Although Re-Animator (1985) had enough of a music budget to allow for a small orchestra, Bride of Re-Animator did not. Composer Richard Band only had a couple of synthesizers and some electronic samples of orchestral instruments to work with.
While Band did bring back his memorable, albeit controversial, comedic riff on Bernard Herrmann's theme for Psycho, to emphasize the film's darkly comedic tone, the true highlight this time around is a passionate melody referred to as the Bride Theme.
"[This new theme] actually translates into three different characters," Band says in Randall D. Larson's liner notes for this Dragon's Domain release. "It's used not only for Dan's memories of Meg from the first movie, but his relationship with the Italian girl Francesca. And then, since Meg's heart is placed into the Bride once she's built, there was a corresponding romantic element there. We didn't want two or three love themes to cover all of this, since they're essentially all coming from the same place, so I composed a single love theme to cover all those elements."
Band also used the Bride Theme for when West first meets the re-animated Bride. "It goes past what we know the theme to signify," Band explains in the liner notes. "She is his accomplishment. We know he's always been in love with himself, but he's also been in love with what he wants to accomplish, so here it's like he's finally met his dream, he's finally met his own love, so that love theme becomes part his as well."
One thing about this score that I find equal parts amusing and distracting are Band's frequent use of phrases from his scores for both Puppet Master (1989) and Puppet Master II (1990). Images of Tunneler, Blade, and Pinhead always creep to the forefront of my mind and crowd out any and all things Re-Animator whenever I hear them. So it goes.
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