Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 285: The weird, wild music of 'Necromania' (1971)

The music in Ed Wood's Necromania (1971) is drawn from a number of sources.

Back in 2019, I assembled a soundtrack album for Ed Wood's 1971 pornographic film Necromania and posted it to SoundCloud for other fans to enjoy. Following the template of the 1995 Orgy of the Dead soundtrack from Strangelove Records, I took the audio directly from the movie itself and included both music cues and dialogue excerpts. Response to the project was, let's say, muted. While I personally find this subject quite fascinating, it's not necessarily of much interest to the average person. Even many Wood fans steer clear of Eddie's adult movies, so the prospect of a Necromania soundtrack is not all that appealing to them.

Nevertheless, in 2026, I am bravely revisiting the topic. Music identification has come a long way in seven years, and it is now possible to find the actual titles and artists of the songs heard in the movie. At least some of the time, that is. I should clarify, for those who haven't seen it, that Necromania relies entirely on stock music. That's no surprise. While Bride of the Monster (1955) has an original score by Frank Worth, most of Eddie's classic films such as Glen or Glenda (1953) and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) use so-called library music. 

An Italian soundtrack album

Necromania's exotic-sounding, dramatic main title theme was one of the pieces I was most eager to identify, and it proved one of the easiest as well. This is a track called "Festa Indiana" by Italian composer Armando Sciascia and His Orchestra. It comes from the soundtrack album for an extremely obscure film called Sexy (1962) directed by Renzo Russo. Described online as "a collection of scenes featuring attractive women," Sexy appears to be just one of many Italian shockumentaries that crossed over to America in the 1960s. 

Another Sciascia track, "Quadretto Ottocentesco" (1970), is heard later in the film during an erotic interlude between Shirley (Rene Bond) and Barb. Armando (1920-2017) was known for his work in multiple genres, including horror, Western, and mondo. One site sums up his music nicely: "sleazy jazz arrangements that convey a sense of intrigue, passion and danger through a brilliant use of percussion, sultry horns, and minor key chord changes."

The other piece from Necromania that I most wanted to find was the twangy guitar instrumental that underscores the love scene between Tanya (Maria Arnold) and Carl, the impatient "quickie artist." This, too, proved no challenge whatsoever. It's "Crystal Lights" aka "Cristalli E Luci" by Italian guitarist Bruno Battisti D'Amario (1937-2026). It first appeared on his 1969 album La Chitarra Dai Mille Suoni (or The Guitar of a Thousand Sounds). Wood uses a second track by this guitarist, "Bossa Bossa Bossa," during the aforementioned Shirley/Barb sequence. He was a favorite of Ennio Morricone, and his work can even be heard on the iconic soundtrack for The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966). In a sad coincidence, D'Amario died the same day this article was published.

Edwin Astley

One of the key musical tracks in Necromania, since it turns up at least twice (both times during lesbian sex scenes), is "Mae West" by Ken Moule and The London Jazz Chamber Group. Ken (1925-1986) was a British jazz pianist and composer with a handful of TV credits. "Mae West" was originally released as part of an album called Adam's Rib Suite in 1970. It's a concept album with jazz instrumentals inspired by famous ladies throughout history. There are tracks here called "Zsa Zsa Gabor," "Aphrodite," "Helen of Troy," "Marilyn Monroe," and more. Ken's label must have felt that "Mae West" was the best of the bunch, since it was also released as a single.

There's a particularly swoony, overripe bit of romantic music in the film that I cheekily identified as "Love Theme from Necromania" on my DIY soundtrack album. The true title turns out to be "Yesterday's Laughter, Today's Tears" by Mike Wirtz, His Orchestra & Chorus. The fact that Mark (1943-2020), a French-German pop composer, had both an orchestra and a chorus backing him up tells you what kind of recording this is. While it's not Latin in the least, "Yesterday's Laughter" comes from Mark's 1966 album Latin A Go-Go. It was also included on the 2009 compilation Wirtz & Music.

And then there's Edwin Astley and The TV Jazz All Stars. Astley (1922-1998) was a British composer who worked in film and television from the 1950s to the 1970s. He's known for his work on such shows as Danger Man, The Saint, and The Adventures of Robin Hood. In fact, his theme for The Saint was a UK hit as recently as 1997, thanks to a cover by Orbital. But what concerns us is Edwin's work on the series International Detective (1959-1961) and Man from Interpol (1960). In Necromania, Ed Wood uses at least three of Astley's music cues from those shows: "Manhunt," "Shock Tactics," and "Ten Four!"

I wasn't able to identify every last music cue in Necromania, but I got enough to justify an article. My findings were pretty much what I expected: a bunch of library music from the '60s and and early '70s. But I wonder how much of a hand Ed Wood had in choosing this stuff. He didn't have a composer on Necromania, but is it possible he had an uncredited music supervisor?