IL FIGLIO DI SPARTACUS

I remember as a kid sitting watching this movie, it was in a local flea pit called THE GAIETY, which had a reputation of showing movies a few months after they had been released. I was a little bemused because I had watched the original SPARTACUS and thought that it was great, this low budget B movie directed by Sergio Corbucci however I felt at the time was a little uninteresting and slow and certainly not in the same league as the Kirk Douglas epic. It was not until a few years later that I discovered more about the Italian Peplum and became to start to appreciate its qualities and also its pitfalls, and after seeing a few more Steve Reeve movies I became hooked upon their quirky but on many occasions incorrect historically story-lines. So it was also not until this time that I discovered who Sergio Corbucci actually was and also that the score was courtesy of Piccioni. Maybe not the composers best effort for the cinema, but as an avid collector of Italian soundtracks I decided to try and seek out the score on LP, of course it proved elusive, because it had not been issued. So it was a delight to hear that our good friends at Digitmovies had decided to include it in their Peplum soundtrack anthology. As I have already stated it’s certainly not the best of Piccioni, and at times one could easily forget it was actually penned by this Maestro. But as far as I remember the music serviced the picture very well and after all that’s what movie music is all about isn’t it? Piccioni’s score contains its fair share of atonal or suspense cues, with the odd flourish or burst of action and melody. But it is still an interesting early effort from the composer before he had established himself as a composer of note and originality.  The production values from Digitmovies are as always very high, and once again they have presented the CD with striking and colourful art work and interesting notes. Worth a listen.