was originally composed as “Katia’s Theme” for American International Pictures’ Black Sunday), and legal records show that, on May 25, 1961, Baxter filed copyright on “Katia’s Theme” in his own name. The true author of the piece is easily identi- fied by comparing the scene of Andrej carrying the swooning Katia to her bedroom, as it appears in the two versions of the film; the scoring here is basically identical, though more grandly orchestrated in the AIP ver- sion. One hastens to mention in this regard that, by acquiring the rights to the picture, AIP were empowered to use (or not use) Nicolosi’s score in any way they wished. There are instances when the two scores lead the viewer to interpret the same scene entirely differently. Nicolosi’s judgment is most flattered by the first scene inside Castle Vajda, in the elaborate dolly move that glides past Katia at the piano, past her brother Constantine cleaning his hunting rifle, and ends on Prince Vajda staring hauntedly into the fire- place. Baxter gives Katia a woeful dirge to play (clearly written not to tune, but to match Steele’s hand movements on the keyboard), estab- lishing a tone of dread long before we are shown the Prince’s facial ex- pression; in fact, one infers from the scene, as it appears in the AIP ver- sion, that the music has brought on the man’s mood. Nicolosi, however, has Katia reprise the theme estab- lished on the soundtrack during her meeting with Andrej, suggesting that she is distracted by thoughts of new love, making their subsequent, quick romance much easier to accept. When the shot finally creeps over the Prince’s shoulder, the other- ness of his expression comes as a shock and he is established as firmly in the grip of the day’s implications and vulnerable to its advances. Baxter’s score is everything Nico- losi’s score is not: boisterous, un- subtle, boldly orchestrated, inces- santly busy—musically underlining every footfall, every droplet of drip- ping blood (note how the string sec- tion adjusts to pizzicato whenever we
PRINCESS ASA—the first truly erotic succubus of the cinema.
