Basil Poledouris (August 21, 1945 – November 8, 2006) was an American composer of Greek descent.
He was noted for producing scores for some of the most popular movies of the late 20th century, including The Blue Lagoon (1980), Red Dawn (1984), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Free Willy, Starship Troopers and The Hunt for Red October. Known for his epic, symphonic scores, he is frequently regarded as one of the best film composers of all time. Many of his work is famous in its own right, with his scores for Conan and RoboCop (which featured men banging on anvils) being particularly noteworthy.
He also had a very small number of acting credits, most notably as a Klingon, a Redshirt, and an Ekosian trooper on various episodes of Star Trek (the original series).
List of scores composed by Basil Poledouris include:
- Big Wednesday (1978)
- The Blue Lagoon and its sequel (1980, 1991)
- Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Conan the Destroyer (1984)
- Red Dawn - this was the very first soundtrack album to be released by Intradanote .
- Flesh+Blood (1985)
- The Twilight Zone (1985) (four episodes)
- Misfits of Science (1985-86) theme, the pilot score and first regular episode score.
- Iron Eagle (1986)
- Amerika (1987)
- RoboCop and RoboCop 3 (1987, 1993)
- Cherry 2000 (1987) - this was the first CD Club release from Varèse Sarabande (later reissued in expanded form by Prometheus and twinned with Poledouris's No Man's Land).
- Lonesome Dove (1989)
- The Hunt for Red October (1990)
- Quigley Down Under (1990)
- Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (1991)
- Free Willy and its first sequel (1993, 1995)
- Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993)
- On Deadly Ground (1994)
- Serial Mom (1994)
- The Jungle Book (1994)
- Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995)
- Celtic Pride (1996)
- Breakdown (1997)
- Starship Troopers (1997)
- Les Miserables (1998)
- For Love Of The Game (1999)
- Mickey Blue Eyes (1999)
- Cecil B. Demented (2000) with his daughter Zoe Poledouris
- Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles (2001)
- The Touch (2002)
- The Legend Of Butch And Sundance (2004) - Made-for-TV Movie and pilot for an unsold series; his final score.note
Tropes in his works:
- Associated Composer: For John Milius, Paul Verhoeven, and Simon Wincer.
- Cult Soundtrack:
- His music for Conan the Barbarian (1982) is famously known for causing hair to grow on listeners in previously unknown places, along with causing heavy metal fans to develop a hankering for classical music. It's also considered one of the all-time great soundtracks, despite the film itself being a total Camp Classic. Intrada issued the complete score in 2012.
- His score to Cherry 2000 was so popular among film scoring fans that the album used to go for over $1,000 in online auditions (the score was so rare that Poledouris didn't even have a copy until John Waters gave him his personal copy when they did Serial Mom together). A pair of reissues have since remedied this problem but it's still one of Poledouris' more popular scores.
- Everything Is an Instrument: The main theme from RoboCop (1987) features the sounds of people banging on anvils.
- Rated M for Manly: If you wanted someone to do the music for a bloody, meat-headed action flick, Poledouris was the man.
- Recycled Soundtrack: The Hunt for Red October used a track from Poledouris' score for the 1987 film No Man's Land.
- Theme Music Abandonment: His RoboCop theme is absent in RoboCop 2, but returns in RoboCop 3.
