[movie] Demons (Dancu version)

Demons (1985)

Lamberto Bava, director. Original music by Claudio Simonetti.

Additional music, sound effects, sound design, incidental music, atmospheres, video editing and recoloring by Brian Albers of Humorless Productions aka Dancu in 2016-2017.

https://dancu.bandcamp.com/

http://humorlessproductions.wordpress.com/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Humorless-Productions/190626074303436?ref=hl

http://www.mixcloud.com/humorlessproductions/

Ok, so here is my version of Lamberto Bava's classic proto-zombie flick Demons from 1985, where I re-scored it- added a bunch of music, atmospheres, sound effects and sound design.

I actually did all the work on this a couple years ago. This was the first movie I re-scored. The second was Elves (1989) which you can see here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcAtRHzCP-E).

All audio done in Presonus Studio One, with way too many synths and signal processors to list.

All video work done in FCPX and Adobe Premiere.

If you have any questions about what I did or how I did it, ask below. Here are some basic notes-

First I edited out the fat- I took out the three or four short scenes of the quartet of punk rockers driving around Berlin. Those characters do enter the movie in the second half, but these scenes in the first half that I axed were totally irrelevant to the movie as a whole, so I dropped them.

I went to a screening of this movie sometime in the 2000s in Los Angeles with a Q&A with some of the actors. Geretta Geretta was there, the black woman with the braids who becomes the first demon in the movie. Somebody asked why they chose to shoot the movie in Berlin instead of somewhere in Italy (where most of the actors and crew lived) or New York, which was all the rage with Italian horror filmmakers at the time. She fielded the question and said that Berlin was simply the super hip place in Europe in those days, and I think that's why those scenes were included in the movie. But in retrospect, they're 100% inconsequential to the story, and the film works just fine without them.

Bobby Rhodes was there too, and 35 years after the movie, he looked EXACTLY the same. Didn't even looked like he'd aged a day.

I ditched only one other scene which happens most of the way through the movie. As they're trying to escape the theatre, a group of people enter an empty room, with brick walls and a dirt floor, and they sort of grope around as if they're blind or as if the room was completely dark, as if they're in some sort of trance. Then they freak out in hysterics for about 10 or 20 seconds, and then they turn around and leave the room. There are no other references to that room. So what the hell was it? I don't know. Does anybody know? Doubt it. In any case, it's a better movie without that scene.

I tried to lose the whole helicopter thing (that's another total head-scratcher), but the last part of the movie would have been one big non-sequitur, with them on the roof for the big fight scene. So I had to keep it, even though it makes no sense.

Also in this process, I color corrected many of the scenes. Especially the whole intro subway/S-bahn scenes. They were really green, so I warmed them up a bit. And I fixed a lot of the stuff in the rest of the movie, too. Mostly dropping the blacks and punching up the overall color a bit.

Then I started on the music. The one aspect of this movie which inspired me to take it on in the first place, was the fact that there is no music in the two most climactic scenes of the movie- the transformation scene about halfway through, and the final rooftop climactic battle. Once I made the music for those scenes, I thought I would leave it at that. But then as I watched the rest of the movie, I kept noticing other scenes that really needed filling out, so at that point I dove in head first and went through every scene and added what I thought they needed.

I also went so far as to remaster the movie's original audio, including all dialog, all the heavy metal songs and Claudio Simonetti's originals.

And now that it's done, I can confidently say that it's a vastly better movie. It's still mind-boggling to me why so many of the scenes don't have music in the first place, especially those two pivotal scenes. Lamberto Bava was a seasoned pro at this point, as was Claudio Simonetti. If they were rookies, you might think it'd be plausible that they made a rookie mistake like running out of time or running out of money. But I don't think that's realistic. Maybe they were just going for a stylistic thing where they thought having no music in those scenes and others would be best. Well, it's not, and I fixed it.

Hope you like it. Go check out Elves, too, where I gave it the same treatment.

