Sirki’s Summons – January 15: AIP Composer, Les Baxter

Greetings from Beyond the Veil, Effendi.

It was on this date, in the year 1996, wrote a coda to the career of composer Les Baxter. The reason that I have included him here, is that of over 100 scores he composed for film (according to IMDb.com), the majority of them were for Imagi-Movies, especially the “King” of B–movie studios, AIP. Among his most famous scores were Roger Corman’s Poe movies and the Beach Party series of films. He also scored the dubbed, US versions of films like Black Sabbath (1963), Goliath and the Vampires (1961), Reptilicus (1961) and Black Sunday (1960).

Other films include Frogs (1972), The Dunwich Horror (1970), Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965) and X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963). Baxter is also credited with writing the “whistling” theme for TV’s Lassie.

A final note: He also “allegedly” scored The Attack of the (the) Eye Creatures (1965) and requested that his name be taken off the credits. In retrospect, it was probably one of the best career moves he ever made. Because let’s face it, when it came to that horrible, word for word remake of  Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957), the producers… just didn’t care.