Released in 1983, THE LOST EMPIRE was the feature film debut of exploitation director Jim Wynorski. A mixture of camp fantasy, corrupt villains, and chesty babes – not to mention caped ninjas and killer apes – the film is a wild and surreal action fantasy that makes the most of its resources despite the lack of a workable budget and loaded with plenty of charm and beautiful women. Wynorski had grown up in New York with aspirations of becoming a movie director, but his announced desire to ""be Roger Corman"" got him kicked out of a college film program for ""lack of aptitude"". So Wynorski moved to California in 1980 and got a job making coming attractions trailers for… Roger Corman. While working for Corman, he wrote and co-produced three exploitation movies for Corman's New World Pictures in the early 1980s, leading up to THE LOST EMPIRE, which was produced outside of Corman's company. When it came to scoring THE LOST EMPIRE, Wynorski selected composer Alan Howarth, who at the time was John Carpenter's musical associate, having worked with the director/composer to develop the scores for ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, HALLOWEEN II and III, and CHRISTINE. Howarth had just branched out to do solo work (adding some additional cues to Sam Peckinpah's THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND after the film's main composer, Lalo Schifrin, had completed his score); LOST EMPIRE would be Howarth's first feature film score on his own. THE LOST EMPIRE gave Howarth the chance to do something the minimalistic vibe of the Carpenter scores up until then hadn't, and that was to compose exciting adventurous melodies and heroic themes.