Re-Animator

Music by Richard Band

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stuart Gordon´s Re-Animator (1985) was one of the biggest box office hits (and success in home videos) of the 80´s horror. Its success justifyes for the use of mad scientist genre clichés spiced with an abusive dose of sadism and eschatology made the movie one of the funniest of its time. An offensive cinematic joke. What by extension, serves as a "compliment" to a large share of horror cinema.

In a preview of filmed material, the composer Richard Band asked the producer Brian Yuzna about music: "You want this to be absolutely serious? I can make a soundtrack such. Or do you want admittedly it to be a big joke? I favor the second hypothesis ... ". Yuzna was favor too. And so, Band borrowed some Psycho ideas to the main theme once the protagonist Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) was visibly an unbalanced person. The controversy caused by the use of Herrmann's ideas was such that in the current edition on CD, his name is respectfully quoted on the cover. Band also used the melodic base of Piper Dreams (Jerry Goldsmith in The Omen) for the Love Theme. Despite the questionable approach, good climatic passages make Re-Animator a sample of unpretentious music serving a film that was never intended to be taken seriously. Tracks like The Turning Point and Down in the Cellar, reveal the unquestionable composer's ability to atmospheric music and more humorous passages like Body and Soul and Corpses Just Want to Have Fun reveal the project as a clearly assumed macabre cartoon.