The Erotic and Painful Obsessions of Jess Franco

ASM 028

im Vertrieb von / distributed by:
Indigo

CD 92067-2

Gerhard Heinz

The Erotic and Painful Obsessions of Jess Franco

Eugenie (Historia de una perversión)
Bloody Moon
Linda

One artist is the obsessed filmmaker Jesús “Jess” Franco, whose work consists of more than 170 films. Most of these films fall in the category of “exploitation”. His work triggers highly controversial debates, mainly because of his addiction to the topics sex and violence. Nevertheless he received the most important Spanish film award “Goya” for his lifework in 2008 (presented in Feb. 02, 2009).

The other one is the Austrian film music composer Gerhard Heinz, who is famous for over 100 original film music scores (frequently erotic) in the Sixties, such as “Schoolgirls” or “The Naked Countess”, honoured with gold and platinum records in Southeast Asia. Both started to work on the same projects in 1980/81 during three different film productions for the distribution company “Lisa Film” (Without meeting each other personally).

This is about the two softsex flicks “Linda” and “Eugenie (Historia de una perversión)” (both with pretty young actress Katja Bienert) and the slasher movie “Bloody Moon” (starring Olivia Pascal), which ranks among the most famous samples of the gory genre. By modern standards hardly imaginable this movie had its own photo story in Germany’s most popular teen magazine “Bravo”, but later in the Eighties it became one shining example in the “video-nasties” discussion.

This (virtual) cooperation, characterized by a lack of time and money, resulted three soundtracks which represent the zeitgeisty musical styles (disco!) and the atmosphere at the film sets, namely “beach, sun and happiness”, as well as the genre-specific elements sex and horror. For the musical realization Gerhard Heinz accessed a wide range of genres and instrumentations, from typical stomping disco songs (each of them could have become a summer hit in the 80s!) over romantic (sl)easy listening tracks, partly influenced by Spanish folk music or Samba, to orchestral suspense parts, which together with the skilled use of synthesizers develop the thrill to the maximum.


Foto courtesy of Gerhard Heinz.


As Gerhard Heinz did a great job it’s been easy to compile 23 unique and distinctive tracks for this CD. They convert the listener’s imagery into the weird world of Jess Franco, but at the same time – liberated from its in part unbearable synchronized dialogues and moans – can stand alone perfectly.

As always this Allscore CD is designed elaborately and contains notes by Katja Bienert and Gerhard Heinz as well as an interview with the composer, all in German and English language, also images of film posters and stills.

All titles are previously unreleased (except one which appeared on a late 70s disco soundtrack LP).

Real fans will find further tracks of the three films, which haven’t been compiled for the CD, in several music download shops in the internet (February 2009).


BEISPIELE / SAMPLES

  1. Play Schlussmusik 01:59
  2. Play Wieder am Swimmingpool 04:06
  3. Play Gespraech am Vorhang 02:23
  4. Play Versuchung auf der Terasse 04:00
  5. Play Autofahrt (Thema) 02:03
  6. Play Lolita und der Teddybaer 01:03
  7. Play Alba und Lolita 01:33
  8. Play Alberto und Alba 02:37
  9. Play Der Traum - zweite Phase 04:21
  10. Play Im Strandcafe 02:11
  11. Play Verfolgung am Strand 01:07
  12. Play Die Maedchen im Kloster - Filmversion 04:11
  13. Play Panorama (Rio) 01:00
  14. Play Betsy und Ron 03:23
  15. Play Holiday Feeling 03:02
  16. Play Samba Tropical 03:09
  17. Play Disco Nights 02:18
  18. Play Disko alternativ 02:33
  19. Play Intro 00:47
  20. Play Bungalow 13 03:02
  21. Play Schock 00:18
  22. Play Die Saege des Todes Suite 02:09


PRESSE / PRESS

R. D. Larson's Soundtrax [Feb. 12, 2009]: "a superlative collection of early 1980s exploitation film music"

Darren Allison, Cinema Retro magazine [03/09]: "Euro trash at its very best, I can’t think of a better way of sucking up a sexy sixty minutes!"

Kris Spencer, Scorebaby [02/09]: "Given the high quality of this compilation, it should be a given that any fan of European soundtracks needs to have it and the rest of you should give it a listen as well. "

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