LE FATICHE DI ERCOLE / ERCOLE E LA REGINA DI LIDIA

Digitmovies proudly presents the first volume of the new series dedicated to the original soundtracks of the Italian Peplum, a genre that had a huge success from the late 1950s to the first half of the 1960s. The first movies of this kind were the famous "Le fatiche di Ercole "(aka "Hercules") and "Ercole e la regina di Lidia" (aka "Hercules Unchained") respectively directed in 1957 and 1958 by Pietro Francisci, starring the icon of international bodybuilding, Steve Reeves (Glasgow, Montana 1926 - San Diego, California 2000) as Hercules and magnificently scored by Enzo Masetti. Regarding the soundtrack discographies of these two films: a long-playing album of "Hercules" was issued in America by RCA Victor (Rca/Bluebird LBY - 1036) containing narration by actor Conrad Nagel and dialogue from the English-dubbed soundtrack, along with sound effects and some musical passages by M Masetti, while "Hercules Unchained" initially yielded only a very rare 45rpm single on Durium label, featuring the song "Con te per l'eternità" sung by Marisa Del Frate (dubbing the movie star Sylva Koscina's singing as Jole, Hercules' wife). After these, we must wait till 1984, when C.A.M. released in its Phoenix series two LPs (PHCAM 01 and PHCAM 07) containing selected tracks from these two soundtracks. Thanks to the historic C.A.M. Archives, we are pleased to present on a two CD set the complete orchestral scores, as taken from the mono master tapes of the recording sessions conducted by Carlo Savina. This has given us the chance to reconstruct, select and restore the original elements following the two movies' chronology. Listening to the original master tapes today was a fantastic experience and, although these recordings are now almost half a century old, the sound quality is very good. Watching again these two movies on DVD, we realised that, while all the symphonic and choral parts have survived, some of the organ takes and electronic effects are totally missing from the master tapes (used for scenes like that one of the saucer's launch or the Oracle's temple); also, the aforementioned song is missing from the C.A.M. vaults and cannot be included here due to contractual restrictions. These two scores are dominated by the powerful, brassy "Hercules Theme" that is alternated to the romantic love theme "Con te per l'eternità" ("With You for Eternity") that M Masetti frequently both reprises. Our deluxe, two-disc edition also encompasses a large selection of previously unreleased tracks only recently discovered, giving us the opportunity to release these two milestones of film music in their most complete versions ever. As bonus tracks, we have added alternate mixes without the choir from both movies, a rare demo version of "Balletto" from "Ercole e la regina di Lidia" and we have corrected some mistakes that were made in the programming of the previous LPs. Despite careful digital restoration and remastering, some anomalies pre-existing on the original sources remain.