Additional Music by Stephen Barton, Toby Chu, James McKee Smith,

                               and Daimen Kaiser

Lyrics by Trey Parker

Release Date: November 2, 2004

                  Citadel

    The original LP release of Christopher Young’s score to Pranks (later to be re-titled as The Dorm That Dripped Blood) marked the first official release of the fledgling composer’s work. Given that historic moment in film score history, the album has since become somewhat of a collector’s item. Thankfully, for those who don’t need to own the actual waxed disc as part of their collection, Citadel Records has provided this copy on the shiny compact disc format.

     Eschewing the typical electronic scores typical for early 80s horror films, Young is equipped with a live orchestra. This obviously lifts the score an appreciable amount over its competition from this period in film history, but at the same time I found it to be rather typical fare. Low strings reminiscent of Psycho, tinkling bells, and a few horns usually supplanting the strings and relegated to the background. The only thing missing is chaotic orchestra hits (though the string sections get quite a workout with this). In fact, for the most part, Prank’s effectiveness lies beneath the surface, generally working through tension building pieces as opposed to bombastic horror shrieks. This makes the score more effective in that it slowly crawls under your skin as opposed to banging you over the head with its own violence.

     Being a copy of the original LP release, the album only runs thirty minutes, but I highly doubt that there is anything of significance missing from the score, given the nature of the music. Surprisingly, for an album that harkens back to the first official release of a Christopher Young score, the liner notes are rather skimpy and offer almost no information on the scoring of Pranks, other than a few aside comments. Of course, this could be more for the fact that the score is special for what it stands for more than what the actual content is.

      Ultimately, this is for fans of Christopher Young and the film. Unless you’re interesting in a typical (yet orchestrated) 80s horror score, there’s not much on here to really make a recommendation for.