Eli Roth: The Celebrated Director Talks ‘Red Light Disco’

Since exploding onto the scene with his breakout movie, 2002’s Cabin Fever, Eli Roth has become one of horror’s most notorious writer/directors thanks to hits including the Hostel series, The Green Inferno and Knock Knock. Roth has also become a star on the other side of the camera, featuring in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards and the 2023 TV series The Idol.

As anybody who has heard his History Of Horror podcast knows, Roth is a film obsessive and adores Italian movies of the 70s and their soundtracks. So when legendary Italian soundtrack label CAM Sugar – which has a catalogue of more than 2,000 original scores – asked Roth to compile an album of some of his favorite cuts from the glory days of Italian cinema, he couldn’t say no. The compilation in question, Eli Roth’s Red Light Disco, is a 2LP set teeming with rare and unreleased steamy disco cuts, dirty funk, cool jazz, and suggestive psychedelia that shines a light on some of Italy’s greatest – and most underrated – film composers. Roth gave uDiscover the lowdown on his deep love of the 70s, some of his favorite tracks and the experience of putting the compilation together.

Order Eli Roth’s Red Light Disco: Dancefloor Seductions From Italian Sexploitation Cinema now.

Red Light Disco transports you to a time and place where everything just feels cooler. What is it about the Italian movies of the time that is so appealing?

It’s cool because it wasn’t trying to be cool. I mean, it just was. It’s so authentic. And that’s what I love about these movies. They were really relegated to the bottom of the barrel critically in Italy. When you think of Italian cinema, it’s the ‘eenies’ – Fellini, Antonioni – and I always loved the ‘ohs’ – Argento, Deadato, Lucio Fauci – but there is this other treasure trove of cinema that’s completely ignored, which are the Italian sex comedies. A lot of comedy in general, unless it’s Charlie Chaplin or something, doesn’t travel country to country. You can be an action or horror star in one country, and it can travel, but comedy stars generally are very specific to the culture and the time in which they’re made.

When I was in Italy for Hostel, I went to this DVD store that had this label, ‘Federal Video’, and it had all of these crazy films with no English subtitles. I had to learn Italian to understand the jokes! Even if you don’t really understand everything that’s going on, the comedy is so funny, you can still get what the joke is. And the style is spectacular, the cars they’re driving, the clothes. I’m always looking for reference material, for inspiration for things – ‘look at that couch’, ‘look at that wallpaper’. But one of the most distinctive features of these movies are these spectacular scores.

When you think of Italian composers, obviously there’s Morricone, but I love Bruno Nicolai, Stelvio Cipriani, Nico Fidenco, Franco Campanino, Riz Ortolani. There are so many great composers and their music transcends the movies themselves. And the music really is transportive. It takes you right back to a moment that I never even experienced because I was five years old at the time. I have vague memories from childhood of the 70s – men in elbow patches smoking in restaurants – there’s just a certain vibe, a certain feeling. There’s a certain danger to the 70s that I miss and that I love, and I think that the music really deserves to be rediscovered, and hopefully through the music, people will go and rediscover the movies themselves.

Is there something in you as a filmmaker that roots for these underdog films?

Absolutely, I like pushing the envelope, I like being the one who made the thing that everyone’s talking about that’s so offensive. How could they do that? How dare they? There’s a part of me that likes that mischievousness in filmmaking, when there’s an element of danger. When you watch movies by certain directors and you feel like you’re in the hands of an unstable narrator, or this director is a lunatic, anything can happen.

Those are the movies that I was drawn to, outlaw directors – David Lynch, John Waters, Terry Gilliam, Tarantino. But there are movies, probably from my childhood, like Cannibal Ferox or Pieces – those movies were disregarded as garbage by critics. I always loved Porky’s and The Last American Virgin. Then I saw that so many of those movies were influenced by Italian cinema and vice versa.

I’m very interested in the relationship between Italian movies and American movies, and how they influence each other. In the ’50s, we’re making westerns in America, and so the Italians started making their version of westerns, but they didn’t know you weren’t allowed to show blood on screen. So whereas in the American movies, they grab their chest and die, in Italy, they didn’t have the same restrictive laws, so Sergio Corbucci was just showing blood exploding everywhere. They also changed scores in that Morricone was using electric guitar, which no-one in America had thought to do. So suddenly overnight, that bombastic, orchestral score of the American western just feels dated. So then you get The Wild Bunch, where Peckinpah is doing an American version of Studio Movie with Italian violence in it. But then that starts influencing the Italian directors and the Jalo films, and so on.

How did you get involved with CAM Sugar?

I’ve always wanted to go there, because I knew it was this goldmine of music. My friend Alex Brown had a meeting with them and they said they wanted to start releasing their stuff in America. They knew that it’s way cooler to do a limited-edition vinyl. Film fans are all collectors. We all collect the vinyl.

