Weird prog-rock with an overreliance on syntheizers.

Like... I get not wanting to do the swelling orchestral sound every fantasy / medieval movie does, but it's just so jarring

In fairness, a lot of 80s movies thought synths = fantasy.

It's jarring to a modern ear that hears synths and thinks 80s.

least most 80s synths try to sound in-setting,

Ladyhawke didn't even try

"Here's a fight scene with music from an Action TV series"

yeah the soundtrack is kinda whack

it always felt like the ladyhawke soundtrack was written for a different movie

and they ran out of budget and were like "hey this movie over here got canned by they did the soundtrack. we can definitely fudge it right?"

yeah that's the thing is not only is it really undisguised synth prog-rock, it's often tonally whack with most of the scene

and really the choice of Rutger Hauer as Navarre is really choice, I don't think the narrative would've work as well with a more typical leading man