April Fool's Day: The Deluxe Edition

Varèse Sarabande revisits a classic horror soundtrack from its early catalog with April Fool's Day, the 1986 black comedy/horror slasher film directed by Fred Walton and scored by Charles Bernstein.

Thomas F. Wilson, Deborah Foreman, Clayton Rohner and other familiar faces from the 1980s star as college friends whose spring break trip to an island mansion unfortunately coincides with April Fool's Day. Innocent pranks lead to a steadily rising body count as murders decimate the group—with a surprising twist climax. Bernstein found an unusual challenge in April Fool's Day, which needed to evoke the slasher genre, but also have an element of "winking" to its audience. "We're having fun with the horror genre—but it's not a horror movie," he says in the new liner notes by Brian Satterwhite. "My challenge was how to score a movie that wasn't a horror movie but used horror tropes."

April Fool's Day was released on LP (and later CD) by Varèse Sarabande, in a synthesized performance not heard in the film itself. That 20-track, 30-minute synth program is included on this Deluxe Edition, along with the long-awaited premiere release of the actual orchestral recording heard in the film (23 tracks, 27 minutes), plus previously unreleased bonus tracks.