Il rosso segno della follia

Digitmovies continues the anthology series dedicated to the original motion picture soundtracks from the movies of Mario Bava, the Maestro of Italian Horror and Noir. This time we are proud to present, as the seventh volume of the series, the complete edition of the OST composed by Sante Maria Romitelli for the 1969 movie “Il rosso segno della follia” (aka “Hatchet for the honeymoon”) directed by Mario Bava. Those days no record was issued and it was only in 1999, that Rca released a CD entirely in stereo (OST 138 74321– 58151–2) containing 16 tracks from “I tre volti della paura” by Roberto Nicolosi coupled with another 16 tracks from “Il rosso segno della follia” by Sante M.Romitelli. The Romitelli material issued on that CD had a length of 29:39 only, while for our ultimate de-luxe edition we could locate and use all mono master tapes of the recording session. Using the stereo mixes and the complementary mono material our complete archive CD edition has a total length of 61:53. Sante Maria Romitelli has written a varied score using both orchestra and electronics: an airy waltz with variations used for the fashion maison (Tr.1, Tr.7, Tr.8, Tr.11); a romantic theme with Lounge flavour of Titoli di testa (Tr.9); a whole series of music themes between melodic and dissonant that represent well the morbid “Jeckyl & Hyde” style soul of the protagonist: Tr. 2,Tr.3, Tr.4, Tr.6, Tr.13, Tr.15 (where the bittersweet lullaby theme - for the main character as child - is enclosed in a dissonant way); Tr.5, Tr.10 (hallucinated atmosphere that seems echoing to the Barry Gray music for the Tv Cult “UFO”). For the scene of Fashion shows and in the discotheque, Sante Maria Romitelli wrote powerful dance floor music (Tr.14), the sweeping “Hatchet Shake” dominated by organ and timpani. The inedit material in mono includes: a mix of electronic music (Tr.17 - altenate version of Tr.2), dissonant and psychedelic music sequences (Tr.18, Tr.19, Tr.26, Tr.28), experimental electronic music (Tr.21, Tr.23, Tr.27), reprise of the waltz theme (Tr.20), reprise of the lullaby theme for the protagonist as a child (Tr.22, Tr.24, Tr.25) and at the end, as special bonus Track, the alternate mono mix - film version of “Hatchet Shake” (Tr.29).