House By the Cemetery

Vinyl LP pressing includes varnish sleeve with exclusive sleeve notes from noted Italian horror expert Stephen Thrower and from Graham Humphreys. Also includes a 24'' × 24'' full color fold out poster with original artwork. This 1981 horror film score uses a basic ensemble of piano, drums, synthesizer, electric bass and guitar, a line-up similar to the one established by Fabio Frizzi in his scores for Fulci. The signature sound of The House By The Cemetery is a heavily flanged electric guitar, which seems to twist and curdle in the air like decaying filaments of some malevolent odor seeping from the cellar of that Freudstein house. It's not the most subtle approach but this is a Lucio Fulci film after all, and besides, Rizzati also delivers some breathtakingly beautiful passages, reflecting the sadness that permeates so much of Fulci's work, in particular the various incarnations of ''Tema bambino'' which underscore the parallel universe of pretty little dead girl Mae. Of course the title music ''I Remember'' is the centerpiece, resonating with all that is marvelous in Fulci's Gothic horror cinema. Like J.S. Bach scoring The Hammer House of Horror, it's a gleefully macabre organ recital with phantasmal singers wordlessly flitting around the melody, the whole thing delivered with a slow pomp that suggests the funeral cortege of a deceased prog-rocker.