Una ragione per vivere e una per morire - La notte dei serpenti

Digitmovies continues its musical journey along sunny praeries and wild paths of the West by releasing on CD the complete OST in full stereo by Riz Ortolani for the the classic Italian Western "Una ragione per vivere e una per morire" (aka "A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die") directed in 1972 by Tonino Valerii and starring three icons of the cinema: Bud Spencer, Telly Savalas, James Coburn (fresh from his international success "Giu' la testa" by Sergio Leone).The plot: After the defeat of Fort Holman, abandoned by the troops without fighting, the Yankee colonel Pembroke (James Coburn) is expelled from the army with the accusation of betrayal. But he persuades a group of seven men, who have been condemned to death, to follow him to reconquer the Fort and in return promises them a lot of gold hidden inside the camp. Only at the end the motive why Pembroke did abandon the Fort without fighting will be discovered: In fact the Confederates had menaced the colonel's son with death and, immediately after the surrender, they had killed him. So what at first had seemed to be a robbery was indeed a personal vengeance against the murderer of his son. Riz Ortolani has written an epic symphonic score, one of the best of his long career, where a heroic main theme played by French horns and orchestra represents the group of courageous men who are going to die by following an ideal. At the time of the film's releaese no LP or 45 rpm was issued from this OST, but in an odd way one theme was included as the first track of side B on the very rare Japanese album (Cinedisc 5010) of the OST from the movie "The Amazones" (aka "Le guerriere dal seno nudo"). This same track (Tr.10 here on our CD) did also appear on a French compilation LP of Western themes in the 80s, but for quite obvious reasons it was neither included on the CD reissue of "The Amazones" (Point PRCD113) nor on the previous CD of "Una ragione per vivere e una per morire" (Point PRCD 105) so that 3:45 minutes of this OST are issued in CD form for the very first time. Our CD, with a digitally better restored sound than the previous 1994 edition, presents another musical rarity: the OST by Riz Ortolani, complete and in mono, from the movie "La notte dei serpenti" (aka "Night of the serpent") directed in 1970 by Giulio Petroni and starring Luke Askew, Luigi Pistilli, Magda Konopka, Chelo Alonso. Hernandez, the sheriff of a small Mexican village, joins a group of townsmen with the intention of killing the young orphan Manuel and robbing him of his inheritance. Killer Luke, now an alcoholic for having murdered his own son by mistake, is chosen for the task and instead decides to take the defence of the poor child. The muddy atmosphere of the movie which opens with a dark and stormy night in pure horror style is perfectly accompanied by Riz Ortolani's penetrating music score which is performed mostly by electric guitars (with sparse use of the brass and strings) in a dramatic and claustrophobic context. The OST also contains Mexican folk tunes (Tr.16,Tr.22), dissonant music with echoed strings (Tr.20) and with the performance of the whole orchestra in Tr.26,Tr.29,Tr.32. Previously some tracks had only appeared on compilations, but thanks to the complete mono master tapes kept in the Cinevox archives it was possible to realize this very long CD (73:48) will make happy the fans of Bud Spencer and of the Italian Western.