I also noticed that these songs that were so obscure 20 years ago are now being discovered by a younger generation. I’ve had the soundtracks for Porno Holocaust by Nico Findenco and The Red Queen Kills Seven Times by Bruno Nicolai for 20 years, so to see them now appearing in TikToks and Instagram reels is wild. That generation are always looking for a cool song for their reel, they’re not connecting it to reviews or director but they’re just hearing it and going, this beat is amazing, what is this music? And the more obscure the better. I want European DJs to grab the album and just start doing crazy remixes with it. Because I just love it, and I’ve been championing it for years. I can’t claim credit for it, it’s not my music, but I can be a sommelier that can help bring it into the public consciousness, the way that Quentin does with old movies.

What was the most surprising find in the CAM Sugar vaults?

“Running Around” by Daniele Patucchi, which is from the aerobic scene in the horror movie Pieces. No one has ever found it, not even Bob Murawski at Grindhouse, who owns Pieces and re-released it theatrically and put out the songs. It’s been the Holy Grail of obscure 80s slasher movie songs. Andrea Fabrizzii from CAM Sugar said, “There are 8,000 songs, let me cull a selection of several hundred for you.” When I heard “Running Around” from that list I was just like, “Oh my God, I’ve been looking for this song my whole life.” I couldn’t believe it. I realized it was originally from Bionda Fragola’s Strawberry Blonde, such an obscure movie for Americans that we had never thought to look there for that song.

How does it feel to be bringing these songs to a wider audience?

Oh amazing, I mean, “Sexy Night” by Nico Fidenco I played for years, just because I found it so funny. I love Nico Fidenco’s music, I have a ton of his soundtracks. But that song, the way, he’s like [sings] “look how she’s sexy. Ah, look how she look good!” It’s genuinely trying to pass for an American disco song or a new wave song, there’s an earnestness about it and an honesty to the song. None of these were made as a joke. But then, if you listen to the lyrics, you just go, who wrote this? What language is this written in? Because it’s in English, but they’re not English phrases that any of us would use. I love it.

Then the songs that are just instrumentation become a soundtrack of your life, whether you’re driving around, whether you’re making a reel, whatever you’re doing, they’re awesome songs to have on, certainly at a disco party. The theme from Taxi Girl is amazing. And obviously Stelvio Cipriani is really one of the great composers of all time – that Studio 54 sound of “What Can I Do” is incredible.

It must be a real kick to hear these songs fully remastered.

One thing for me is having them in pristine sound quality, because before this, I had ripped it from the DVD, like I did with Franco Campanino’s music for Avere Vent Anni, or there’s stuff floating out there on YouTube – you can find these movies, but they’re all pulled from PAL VHS tapes from the early 80s and the sound quality is usually terrible. So to have the songs really rich and pristine, like they were recorded this morning, you really hear how fantastic they were.

With your reputation, was there any pressure for compilation to feature horror music?

We found that certain songs crossed over, like that song “Running Around.” Is it the best song in the album? No, but for horror fans, that’s a Holy Grail song. So if you’re a fan of horror movies, you’d buy the album just to have that on vinyl, because it’s never been released, and no one’s ever heard the complete version of it. It’s a five-minute song but it’s only used for 30 seconds in the movie. You can find that clip on YouTube at the 20-minute mark. It’s a montage of the main character, kind of running around, but they only use that little bit. So for horror fans, that will be so satisfying.

Also, I can’t explain why I got hooked on that song, “Servizio Fotografico” by Bruno Nicolai from The Red Queen Kills Seven Times. That is just one of the songs that is on every playlist I have. When I’m driving around, I listen to that song all the time. Someone else it used in a movie and I was like, damn it, but it’s out there. With that one, I thought, you know what, this is for me. I want this on vinyl. I have the album, I have the CD, I have the DVD, but I just love it. I know I’m breaking my own rules, but fuck it. It’s a double album, and I want that song on there.

Are you a vinyl collector?

Definitely, I love it. My wife and I have got a great turntable, and we collect rare and original records. I love collecting horror scores and we try to find a lot of Italian music on vinyl. We have a lot of Litfiba and Raffaella Carrà. If we want to gift each other, we’re finding original vinyl from the 70s. We have things like the soundtrack to Seven Golden Men – there are just certain Holy Grail items that you want to own on vinyl.

So the packaging must’ve been so important to get right?

Yeah, we were going to do a photo shoot for the cover, and then we saw the stuff they had, I mean they had all of the original film posters scanned. They gave me a whole bunch of the original Locandinas, which was amazing. I mean, it’s the packaging of records I remember from when I was a kid. You remember looking through those albums and that’s what I wanted to inspire.

CAM Sugar also have a really, really good designer who came onboard and totally got the early 70s Playboy magazine aesthetic we wanted for the booklet and for the photos. We all had such a clear vision of what we wanted this to look like. And there was such a clear style guide from the movies and the posters that it was pretty easy.

And finally, it would be remiss of me not to ask you about a second volume…

I mean, look, if Red Light Disco sells out and does really well, there are 8,000 more tracks in the CAM Sugar archive to choose from. I’d love to do another one, but let’s see how this one does. I’m just happy I got to do this. Everything I do, I do it as if I might never get to do it again.

Order Eli Roth’s Red Light Disco: Dancefloor Seductions From Italian Sexploitation Cinema now.