I'm working on Eyes of Fire (1983) now. I've made some very good progress on it, but it's still a ways from being done. I'll let you know when I post it.

[audio] Goblin live in Krems, 23 April 2009

Goblin live in Krems, 23 April 2009 by Humorless Productions on Mixcloud

OK, so I can't even take credit for this recording whatsoever. But now if I search for it on the internet, I can't find it anywhere at all, so I thought I'd go ahead and post it. I did give it the standard remaster treatment, but that's about it.

Goblin live at Donaufest in Krems, Austria, 23 April 2009.

This is a significant recording because it's one of the last shows performed by the band where all of the original members were still in the band. I'm not 100% up on my Goblin history, but if I remember correctly, in the years prior to this recording, they had broken up and reunited several times, but the reunions would never last too long, and they would end up disbanding every time.

And even that wouldn't be that big of a deal, because there are plenty of bootlegs and tv performances and other live recordings of the band, but this one sounds best by far. The drum sound is cracking, and it has a superior distorted Rickenbacker bass sound, and the keyboard/organ sounds are amazing, and the mix is 100% spot on.

The unfortunate part is that this is obviously not their entire performance of that night. It's only 26 minutes, and that includes the long-ish intro and a solid minute and a half of outro applause. I remember seeing some complete tracklist of this show at one point, and it was about an hour and a half. Only these four songs in this recording were ever posted to the internet.

The original recording was done by the ORF, the national public radio network in Austria. I sincerely hope that they did actually record the entire show and that the master recording survives somewhere in a basement of their studios. It would be a landmark live recording of the legendary Italian prog rock band.

Especially considering that shortly after this recording, they broke up yet again. And again I'm a bit foggy on this, but I think now there are actually two Goblins where half of the members play in one band and the other half in the other. One generally goes by the name Claudio Simonetti's Goblin, and they have been very busy touring quite a lot, even doing their first US tour, which I caught in Hollywood. Further confusing matters, they were also called New Goblin for a while, as you'll see on the cover of their live album recorded in Rome in 2011. The other band I think still goes by the name Goblin, and plays all the same songs, but has different members in the band.

Another reason why this recording would be the ultimate live Goblin recording if the entire thing were released, is because the replacement members in Claudio Simonetti's Goblin don't measure up to the original members. The original Goblin, as heard in this recording, are a prog rock fusion band. The replacement members in the new Claudio Simonetti's Goblin (the drummer and bassist) obviously have their roots in heavy metal, which doesn't fit the music at all. They sound like a heavy metal cover band playing Goblin songs, and to my ears it doesn't work. They've listened to too much (and are seemingly trying to emulate) Pantera and not enough Weather Report.

And that live in Rome album is a glaring example of how misplaced they sound, as they come across as a heavy metal jam band, and it's rather embarrassing.

Which is why I'm so big on this Donaufest recording. I'm sure there was all sorts of tension and turmoil behind the scenes, but on tape it sounds effortless and magical.

Tracklist:

(0:00) intro

(1:37) Deep Red

(8:38) Suspiria

(14:21) Zombi

(20:09) Tenebrae

I rescored a couple 80s horror movies. Help me get them screened.

After posting my first batch of originals in early August, I've been working on a couple other projects, and now those projects are done, so I want to tell you about them.

I added original music, sound design and sound effects to Demons, Lamberto Bava's classic, gore-ific zombie flick from 1985, as well as a lesser known flick Elves from 1989, which is a low-budget and completely bizarre movie about some little, vicious troll-gremlin type monster and something having to do with Nazis and it all revolves around a hot, young blond woman and stars Dan Haggerty (well after his Grizzly Adams days) who plays a down-and-out Santa at a dreary department store at Christmastime. I also remastered the original audio of both films for my versions.

Here's how this all came to be.

