Continuing my rundown of scores mentioned in last summer’s Big Board Extravaganza that I haven’t heard before.

Last time - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=134748

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This time - Strangled Lives / Vite strozzate (1996)
Ennio Morricone
Mentioned by: elfenthalsmith

In 1993, Ennio Morricone working on director Ricky Tognazzi’s The Escort must have felt like a bit of a throwback - the composer returning to the Italian crime genre that was a regular part of his 1960s and 1970s output - and the two would reunite for Toznazzi’s 1996 film Strangled Lives. The latter’s forceful score has a bit more of an orchestral foundation than Ennio’s famed crime scores of decades prior, playing at times like a musical relative of The Untouchables, though that’s not to say the composer left his quirky noises back in the 1960s completely; an unholy electronic noise in Vite strozzate pt. 1 may appeal to fans of Maurice Jarre’s late career synth experimentation, if they even exist. In the grand tradition of The Red Tent, the album ends with a lengthy, somewhat dissonant track - perhaps really driving home that this is a spiritual sequel to the music of The Untouchables. His score doesn’t exactly break the mold, but it’s still quite entertaining and executed with panache (in late career Goldsmith terms, it’s Timeline).

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The score took two years to get an album release, one which has been reissued at least once without anything being added to the 40-minute program. Morricone would work with director Ricky Tognazzi again on The Inverse Canon (2000) and The Good Pope (2003).

Album - https://open.spotify.com/album/4X15c98TposUabIui5PZ41?si=bT3x4RbLQjijmhZiCPqM-g

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Next time: More-iconne again.