April 10, 2014

  • Creepshow Redux

    Several years ago, La-La Land released a limited edition of John Harrison’s music for Creepshow (1982).  For fans of 1980s horror films, Creepshow became a late-night cable staple with its starring turns by Leslie Nielsen and Ted Danson being just some of the campy fun of the film.  The score is by John Harrison (Frank Herbert’s Dune, Children of Dune miniseries).  His first film score is by itself a guilty pleasure for fans of the film.

    Low-budget horror films in the 1980s tended to follow a path set by Carpenter’s Halloween, using a variety of new synthesizer sounds and instrumental backdrops to create appropriate underscore.  Often the music tended toward keyboard driven solo piano lines with a variety of unusual synth textures or sounds with an ostinato pattern providing rhythmic impetus.  In the film’s opening “Prologue” these things all hold sway with a little wordless choir for good measure.  The material was very appropriate to the film back then, but as with so much electronically reproduced music sounds dated a bit now.  The recording itself bears very well for those who love this type of music.  And fans of the film will no doubt flock to grab up the copies available.  From a musical point of view the sampling is not all that interesting beyond the main thematic music.  “The Lonsesome Death of Jordy Verrill” sounds like random, on-the-spot composition.  It plays well to film, but not necessarily apart from it.  While I enjoyed the tongue-in-cheek humor of including “Camptown Races” in the midst of the segment “Something to Tide You Over” it wears very thin quickly on its own.  So this is recommended only for those who enjoyed the campy film and for those interested in adding to their collection of electronic film music.

    La-La Land’s last release of this score was back in 2003.  Then the individual film sequences were edited into single tracks.  For their new expanded release (limited to 3000 copies again), each of these segments has been unpacked to allow for each musical sequence to be accessed individually which is a bonus for fans.  The previous release included music from Tales of the Darkside, but this time we get a variety of music library cues amounting to an additional 30 minutes of material to fill out the CD.  The music by a host of different composers will likely be some extra enticement for those not sure whether they want to replace their previous disc or not (of course, the Tales score is not included this time out).  Well done release of campy 1980s film music.