Soundtrack Review: Malenka / The Feast of Satan

malenka

Malenka / The Feast of Satan
Released by Quartet Records
30 Tracks with a total running time of 65:39 min.
Music composed by Carlo Savina

Savina’s score for Amando de Ossorio’s 1969 film Malenka (aka Fangs of the Living Dead) is a real treat and a great way to step back in time to one of those gothic vampire pictures that we grew up with on late night television. Using primarily an organ for this score, it creates a multi-layered effects that just seeps with atmosphere. He creates this ghostly or almost other-worldly feeling, if that makes any sense, developing different sounds and melodies to enhance the gothic feel of the movie. Even as a standalone piece of music, you can’t help but be transported back to the 40 years ago, to an old run down castle, with the fog slowly covering the grounds, where you are told not to venture out at night.

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Movie Review: Fangs of the Living Dead

Fangs of the Living Dead Blu-rayFangs of the Living Dead (1969)
Directed by Amando de Ossorio
Starring Anita Ekberg, Gianni Medici, Diana Lorys, Rosanna Yanni, César Benet, Carlos Casaravilla, Adriana Ambesi, Julián Ugarte

There are times when you sit down with a movie and maybe you’re just not in the right mood, or frame of mind to really watch it. As the saying goes, you can never watch the same movie twice with the same eyes, and my experience with this title is a perfect example of this. I had seen this years ago, from a grainy old VHS tape, mainly because it was the same director as the Blind Dead series. But I didn’t remember that much of it at the time. When it came out on DVD, I course added it to the collection. I’m sure I watched it at some point, but just didn’t have a strong memory of it, meaning that if I had thought it was that great, I would have remembered it. Then the recent Blu-ray from Shout Factory came out and I was going upgrade to this new version when realized I remembered not caring for it that much. So I sat down with the DVD to refresh my memory and realized that I think I was okay with just this DVD version. Nothing really jumped out at me, so no reason to upgrade. But then I read that this new Blu-ray is actually the European cut which is a bit longer than the version I had. Then the “collector” part of me kicked in and decided I had to have this version now … I mean, it’s longer which means maybe I’m missing all the good parts! So I had to have it. Once it arrived, I sat down with it again, to see if this version was going to be another boring repeat viewing. Oh, how I was wrong.

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