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Kritzerland is pleased to present a new world premiere limited edition soundtrack CD:
WHEN A STRANGER CALLS
Music Composed and Conducted by Dana Kaproff
“HAVE YOU CHECKED THE CHILDREN?”
With that repeated line of dialogue, audiences seeing When a Stranger Calls in 1979 were put on the edge of their seats in one of the most nail-bitingly suspenseful opening scenes ever put on film. Between that film and Alien, it was a 1979 double whammy of suspense and chills. Oh, it’s easy from today’s perspective to sit in judgment and say, “Oh, it’s not so scary,” much the same way that kids today seeing Psycho don’t think that’s scary. Why? Because these films have been ripped off so many times, and the envelope they were pushing has now been pushed so much further, that the classic chillers of old look positively quaint today. The fact that most new movies look and sound exactly the same makes movies like When a Stranger Calls even more unique – a truly low-budget film ($700,000) that came out of nowhere and went on to be an audience and box-office sensation (grossing over $21 million when that actually meant something). And quaint it wasn’t in 1979.
When a Stranger Calls is sometimes called one of the first slasher films – only it’s not a slasher film at all and there were certainly many that came before – in fact, if you want to talk slashing, Psycho would probably be at the top of the list. When a Stranger Calls has no slashing – what it has is pure suspense – there is literally no gore, just some blood in a flashback, but you never see any violence committed. Gore is easy – suspense, pure suspense, is hard.
When a Stranger Calls began life as a short film called The Sitter, directed by Fred Walton. The Sitter was basically the first act of When a Stranger Calls. After the success of the 1978 John Carpenter film, Halloween, it was decided to expand the short film into a feature, starring Carol Kane, Charles Durning, Coleen Dewhurst, Rachel Roberts, and Tony Beckley. The film was instantly influential and many low-budget copycat films happened for quite some time thereafter, including the same director’s sequel, this one for TV, When a Stranger Calls Again. It was also remade in 2006, but the remake stretches out the original’s opening twenty minutes to feature length – and guess what? It doesn’t work.
When a Stranger Calls was Dana Kaproff’s second film score – his first was for Bert I. Gordon’s Empire of the Ants (released by Kritzerland) – and Kaproff deserves a good deal of the credit for the film’s suspense level. It is simply unthinkable to imagine this film without his score because his score is as much a leading player as any of its cast. It’s relentlessly suspenseful music – there are no pretty themes to lull you and give you security – just dread, pure dread, and then almost psychotic music for those moments when things, well, get out of hand. The score is written for strings, prepared piano, and percussion. It is a superb genre score and a classic.
This is the world premiere release of the soundtrack to When a Stranger Calls. The film, of course, was mono, as is this recording, taken from the original session tapes. We present every note of music Kaproff wrote, in film order, as that’s the way it plays best – like a symphony of dread and terror.
When a Stranger Calls is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CD will ship the first week of July – however, never fear, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.
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Kritzerland is pleased to present a new world premiere limited edition soundtrack – two great scores on one great CD:
I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE
Music Composed by Victor Young, Franz Waxman, Hugo Friedhofer, Aaron Copland, Hans J. Salter, Roy Webb, Nathan Van Cleave, Daniel Amfitheatrof, Leith Stevens, and others
and
THE ATOMIC CITY
Music Composed and Conducted by Leith Stevens
Bill and Marge – happy as clams, in love and about to be married. He’s affectionate, a dog lover, thoughtful – the perfect man. Until… he’s not. It’s a girl’s worst nightmare – the loving man she just married is suddenly not the man she thought he was. Why is he suddenly no longer affectionate? Why is he not affectionate to the dog? Why is he not affectionate to anything? Stranger still, why are some of the other men in their town behaving the same way? If only she’d seen the poster for this film, she’d have known exactly what was going on – because there’s no mistaking it with a title like I Married a Monster from Outer Space. Made in 1958, I Married a Monster from Outer Space is not as lurid as its title would suggest. It’s actually a very well made, thoughtful, low-budget sci-fi film with an excellent script, which has gathered a loyal following over the years. Starring Tom Tryon and Gloria Talbott, the film is a textbook example of how to make a terrific little film on a terrifically low budget.
