Les Baxter

That one being heavily influential, I would have to assume, to the Eggers stuff.

yeah um okay nice uh i guess i'll i mentioned this on a recent episode because i re-watched it um and kind of enjoyed it even more upon re-watching it uh the dunwich horror 1970 directed by daniel haller uh of course after hp lovecraft's 1929 story um It's got an amazing soundtrack by Les Baxter, the king of Exotica music.

It's just, I don't know.

It's got such a wonderful atmosphere.

they made these arbitrary changes that I find enraging.

A lot of them have entirely different scores from Les Baxter, which there's nothing wrong with the scores, but it's like the original scores were great.

Why was this necessary to re-score the film? A lot of them are re-edited.

Some things like the Black Sabbath anthology, the segments are put in different orders.

It creates a certain kind of fragile femininity to it.

AIP was, you know... guilty of all throughout the 1960s well into the 70s of acquiring well through the 60s acquiring european films and messing with them primarily you know some of the edits taking on some of like for example uh 1960s uh mask of satan retitled black sunday mario babas 1960 masterpiece was cut slightly to accommodate American tastes and completely rescored by the king of lounge, the great Les Baxter, one of my favorite composers, to give it a harsher, louder, more garish horror score sound.

repeated that formula with 1963's Baba's Black Sabbath and, you know, throughout the decade would bring in films and get Baxter to come in and redo them.

And of course, Hessler suffered a similar fate.

I just wanted to shout out a couple of the things that he played on.

played with Les Baxter, Joe Cocker.

He did a couple albums with Townes Van Zandt.

He's on a Mystic Moods Orchestra album.

Um, it's perhaps more of a subtle difference, uh, between the two scores, uh, but one, you know, certainly more...

You can see where Les Baxter's score was maybe a little more, uh, palpable for the, uh, the, the American audience.

Uh, but the, the 87-minute version that I watched, I believe this is also the version that is sometimes called the international version, the one that's currently widely available from Shout! and Scream Factory via their Black Sunday collector's edition, also their Mario Bava collection box set.

And outside the U.S., I think Arrow has also put out a nice Blu-ray of this as well.

No, but it was maybe a little too sexy for 1960s America.

[laughs]

Regarding the score, I actually meant to, uh, check out the Les Baxter score to make sure that wasn't the one that I heard.

I don't think it was, uh, but I'm interested in that.

These paintings are sort of the wraiths of the fall of the House of Usher era.

and uh they're kind of like weird mirrors of each other in ways too um because the fall of the house of usher the soundtrack is by les baxter um one of my favorites

i've never seen that is that have you you've seen that film

yeah it's excellent um

Santo and Johnny teaming up, as they always did, right ahead of that on The Enchanted Sea.

It was Dick Shorey from his album Moving On and In The Mode and began the extra happy hour with Les Baxter from 1957's Ports of Pleasure and Harem Silks from Bombay.

Up next, Bud Hunga and his combo from a 1970 album called Bud Hunga and His Diplomatic Music.

This is Bangala.

Do, do, do, do, do Do, do, do, do, do do do do do do

Quite a number there for you, featuring Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman on The Theremin.

It was also involved, Les Baxter was involved in that as well, who we heard a little bit earlier in the program, and Harry Revell.

The album was Music Out of the Moon, and that was Moon Moods from that one.