* 2023 stock * Chris' Soundtrack Corner proudly presents for the first time the complete soundtrack to Tonino Ricci's 1978 supernatural thriller, featuring one of the most luscious and infectiously melodic scores composed by A-list Italian film composer Stelvio Cipriani.
It so happened that in less than two years maestro Stelvio Cipriani composed scores for three genre films dealing with the peculiar subject matter of the Bermuda (or Devil's) Triangle. Between 1978 and 1979 Cipriani scored IL TRIANGOLO DELLE BERMUDE (DEVIL'S TRIANGLE OF BERMUDA – 1978), BERMUDE: LA FOSSA MALEDETTA (CAVE OF THE SHARKS – 1978), and URAGANO SULLE BERMUDE L'ULTIMO S.O.S. (ENCOUNTERS IN THE DEEP – 1979).
The last two films were both directed by Tonino Ricci, who specialized in entertaining exploitative genre fare, encompassing the spaghetti western, giallo, science fiction, war, period adventure and fantasy. CAVE OF THE SHARKS was his first collaboration with Cipriani, whose beautiful and engaging composition surely accounted for Ricci's having him return to score four additional films for him. On first listening, Cipriani's main theme, "Magic Dawn," immediately establishes that it can hold its own with any of the great lounge/mood instrumental masterpieces of the 1960s and 70s by such luminaries of the genus as Les Baxter, Martin Böttcher, Ennio Morricone, or Antônio Carlos Jobim. Cipriani's secondary motif is the exotically glamorous love theme "Angelica" which, like "Magic Dawn," appears frequently throughout the film as an enchanting advocate of Ricci's numerous scenes of tropical settings and youthful gratifications. Three additional themes round out the score's arsenal of articulate, reprised components, including a series miasmic, spectral tone-poems that are used to bolster the film's paranormal elements. Adding to this already rich recipe are two delicious stand-alone cues in the exotic-pop mood.
The music for all the deep sea sequences proves that Stelvio Cipriani is not just a composer of pretty, romantic and sexy music – the darker passages for CAVE OF THE SHARKS puts him on equal footing with John Barry and his scores for THUNDERBALL and JAGGED EDGE. These impressionistic semi-abstractions – Cipriani's "water music" – employ a few common tropes, but most of his ideas emphasize all that is eerie, strange and unearthly. This is genre music in keeping with horror and science fiction and rightly so, for CAVE OF THE SHARKS features several elements of monstrousness and the occult.
In 2009 Digitmovies released a three-score, 2-CD set that featured 18 tracks from Cipriani's CAVE OF THE SHARKS. Due to the exceptional nature of the score and collector demand Chris' Soundtrack Corner now offers the complete score – with 26 minutes of previously unreleased material, and comprehensive album notes by John Bender.