One of the most interesting aspects of the film is its wonderful score. The film carries no credit for music at all, despite having really effective music and quite a bit of it. The reason for the lack of a music credit is simple: In 1958 there was a musicians’ union strike. And so Hollywood studios had to go outside the United States and Canada to record music for their movies. In certain cases, especially in the case of the very low-budget I Married a Monster from Outer Space, they would re-record selections from existing scores that were owned by the studio’s publishing companies. Therefore, what we have is a score composed by Victor Young, Hugo Friedhofer, Aaron Copland, Franz Waxman, Leith Stevens, Daniel Amfitheatrof, Walter Scharf, Lyn Murray, Nathan Van Cleave, Roy Webb – well, you get the idea. The surprising thing is how well it all works and how seamlessly it all plays. Today, it would be called temp tracking, but back then it was born out of necessity and budget. It’s actually kind of a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, where several of the greatest film composers of all time have music in the same film.
The music, housed in the Paramount vaults, was in mostly excellent condition. A little wow and flutter on a couple of tracks was the only problem and we’ve left it as is because the music is so good and the problems only last for a few seconds.
Our second feature is a tense little low-budget thriller from 1952 called The Atomic City, starring Gene Barry, Lydia Clarke and Nancy Gates. The basic plot is simple: Enemy agents kidnap the son of a nuclear physicist in Los Alamos, New Mexico; their ransom demand isn’t money, however – the bad guys want the physicist to turn over the formula for the H-bomb. Directed by Jerry Hopper, the screenplay was written by Sydney Boehm, a great writer who wrote several great films, including When Worlds Collide, The Big Heat, Union Station, Violent Saturday, The Tall Men, The Revolt of Mamie Stover, Shock Treatment and many others. His screenplay for The Atomic City was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story and Screenplay – very unusual for a low budget programmer in 1952.
The superb music was composed by Leith Stevens. Stevens made his mark in the early 1950s, beginning with two sci-fi scores that became instant classics – Destination Moon and When Worlds Collide. After The Atomic City, he would go on to write great scores to some iconic films, including War of the Worlds and The Wild One. He worked in almost every genre, turning out scores for such films as the noir classic The Hitch-Hiker, Scared Stiff, Private Hell 36, World Without End, Julie, But Not for Me, The Interns, A New Kind of Love and many others, as well as for such classic television fare as The Twilight Zone, Have Gun – Will Travel, Gunsmoke, The Untouchables, Burke’s Law, The Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants, and on and on. His music for The Atomic City is greatly responsible for the tense atmosphere and keeping the film an edge-of-the-seat thriller.
The music was thankfully preserved on a set of acetates in excellent condition. These were transferred as carefully and lovingly as possible, and we hope you’ll be pleased with the result.
I Married a Monster from Outer Space/The Atomic City is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CD will ship the first week of July – however, never fear, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.
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I see the track listings of I Married name the composers on each track.
Haines, do you know what films the music is from by those composers?
Yes, the booklet has all the information about which cues are from which films, taken from the information provided to us.
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I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS!!! One of the best suspense scores ever!! THANK YOU KRITZERLAND!!!!! I'll be ordering this as soon as i can!! 
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Congrats on these Bruce, particularly the Kaproff release. I wanted to mention something unrelated to the score to 'When a Stranger Calls', but, sort of related to the phone on the cover.
Remember the scene in 'In & Out' (1998) when the young model is left alone in the motel out in the country while her boyfriend has an errand to do? And he tells her to call for anything she needed? She looks at the phone (it's a rotary phone) and she cries out is dismay because she doesn't know how to operate it! I think now that some newbies to this board who are very young and only know from cell-phones will look at the cover and say...'What IS that'?
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Didn't expect When a Stranger Calls - what a nice little surprise! Ordered.
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presses "LIKE" button
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WHEN A STRANGER CALLS gave me nightmares as a kid. I remember seeing the trailer in the cinema - and it creeped me out so much that I still shudder.
So I just have to face my fears and buy this soundtrack...
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The start of the second clip of A Stranger Calls ("Have You Checked the Children?)" should have been called "The Audience is Listening". Sounds just like the THX effect.
It's been talked about a lot over the years. It's a recurring motif in the score and there are other cues where it's even more of a soundalike - and, of course, written long before the THX logo
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Glad people are happy about these!
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