As volume XVIII of the series dedicated to the Italian Peplum Digitmovies presents the OST, complete and in full stereo, composed by Franco Micalizzi for the adventure movie Le amazzoni - Donne d'amore e di guerra (aka "Battle of the Amazons"- "Karate Amazones") directed in 1973 by Alfonso Brescia (under the pseudonym of Al Bradley) and starring Lincoln Tate ,Lucretia Love, Paola Tedesco, Mirta Miller, Benito Stefanelli, Genie Woods, Solvi Stübing, Alberto Dell'Acqua, Roberto Alessandri, Giancarlo Bastianoni, Frank Braña, Luigi Ciavarro, Pilar Clemens, Sonia Ciuffi, Fernanda Dall'Acqua, Liliana Fioramonti, Leonilde Simoncelli, Luigi Antonio Guerra, Barbara Sybilla Hunter, Patrizia Luparia. The movie tells the story of mythic warrior women, the Amazones, who are ruled by the ferocious queen Antiope. They go about hunting men only to use them for hard labours and for procreation (the newborn males are then suppressed). Valeria, the valiant daughter of the chieftain, persuades the inhabitants to defend themselves against the abuses of power and against injustice. Four bandits commanded by Zeno are recruited with a reward of foods, leathers and females. The Amazones, upset by a successful enemy raid into their camp, massacre their own prisoners and set out to destroy Leocos. Notwithstanding desertions and betrayals, and thanks to their inexhaustible tricks and unsuspected war abilities, the Leocos people succeed in killing many Amazones and making others escape. Hopeless, but happy to dedicate themselves to agriculture, the bandits intend to bring up the immature daughters of the Amazones to peaceful occupations, but at the war cry of their mothers the little girls follow them. At the time of the movie's release, the movie with the title "Karate Amazones" had such a huge success in Japan that only in that country a vinyl LP was printed (TAM YX-8023), today very hard to find, which contains 14 tracks in stereo purposely selected in those days with a duration of 32:04. For this CD we have used the stereo master tape of the Japanese album preserved in the RCA vaults and we could also find all the stereo master tapes of the original session. Our complete editing (58:56) has been fully approved by M°Micalizzi himself. "Feronia", the main theme introduced in Main Titles (Tr.1), a lovely orchestral ballade with a pop arrangement and female voices with an exotic and erotic flair, is reprised in a slow version (Tr.14) and in the unreleased takes with an almost mystic flavour (Tr.19,Tr.24). The deeds of the provocative female warriors are scored with violent and dramatic themes reinforced by the sound of distorted electric guitars (Tr.3,Tr.6,Tr.7,Tr.12, Tr.13) and get alternated with ethnic music like a Sirtaki (Tr.5) and with a funny motif with a Middle Age flavour (Tr.10). An OST that deserved to be reissued on CD as right and proper rescue of the Italian Silver Age and of the musical art of the cool Franco Micalizzi.
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