Saskatchewan
Prince Edward Island
Nova Scotia
Newfoundland and Labrador
New Brunswick
British Columbia
Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth
1992
12 tracks, TRT: ~47:00, 320 MP3
Note: This has been a guilty pleasure for many years. I’m a huge fan of the Christopher Young scores for the Hellraiser franchise but they are not exactly albums I can get a great thrill out of listening to regularly.
Randy Miller’s contributions gives us some of Young’s original themes with a style unlike the first two. Hellraiser III’s score is butchered in the film and often blended with Young’s original two scores (mainly the first one) to create better musical cohesion.
On album, we are given Randy Miller’s complete (I think) compositions for the film minus any studio tinkering which is a joy to listen to. Not without some personal re-arrangements of my own, of course, which places the album cues in more of a chronological presentation along with giving the sound a much-needed touch-up. On album, I’ve always found the sound to be flat but not dead. A definite earsore after awhile. I applied a filter which brought out a lot of the score’s dynamics which were previously buried in the murkiness of the mix. To think that my source was a re-issued and remastered copy to start with, it makes me wonder how much of an improvement from the originally released album the sound was but as is evidenced from my efforts the professional remastering effort from Silva Records could’ve been (and now is) much better.
I will always hold this score close to my heart as it is one of the few horror franchise sequel scores to feature an entirely new composer whom takes existing material and writes his own original music around it to give it that feel that is somewhat consistent with the established music identity of the early franchise which I personally enjoy. As a Hellraiser score, the themes are there but the tone is entirely different. There’s some nice action material here, A LOT actually, with a nice Gothic edge. Its biggest flaw is that it’s just not scary. It’s fun but it’s mixed too loud which does not succeed in scaring me as much as it does get my blood pumping and puts me on edge. That’s an issue with the source that not even I can fix. Until the masters become available, I don’t expect much better quality for this album.
The chronological presentation does alter the flow of the album in a good way. I have never been a fan, no matter what score it is, of presenting an album out of order as most record labels usually place all the best tracks first which makes the later cues seem less important. Sometimes it helps flow while other times not so much. It’s all a matter of preference. I like the score to have time to build, not assault me from the get-go and give me all the good stuff up front. Maybe if I was just getting into film scores then yeah but as a seasoned listener, I like to hear the progression from slow to bombastic. It feels more rewarding to me. While this album does open with an action suite of the film’s themes, it’s a catchy way to get me hooked to hear the rest. Now that the presentation is the definite way I want it, I can finally be satisfied.
Enjoy!