I seem to recall this offering from Empire Pictures having been released on New World Home Video, as it was part of the asset sell off when the company's finances were collapsing into an impossible to fill hole of debt.
Judging from the comments that composer Richard Band makes regarding the film in his liner notes for this limited edition release (only 1000 copies were made), he considered The Caller to be something of an overlooked, perhaps even lost, film. But it is available on YouTube and MGM+.
Band shares how producer Frank Yablans and director Arthur Allan Siedleman gave him a "tremendous amount of latitude to experiment" with his approach to the score. That experimentation included exploring music ideas that came to him while he was scoring From Beyond.
Although Band does not recycle any themes or motifs he composed for From Beyond, my untrained ear could hear the stylistic similarities between the two scores. Especially during Track 4 No More Questions.
The Caller features only two characters. The titular Caller, played by Malcolm McDowell, and The Girl, played by Madolyn Smith Osbourne (credited as Madolym Smith). Band states this necessitated a score that "had to carry quite a load without stepping on any of the dialogue or intent."
"This score had to feel suspenseful, lonely, melancholy, sweet, desperate, and off-kilter," Band explains in his liner notes for this release. "In dialogue scenes I primarily used strings and woodwinds along with bowed waterphones, organic bells and other live devices. The electronics were left strictly to the moments in the film where..."
Wait, that information Band gives is a spoiler for the film, which I still have not seen. I really should take some time to watch The Caller, I think. Because I love its score.
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