The Caller (1987) - Soundtrack

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.

Bride of Re-Animator (1990) - Soundtrack

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.

Arena (1989) - Soundtrack

The elevator pitch for Arena might have gone something like, "Hey, think Rocky, only he has to fight the Predator instead of Apollo Creed!" Too bad the pitch is more exciting than the film itself.

Composer Richard Band, in his liner note for this Intrada release, shares how the music he wrote and performed for Arena marked a turning point in his career. "Up until then," Band writes, "I had primarily composed for orchestra, using electronics in only a few scores. But Arena called for something different - a truly futuristic electronic score."

With the assistance of Gary Chang's Fairlight and Synclavier, Band was able to achieve the "driving futuristic feel" he desired. He also came to understand the necessity of becoming better versed with the technology, which he now recognizes as his first step towards going fully electronic in the 1990s.

While this might not be Band's best electronic score, it is by no means terrible. Like so many other scores for movies of this kind, the music is one of the best things about it.