The stylish 1960s Italian/French movie Danger: Diabolik is known for two things. In some circles it’s a cult classic. It’s based on an Italian comic and stars a dashing antihero thief with anarchic pretensions, and features gorgeous, lavish sets, tons of positively continental late-60s pizazz, and a suitably caper-ish soundtrack by Ennio Morricone. In other, perhaps larger circles, it’s also known as the last crappy film Mystery Science Theatre 3000 ever lampooned before Mike and the bots came crashing back to Earth.

If you know anything about MST3K, it’s the premise: a hapless guy and the robots he’s made are locked in a spaceship and forced to watch really bad movies, a fate they deal with by mercilessly poking fun at the movies as they play. Does that make Diabolik a bad movie? Well, sort of—it’s pretty unbelievable that a slick master thief who wears silly masks all the time would have a huge underground lair with gadgets and Rube Goldberg devices lying around, as Diabolik does. But as a fan of the movie pointed out on IMDB, isn’t that basically what Batman is—a man working outside the law who wears silly costumes and has an inexplicably giant and ornate underground lair? Besides which, compared to most of the movies MST3K lampoons, Danger: Diabolik actually has a soundtrack that doesn’t suck, composed by one of cinema’s greatest.

“Deep Down” would probably be a more effective theme if it wasn’t so obviously rehashed five times during the course of the film, but maybe that’s why Morricone was reportedly never happy with Diabolik’s soundtrack. It probably also works better in Italian than English. This version is the semi-officially released Italian version, cleaned up and apparently pressed to seven-inch—Morricone completists would know better than I. Though most of Morricone’s soundtracks have since found release, Danger: Diabolik isn’t one of them—the best anyone’s found so far is apparently a bootleg CD, recorded from the movie itself (which is why you can hear Diabolik’s over-the-top evil laugh at the beginning). I haven’t put that version up for two reasons: the sound quality isn’t as good, and the English lyrics will make you wince in pain. Better to stick with the Italian version and dream of trans-Atlantic excess free of complications like understandable lyrics.

Unless you understand Italian, of course, in which case I guess there’s no saving you from the cheese.

(P.S. You really want the English version? Here’s a video.)