Quei disperati che puzzano di sudore e di morte

Digitmovies proudly reissues on CD the complete edition in mono and in full stereo of the OST by Gianni Ferrio for the classic 1969 western "Quei disperati che puzzano di sudore e di morte" (aka "Los desperados" - " Bullet for Sandoval") directed by Julio Buchs (but some sources report that it had also been co-directed – uncredited - by the great Lucio Fulci) and starring Ernest Borgnine, George Hilton, Antonio De Mendoza", Leo Anchoriz, Andrea Aureli, Annabella Incontrera, Manuel Miranda, Antonio Pica. The film tells the story of John Warner (Hilton), an employee of rich Don Pedro Sandoval (Borgnine) who asks for the hand of his daughter Rosa, but the rich man does not give his assent to this marriage and accuses him with the striving for his real estate. John, who is enlisted in the Confederate States army, escapes from the camp after having learned that the now pregnant girl is in serious danger of life. After being arrested and condemned to death for desertion, he escapes with the help of two of his fellow soldiers. The girl dies from cholera and some time later also the newborn baby comes to death. Crazy with rage, John wants to take revenge, becomes a bandit and he goes on searching for all those he considers responsible for that epidemic and for the death of his beloved ones. Gianni Ferrio (born in Vicenza,1924), one of the biggest names of Italian film music, has composed one of his best scores for the big screen with this music. In those days Cinevox Record printed a - now hard to find - vinyl album with only 500 copies (MDF 33/29) which contained 22 tracks mixed in stereo and was reissued for the first time on CD (MDF 317) in the year 2000 with an added suite in mono sound. Recently we have discovered the complete mono mastertapes of the 1969 recording sessions which, besides the full stereo tracks of the original album properly restored and remastered in digital version, gave us the chance to release the complete score split up into 18 tracks which were originally recorded in mono for the movie. So we were able to reconstruct the original film version of the "Main Titles" thanks to the discovered takes of flutes with reverberation and echo, bell tolls and orchestral stings which had been recorded separately and were later edited in the movie itself (Tr.1). Gianni Ferrio has written a notable orchestral score which alternates a yearning theme in a classical style with the performance of the Cantori Moderni choir and typical Deguello trumpet tracks (Tr.30 and Tr.40) with violent, mysterious and dramatic themes. So the aficionado can listen to both the mono film version and the stereo album version of this OST on the same CD with a long duration of 73:58 minutes. This rescue and preservation of an OST of the Italian Silver Age will make all the fans of Gianni Ferrio and of the Italian Western very happy.