Not only is TerrorVision my favorite Band score of all time, the film is one of my favorite movies of all time. No joke. This gonzo horror-comedy from 1986 is my favorite film ever, next to Cronenberg's Videodrome (possible techno-phobic connection there?). Whenever TerrorVision comes up in conversation at my house and I encounter someone who has never seen nor heard of the movie, I typically describe it to people as what "Carpenter's The Thing could have been, if it had actually been directed by John Waters...".

And then I force them to watch it, immediately, on the spot.

Few things in this world bring me greater joy than watching other people watch TerrorVision for the first time. It's fucking insane. The premise is wacky right out of the gate: the film begins with introducing one of the nuttiest nuclear families scorched onto screen, consisting of swinger parents (played by the wonderful Gerrit Graham and Mary Woronov), their MTV-damaged punk rock daughter (the always-enchanting Diane Franklin), a survivalist-obsessed grandpa (Bert Remsen) and his sidekick grandson (Chad Allen). Add in the daughter's W.A.S.P. shirt wearing metalhead boyfriend named "O.D." and played by the legendary Jonathan Gries, and you get a wild cast of characters who find themselves losing their shit when their new satellite dish accidentally beams a gruesome, highly carnivorous alien beast into their suburban tract home, which proceeds to devour anyone in sight in incredibly disgusting ways. It's a blast. Full of neon colors, tasteless humor, heavy artillery, goo, and one of John Carl Buechler's most disgusting monster mutation designs ever, it's got everything I need for a good time.

And the music is perfect. The score is one of the most berserk pieces of film music to ever come out of Empire Pictures. You have a huge chunk of the score where Band is composing some of the wackiest shit I've ever heard from him. But then there's the Fibonaccis. The first time I saw this film, late at night on some UHF channel on the little color TV in my bedroom, I was blasted out of my goddamn socks by this explosion of wild, irradiated art-damaged New Wave weirdness that the Fibonaccis bring to the film, right from the beginning as their immortal theme song screeches over the opening credits. I was immediately in love. I dare you to listen to The Fibonaccis' "Terror Vision" theme and try to forget it; impossible. This weird, frizzy ode to late-night cathode-TV damage and obscure monster movies is pure New Wave perfection, one of the catchiest songs I've ever heard out of a low-budget 80's horror / sci-fi this side of Sue Saad and The Next. Stone cold classic earworm, even in spite of its absolutely bizarre vibe and instrumentation. The other Fibonaccis tunes are mostly instrumental and likewise totally nuts, from the oddball cowboy-western meets 60's lounge twang of "The Friends Of Crime", and the weird hardcore punk of "Sack Of Suit Suite Guitar" that evolves into a very strange avant-garde tonal experiment and then bounces back into total headbangin' rampage. Their "swingers" number "Advice To A Mutant" takes parts of the theme song and shifts it into another loungey, sleazy tune with hilarious lyrics and Sinatra-style crooning from guest singer Hal Negro, the pseudonym of famous LA punk fixture and The Satintones member Marty Goldberg. The galloping surf / skronk / art-punk of "He Can't Stop Laughing” is so bizarre, that I can't even remember where in the fuck this music appears in the film. These cats were amazing, right up there with Oingo Boingo, Martini Ranch, and (to an extent) the wackier Devo material as far as taking New Wave and post-punk as far into the schlock-zone as they possibly could.

But Band's music is just as fitting for the bizarre vibe. The absurd cornucopia of Band's interludes, main themes, and action pieces for TerrorVision are all equally informed by theremin-flecked sounds of the battiest 1950's-era science fiction films, pieces of Holt's "Planets", 1980s synthcreep, and quasi-heavy metal fuckery. It's a laugh, with almost every single character having their own "theme", like something out of a 1960s sitcom show. From O.D's burst of metal shred guitar to Medusa's gothic organ flare, and Grandpa's militaristic theme, it's just ridiculous. Especially when you consider how this goofy lighthearted music is the accompaniment for some of goddamn grossest goo / vomit -effects they put together for the death scenes in this movie. Band goes for pure kitsch here, loading up with some of his atmospheric synth arpeggios that slink around the military snares, deep dread-indfucing brass, bizarre electronic squelches, cascades of creepy pipe organ sounds, synth-rock goofiness, weird passages of psychedelic, slight nauseating atonality, and these passages of clattery, increasingly cacophonous instrumentation that are closer to Carl Stalling cartoon-like arrangements than anything else I can think of. There's nothing quite like it in Band's oeuvre, especially in the sphere of 80's horror-comedy. And the track titles are hysterical: "Pluthar And The Kids", "Spiro Gets Giacuzzed", "Gramps Bites The Big One". It's all so silly, so surreal, so slimy.

For TerrorVision fanatics, this is pure gold. So stoked that this (more or less) complete score is finally available on physical media again (there have been earlier CD editions) - I nabbed a copy of this as soon as they showed up here at the shop.

This remastered and expanded vinyl edition (on 180 gram wax and presented in a thick gatefold jacket with obi strip, along with liner notes from Band himself) is considered the "Special Director's Cut Soundtrack", whatever that means. The LP doesn't include all of the Band cues and pieces that are on the previous Intrada CD, but all of the key stuff is here.