Riz Ortolani

Quartet Records, in collaboration with the Riz Ortolani estate, presents the expanded vinyl edition of one of the titles most requested by maestro Ortolani’s fans: the bizarre 1978 mondo movie Brutes And Savages (aka Savana Selvaggia)

Written by Jenny Craven and directed by Arthur Davis, this belongs to the select group of mondos that became notorious not for their shocking content, but for their lack of understanding of the genre. Surviving in two different cuts (92 mins and 107 mins), Brutes And Savages focuses on mostly Latin American customs from local natives who do unspeakable things to animals.

The single most entertaining feature of Brutes And Savages is its music by Riz Ortolani, the “de facto” mondo master who was the key musical figure of the genre since its conception in Mondo Cane and its Grammy-winning, Oscar-nominated song, “More.” Ortolani scored countless mondos from Africa Addio (1966) through Addio Zio Tom (1971) to, obviously, Cannibal Holocaust (1980), netting a few great titles along the way. The composer always found a way to create cool tunes that managed to tie together the insanely wide-ranging episodes that featured inconsistent quality and tone—and when all else failed, he created singular, individually successful cues for self-contained segments that saved as much of the film as possible.

A 1978 LP release of the music from Brutes And Savages is quite hard to come by. Export LPs originating from Australia and Hong Kong routinely fetch outrageously high prices on the secondary market. This new vinyl edition includes a crucial suspense cue that was cut for not meshing with the style of the record.

The audio was mastered by Chris Malone from the original master tapes provided by the Ortolani estate, and the discs are pressed in transparent green-jungle, audiophile vinyl.