Hellraiser Composer Honored with Lifetime Achievement Award

Christopher Young, the film composer perhaps best known for his haunting score to Clive Barker's Hellraiser and Hellraiser II, was given the prestigious Richard Kirk Award for career achievement at a dinner held Wednesday night in Beverly Hills by Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI).

Barker was on-hand to honor Young and his "classy horror movie music," adding that the composer "is himself, [when] so many people are not."

Also present was Sam Raimi, whose last movie, Spider-Man 3, was scored by Young. Raimi's impending return to the horror genre, next year's Drag Me to Hell, is Young's next project.

In accepting BMI's award, Young called it, "the brightest moment of my life." He joins previous winners such as Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams and Danny Elfman.

Young first broke into the business on the 1982 bottom-of-the-barrel slasher The Dorm that Dripped Blood. In addition to the first two Hellraiser films, he composed the scores for genre efforts such as A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, Invaders from Mars, Flowers in the Attic, The Fly II, The Dark Half, Tales from the Hood, Species, Urban Legend, The Grudge 1 & 2, The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Ghost Rider. Outside of horror, his work includes the music for Murder in the First, Copycat, The Gift, Swordfish and The Shipping News, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe in 2001.