Buy it... if you want to hear superior performances of the best and most interesting cues from the first three Alien scores.

Avoid it... if Alien-related music has never interested you in its tendencies towards drab atonality.

Eidelman

The Alien Trilogy: (Compilation) In the mid-1990's, the Varèse Sarabande label began contracting the services of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra for performances of famous film scores. Some of these recordings would come from the wand of the original composer, such as the much revered recordings of film music by Jerry Goldsmith. Others would feature the conducting of famous score themes by the likes of Joel McNeely, Frederic Talgorn, or Cliff Eidelman, all of whom are capable composers themselves who were arguably at the collective height of their careers at the time. One compilation conducted by Eidelman (whose film composition career had already begun to languish by then) was a relatively early RSNO/Varèse set of performances from the first three Alien films. It remains bit odd to fathom that Robert Townson and Varèse engineered this project with the fourth film of the franchise advertised to be just around the corner, but given the poor quality of the fourth score in the series, not much was likely lost. As it stands, the "Alien Trilogy" album features the musical journey of Ellen Ripley throughout her dismal encounters with the alien species, and it isn't the most pleasant of listening experiences. The process of scoring the first film in the franchise wasn't pleasant for veteran composer Jerry Goldsmith either. Despite the immense qualifications that Goldsmith brought to the process, second-time director Ridley Scott decided to temp the movie with previous Goldsmith works, creating odd and unreasonable expectations for the composer to meet. In the end, Goldsmith wrote a score that wasn't what Scott wanted, and the director threw much of it out or otherwise mutilated it and inserted cues in improper places. As fans of the composer well know, Scott purchased the rights to the score for Goldsmith's Freud, as well as a handful of classically-oriented works, and placed these over several scenes that Goldsmith had scored. Other cues were simply dropped in favor of layers of sound effects. In the end, Goldsmith was understandably outraged, and through the years did his best to ensure that his original version of the score would be preserved on album. For this compilation, Eidelman and others painstakingly recreated Goldsmith's work as it was intended, providing several cues here that don't appear in the film.

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That doesn't necessarily mean that Goldsmith's score, despite its effectiveness in the few portions of the film where it was allowed to flourish, is readily enjoyable. Many longtime collectors of Goldsmith's scores shun Alien, partly because it was never used well in the film, and partially because it's largely unlistenable outside of the final cue. It has much of the same effect on people as Goldsmith's somewhat concurrent Outland, with a drab, dissonant score for a gray, hopeless future in space finished by one somewhat tonal thematic performance at the end. This compilation focuses mainly on Goldsmith's work, and the presentation is excellent regardless of tolerability. The cues from James Horner's score for Aliens are more accessible on CD, as they always have been in comparison to Alien. Horner extended the four-note "time" motif from Goldsmith's score into an opening titles sequence not much unlike Goldsmith's. But where Horner excels is in his action music; some listeners see little difference between the propulsive, snare-driven action here and that of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and in Horner's world of recycling sounds that work, those people would be correct. Nevertheless, his adaptation of that material is far more brutal here, and rips up a storm with brass and piccolo that is well captured by the RSNO. The three cues from Alien 3 represent the opening and closing of the film and one horror cut from the middle portions. The Elliot Goldenthal score is a "love it or hate it" event, and no matter where you stand on that debate, everyone agrees that it is a significant departure from the approaches of Goldsmith and Horner. As he tends to do, Goldenthal over-intellectualizes the score, inserting a purely classical, operatic, and religious element into a film that never called for that kind of elegance, even in its sacrificial finale. Goldenthal's adagio and related neo-classical ideas do, however, offer ironically the most easily listenable music on this compilation in their rather simplistic beauty. The horror cue in the middle of this suite is completely intolerable in true Goldenthal experimental fashion, showing that the composer was incapable of finding a completely effective middle ground between horror and romanticism. Overall, however, the performances on the album are nearly flawless and represent a fantastic job of coordination and execution by the producers and conductor. Even as Alien-related films continue to be released, this collection from the first three scores is worthy of attention from any fan of the series. ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Cliff Eidelman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.29 (in 17 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.2 (in 7,740 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.