Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash and Emmy-winning composer Bear McCreary (“The Walking Dead,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”) collaborated on the theme song for Deathstalker. Watch the music video below.
The reverential reboot of the Roger Corman-produced 1983 sword and sorcery cult classic is in theaters today via Shout Studios.
The theme song features original Deathstalker II composer Chuck Cirino, singer Brendan McCreary, Dethklok drummer Gene Hoglan, bassist Pete Griffin, and guitarist Omer Ben-Zvi.
Slash, who also executive produced the film, explains. “We wanted to do a remake of the Deathstalker theme, and I’m good friends with Bear McCreary, so I called him, and it turns out he’s a big Deathstalker fan and a fan of Chuck Cirino, the original composer for the original song. So we thought, ‘Let’s remake the song. We’ll get a live band and we’ll do it like that.’ So we went into a studio, Bear and I and some musicians and Chuck, and we did a great version of the original theme song. It was just a blast to do.”
“I spent every weekend in high school watching cult movies with my buddies,” adds McCreary. “The night we watched Deathstalker II, I was immediately struck by the catchy melodies in Chuck Cirino’s score. I picked up a little Casio keyboard I had lying around and played along. After I moved to Los Angeles to pursue my own dreams of scoring films, Chuck and I became good friends.
“Years later, my friend Slash told me he was developing a new feature film version of Deathstalker, and I knew right away that my worlds were about to collide! I was thrilled to collaborate with Slash, Chuck, and my brother, vocalist and lyricist Brendan McCreary, on a new song inspired by Chuck’s iconic Deathstalker II theme to match director Steven Kostanski’s lovingly bloody vision.”
In Deathstaker, the Kingdom of Abraxeon is under siege by the Dreadites, heralds of the long-dead sorcerer Nekromemnon. When Deathstalker recovers a cursed amulet from a corpse-strewn battlefield, he’s marked by dark magick and hunted by monstrous assassins. To survive, he must break the curse and face the rising evil.
Written and directed by Steven Kostanski (Psycho Goreman, The Void), it stars Daniel Bernhardt, Christina Orjalo, Paul Lazenby, Nicholas Rice, and Patton Oswalt.
Meagan Navarro wrote in her review, “Deathstalker wears its cinematic reverence on its sleeves, delivering a love letter to practical effects and bygone sword & sorcery epics.”
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