Revolver (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

With the rise of the poliziotteschi films to a prominent place in ’70s Italian cinema, Ennio Morricone’s frequent gigs scoring these two-fisted crime-panic cop films gave him ample opportunity to take advantage of all the strengths he displayed in his scores for giallo horror-thrillers and tough-guy Western epics in a newer, tougher, American-influenced style. Revolver might be best known for the tender ballad “Un amico” — repurposed by Quentin Tarantino for Shoshanna’s death scene in Inglorious Basterds — but the real stunner is the full 12 ½-minute title theme suite, which rides off a motorik-pulse purpose that Krautrock bands would envy and keeps finding new levels of escalating intensity that any film would have a hard time living up to.