — Profundo Rosso (Original Film Soundtrack) — Both labels released multiple versions of multiple Goblin scores over the years, and like Carpenter, they're standard bearers that must be included. This was always a personal favorite, and their attention to detail in the artwork, then fed into an expanded collection of beautifully remastered cues, makes it a no-brainer.
v/a — Eyes Wide Shut (Music From the Motion Picture) — It speaks to the quality, discipline and commitment of the trio, and these two labels, that they were able to secure licensing rights for material from Stanley Kubrick's estate, one of the most notoriously protective of all time. The soundtrack to the filmmaker's final masterpiece, Eyes Wide Shut, feels almost like a clearinghouse for the sounds that were a signature in many of his films — classical, electronic, musique concrete — that remains incredibly listenable, if sometimes creepy, away from the images on screen.
Nicolas Godin — Fire of Love — Godin, one half of French electronic mainstays Air, delivers a feverish, evocative collection of tracks for this documentary about married volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft. The exact kind of spotlight Mondo has shone on lesser know but worthy titles — in this case, a fantastic score to a fantastic film.
These releases encompass an era now coming to a close with Hickman, Shafeek and Smith's departure from the company. Without trying to be pessimistic, it's unclear what may come next — but hopefully, the pedigree that the company has developed under their watch will serve as a North Star for whoever attempts to replace them. In the meantime, I'll follow their social media feeds closely to see what other mantle they may take up when and if they decide to start a new imprint or label somewhere else.
Elsewhere in the vinyl distribution sphere, Terror Vision has been able to carve out a thriving niche with titles that are frequently odd but always fun — not obscurities altogether, mind you, but things just off the radar. The first of these is Paul Zaza's score for Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II, a horror sequel widely regarded as superior to its predecessor. I can't say if Zaza's score to this is better than his work on Prom Night — as a hardcore devotee of horror disco, Prom Night features a nonstop string of dancefloor gems. But the film's late '80s setting guarantees a soundboard full of richly familiar synthesizer sounds that he skillfully deploys to create a consistent and palpable mood.
Terror Vision's other title this month actually comes not just as an LP or cassette but as aBlu-ray: Linnea Quigley's Horror Workout. Quigley, one of the genre's most enduring female stars, managed to parlay her modest fame into this VHS-era oddity, in which she shuffles through a handful of horror-movie scenarios while exercising. Piggybacking on the era of Jane Fonda et al. workout videos while catering to horror fans, the film offers true, joyful kitsch, culminating in a fitness session for a group of ghouls. Where it may have once gathered dust on video store shelves, Terror Vision has restored and remastered it for a new generation of collectors, whether you want to work up a sweat or just some laughs.
The final title for this month's column is from Grindhouse Releasing, a label that has only intermittently released soundtracks — but this one became a must-have after I rediscovered the film it accompanies last fall. Death Game is almost unquestionably better known because of Knock Knock, the 2015 remake that Eli Roth mounted with Keanu Reeves, Ana De Armas and Lorenza Izzo than because of Peter S. Traynor's long-out-of-print 1977 original film, but as with all of their titles, Grindhouse's meticulous restoration — and accompanying bonus materials chronicling its making — have elevated it to an unsettling, vital entry in a genre full of too many titles bearing that description.
The soundtrack, available as a bundle with the movie itself or separately, leads with Sally & Scottie's "Good Old Dad," a ragtime-ukulele-driven theme song that might just be a charming AM-radio earworm — at least if you had no idea it was attached to a film about two young women (Sondra Locke and Colleen Camp) who seduce and torment a hapless homeowner (Seymour Cassel). Jimmie Haskell's score features classical passages, clarinet-forward jazz, and eventually swirling electronics to create the right atmosphere for a truly bizarre home invasion.
It's no surprise that my personal favorite cue here is "Jacuzzi," a disco-tinged track which accompanies the threesome between Cassel's George Manning and his impromptu houseguests Jackson and Donna, and sounds a bit like Van McCoy's "The Hustle." But this disc — currently only on CD; maybe this will prompt a vinyl reissue? — like the two from Terror Vision, showcases exactly the kind of care and specificity that collectors want from record labels and distributors. What they do is more than give us trinkets or keepsakes from our favorite films; they fulfill our passions while feeding our curiosity.
