Stelvio Cipriani - Papaya Dei Caraibi

9.0 - Italy - 1978

- Masterpiece - 

The good people (or person for all I know?) at Chris' Soundtrack Corner are doing the Lord's work reissuing wonderful, largely Italian, soundtracks to what one can only presume are quite terrible movies. Viz. this tremendous score from Cipriani for sleazemaster Joe D'Amato's otherwise risible cannibal sex romp. Indeed, I've taken no small amount of pleasure in describing how much I love this score before revealing that it's for a film known to English audiences as Papaya: Love Goddess Of The Cannibals. Like most such releases, there's a lot of repetition of certain themes, but that's part of the charm. The main recurrent theme has a sultry pulsating bass atop a lite disco groove and layered percussion. Wah-wahs all over and the whole thing's shot through with sex.  "Papaya Song" is a thing of beauty with the trademark wordless vocals of the incomparable Edda dell'Orso. A couple of the bossa numbers are a bit by numbers, but this one's been more or less on repeat at The 'Staff residence since it arrived in the mail from Germany a couple of months ago. Also: boobies in the liner notes.