Scoring the Space Terror: Music in Science Fiction Cinema during the Italian Economic Miracle

Science fiction became a fashionable ingredient in Italian culture during the 1960s. Once the country entered the economic boom, or “miracle” (c. 1958–1963), the times were ripe for a new cultural sensibility about science’s promises (and threats) to grow. Italian cinema was highly affected by this phenomenon. Rather than developing into a neatly defined genre, sci-fi elements were incorporated into existing genres triggering a variety of configurations in both auteur and popular cinema. In such processes of cross-genre syncretism, music and sound exerted a key role. Our article examines how sound contributed, both from a production and a dramaturgical standpoint, to shaping a highly diversified, “vernacular” sci-fi imagery in Italian cinema. Our analyses include examples from autochthone domestic sci-fi B-movies as well as from comedy and auteur cinema, over a timeframe spanning 1958 to 1965.