Available once again, and just in time to coincide with the long-awaited reissue of this phantasmal Czech film, which just came out through Criterion. Surprisingly, the score for Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders had never received any kind of official release prior to B-Music/Finders Keepers putting this out, a real coup on the part of that imprint. This long-lost film has remained elusive ever since its release, popping up on DVD a couple of times over the past decade and a half but quickly going out of print, and the new Criterion release finally presents this haunting surrealist horror film properly. Directed by Jaromil Jire� and released in 1970, Valerie is a dreamlike narrative that follows the young protagonist Valerie through her encounters with vampires, sinister men, and Catholic priests. It's an intoxicating, often nightmarish film brimming with strange, hallucinatory images, a free-flowing fairy-tale laced with allusions to the repressive communist regime in Czechoslovakia.

Like his subsequent work on Morgiana, the Czech composer Lubos Fiser's weaves a spellbinding, dreamlike atmosphere from a combination of haunting pastoral folkiness, choral voices, traditional Czech music, hallucinatory chamber strings and delicate music-box melodies. The sinister fairy-tale feel of Valerie is enhanced by the gorgeous, childlike melodies and strangely medieval feel of some of these arrangements, and while I've loved all of Fiser's work that I've been able to track down, Valerie is by far my favorite. Those traditional elements are combined with restrained avant-garde tendencies: several tracks center around liturgical, hymn-like choral arrangements and the sounds of children praying in unison, while others are covered with booming, ominous pipe organs and swells of reverberant orchestral blackness, the dissonant rumblings of a piano buried beneath layers of muffled murk; elsewhere chilling violins drift over stretches of beautifully moody folk, and gently plucked acoustic guitars become intertwined with chamber strings and harpsichord. A combination of fractured lullabies and nocturnal reverie drifting languidly through this surreal, often horrific fantasy.

Along with Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural, this is one of the finest dark fairytales of the early 1970s, and it's graced with one of the most haunting scores to come out of the Czech New Wave; anyone who's enjoyed Fiser's other scores will definitely want to pick this up. The disc includes another one of the label's extensive booklets, filled with rare images from the production, various international poster art, and liner notes from label boss Andy Votel (Liars), Peter Hames and Trish Keenan (Broadcast). Highest recommendation.