By 1982, the partnership between director Bruno Corbucci and actor Tomas Milian had produced one of Italian popular cinema's most beloved characters: Nico Giraldi, the fast-talking, slang-hurling Roman inspector whose misadventures anchored the so-called "delitti" series. Delitto Sull'Autostrada was its third chapter - and Franco Micalizzi, who had been the series' musical voice from the start, returned to take it somewhere new. Musica Per Immagini's reissue is its first ever appearance on vinyl, remastered by Claudio Fuiano from the Cecchi Gori Music masters and licensed by GDM Music.

Micalizzi's name belongs in any serious account of the poliziottesco soundtrack. His scores for Roma A Mano Armata, Napoli Violenta, and Italia A Mano Armata - the latter's theme later lifted by Tarantino for Death Proof - established a signature built around clavinet, big band brass, and a locked, circular groove that hit with the force of something borrowed from the best American funk while remaining distinctly Roman in attitude. By 1982, though, the electronic mood of the time had pressed itself into the genre, and Micalizzi moved with it. The clavinet and brass are still here, but synthesizers and keyboards now carry increasing weight, bending the familiar sound into something that reads as the logical endpoint of a journey that had been underway since the mid-1970s. The groove remains - evolved rather than replaced.

The third in Musica Per Immagini's "Tomas Milian Superstar" vinyl series, issued alongside Detto Mariano's score for Delitto Al Ristorante Cinese. Liner notes by Marco Ferretti, translated by Peter Sarram. Essential documentation of a composer and a genre at their most assured.