The Theme to Cannibal Holocaust

Last post, I wrote that even though Cannibal Holocaust was banned, I didn't feel like going back and watching Cannibal Holocaust for the third time in recent years to do a full review. However, it will be a whole year until Human Centipede 3 comes out and probably a week and a half until my copy of The Burning Moon comes in the mail. I will rather than watching the entirety of Cannibal Holocaust again address one aspect of the film as an angle in. That angle will be the highly unusual theme music that was used for the film. I've heard people say that whoever chose that soundtrack for the film should have been fired. I disagree. I think it is a highly effective soundtrack by Riz Ortolani. This is a score to a film about total annihilation made illegal in many countries. The theme has an early synthesizer on it, but is really a highly orchestrated piece of 70's easy listening. However, in the film it comes off as an ironic foreshadowing of total annihilation. It's extremely distinctive. Parts of the film do use incidental music of a more conventional horror film nature. But it is really the theme that evokes true dread, true annihilation, mass death. It is truly sick and truly ominous. It's the most perverse aspect of the film, the theme music signaling perhaps through irony rape, mass death and cannibalism.