In Remembrance: Basil Poledouris

     Basil Poledouris, the film score composer best known for his powerful action-adventure scores of the 1980s and ‘90s, has passed away on November 8, 2006 in Los Angeles, CA. He was 61.

     Born August 21, 1945 in Kansas City, MO, Poledouris attended Cal State Long Beach before transferring to the University of Southern California to study filmmaking and music. It was while at USC that he became friends with future director John Milius, composing the music for Milius’s student film The Reversal Of Richard Sun in 1966.

     Although he composed scores for a handful of films including the drama Extreme Close-Up (1973) and Milius’s surfer story Big Wednesday (1978), Poledouris’ first major film work was the lush score he composed for the romance Blue Lagoon (1980). He followed it up with the orchestra and choral arrangements for Milius’ fantasy epic Conan The Barbarian (1982). Considered to be one of the seminal soundtracks of the genre, Poledouris was in soon penning scores for other science-fiction/ fantasy and action-adventures films including Conan The Destroyer, Red Dawn (both 1984), Flesh & Blood (1985), Iron Eagle (1986), RoboCop (1987) and The Hunt For Red October (1990).

     Despite his renown for his bombastic action scores, Poledouris also wrote the soundtracks for numerous comedic and family films including Free Willy (1993), Serial Mom (1994), The Jungle Book (1994), Celtic Pride (1996) and Cecil Be DeMented (2000).

     Poledouris also worked on several television projects including the series Misfits Of Science and the middle 80s revival of The Twilight Zone as well as the mini-series Amerika. In 1989 he won an Emmy award for the folk-based score for the miniseries Lonesome Dove.

     Poledouris’ final film score was for Michelle Yeoh’s 2002 Hong Kong action film The Touch.