I'd done a couple fan edits of Demons in the past, just for personal use. This amounted to cutting out all the scenes of that quartet of punk rockers aimlessly driving around Berlin. Those scenes are totally inconsequential to the film, so I axed them. I trimmed some other very small bits, but nothing as substantial as the punkers. Well, I had it on the flatscreen the other day, and something I hadn't noticed before hit me- a couple of pivotal scenes are largely devoid of music. I don't know how it was possible that I didn't notice this until now, 30 years after the movie had originally been released and after having viewed it dozens of times. In fact, it's the most famous scene from the movie - the transformation scene with the teeth and fingernails - and the climactic finale scene with the rooftop battle which are both are bafflingly light on music. So, I set out to fix that by composing my own and inserting it into the movie alongside those great Claudio Simonetti compositions and the 80s heavy metal songs.

The two songs I made for those scenes came together quickly. But upon watching the film again with a keen eye (ear) on the soundtrack, I started noticing all sorts of scenes that could be touched up with some added sounds or atmospheres. So, in the end, what I did was analyze the movie from beginning to end with an emphasis on the soundtrack, and filled in the gaps that I felt needed filling.

To give you a much better idea of what I'm talking about, I threw together a couple A/B before-and-after comparisons of those two famous scenes (using low res files; my master copy is 720p)-

Big difference, yes? The music in those scenes may come across as a bit too heavy or relentless or poundingly aggressive, but those are but a few minutes of a movie that is 90 minutes in length (well, actually 80 minutes now that I've excised the scenes of the hoodlums). I added all sorts of sounds to the rest of the film- sounds that are much more subdued and atmospheric, but appropriately spooky and creepy and ominous. So don't expect the entire movie to be wall-to-wall industrial strength pounding drums and distorted synth bass lines.

I am very happy with the results with this first attempt of mine to rescore an old movie. So, I thought I'd do another. I selected Elves not because it had any scenes in it that were egregiously in need of music, but rather I thought that I could make great improvements in this movie by adding just some atmospheres and other minimal synth parts. So I started doing that, and, like Demons, I got a little bit carried away and ended up adding a decent amount of sounds throughout the movie. All told, though, I'd say that I ended up contributing less music to Elves than Demons. But still, the impact of those sounds is significant. I'm not gonna say that I've transformed the movie into a whole new thing. In fact, unlike Demons, I didn't edit out any scenes from Elves at all. But with both of these movies, I like to think that I've improved upon the material that was already there.

And now I say to myself, 'ya know, I'd bet there's a bunch of people out there who might really like to see one or both of these. I wonder if I could find anybody who would be willing to screen them for a public audience.' Having seen Demons a couple times over the years at Grindhouse at The New Beverly in Los Angeles, I know that movie has a sizable fan base. Elves, probably not as much, but it's definitely one that fans of that era of horror flicks would like.

So that's what I'm working on now- finding a venue that's willing to screen these. And this is where I can use your help. I've contacted some people at theatres in my current city, San Diego, but none have expressed too much interest. I have some contacts through some of my LA friends, but I'm still coming up empty. So I'd be super stoked if any of you, my readers, might have any suggestions or know of any people who I could contact in the hopes of getting either of these versions screened.

My original idea was to do a Kickstarter to raise the funds to rent a theatre for a couple hours, and I still might do that, but I thought I'd first try to leverage the power of the internet and ask my network of social media friends. I'm hoping to find some place in San Diego, OC, LA or the Inland Empire, but I'd be happy to trek to anywhere in the region if need be. I don't know if I'd be open to sending off the movie to some remote location where I wouldn't be able to attend the screening. I'll want to be there in person, and would even be hip to doing a Q&A about the work I put into my version.

I might also add that neither of these reworks are commissioned or authorized by the original filmmakers, composers, producers or movie studios or anybody involved. They're simply a couple personal projects of mine in an attempt to challenge myself to find out if I could do it. And now that both final versions have surpassed my expectations, I thought some of you horror fans out there might like to see and hear them as well.

Hit me with any suggestions in the comments of this post, or drop me a note at brianhumorless@gmail.com, or find me on FB.

Super. Thanks for everything.

Brian, Dancu and Humorless Productions