Now one of Hollywood's most respected and versatile composers, for many years Christopher Young seemed to be pigeonholed into the horror genre, writing many fine scores along the way.  It all began back in 1981 when he scored The Dorm that Dripped Blood, his first assignment.  Long before Scream or The Faculty or any of their copycats, The Dorm that Dripped Blood was about a group of students who volunteered to stay at school over Christmas in order to clear the place up.  One by one, they get knocked off by a vicious killer.  Now, you may be wondering why I'm talking about a film called The Dorm that Dripped Blood when I'm reviewing a score called Pranks, but of course, they're one and the same.  After the soundtrack album was already pressed (under the name Pranks), the film changed title.  However, the producers of this CD - Citadel Records, who also issued the original LP almost 25 years ago - have opted to put the CD out under the same name.

It goes without saying that Young was still finding his feet as a film composer at the time, but Pranks is a very impressive work.  Don't go into it expected the massive gothic horror of Hellraiser or its sequel because that is precisely what this isn't.  It very much reminds me of Jerry Goldsmith's most experimental and dissonant works of the early 1970s like The Mephisto Waltz.  The music is scored almost exclusively for string orchestra, large array of percussion and a pair of pianos and is almost entirely devoid of melody, remaining in a resolutely dissonant setting through the majority of its running time.  It opens with a Bernard Herrmann-style slashing strings device, but quickly removes much of that stylisation and becomes an extraordinarily bleak work completely devoid of any warmth.

Impressive and imaginative though the music is, I have to say it's quite a tough ask to actually enjoy it.  It is a brilliant soundscape for the film, demonstrating that even that early in his career Young was eager to take risks and write music which was unexpected and experimental, qualities which have not deserted him in the intervening two-and-a-half decades.  Pranks is a score which is a little hard to enjoy, but certainly not hard to admire.  The album is a limited edition of 1500, released late in 2004, and available from the usual internet specialist soundtrack retailers.