Ennio Morricone is more well-known for scoring epic Westerns, tense thrillers, and sweeping dramas than your typical revenge-driven crime thriller. But until Herbie Hancock got a crack at it four years later with Death Wish, nobody rose to the task like Morricone when it came to soundtracking a film featuring a modern-day Charles Bronson bent on revenge. Città violenta (Violent City) is one of Morricone’s gnarliest, nastiest scores, putting his ear for heightened nerves and narrow-eyed tension to work on a score that could translate seamlessly to doom metal, complete with some spectacularly menacing distorted guitar snarl.

– Nate Patrin