Buy it... if you want just a small taste of the best cues from the first two scores in the Scream franchise.

Avoid it... if you seek any of the Danny Elfman or Hans Zimmer music heard in Scream 2, or if you expect a well-rounded presentation of either score.

Beltrami

Scream/Scream 2: (Marco Beltrami) During the resurgence of slashing teenie horror flicks in the 1990's, few franchises fared better than the one born from Scream. The concept by Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson took the infamous ghost-masked killer on a rampage in the suburban town of Woodsboro, leading most of its primary characters to the grave while elevating the cult status of its surviving lead, Neve Campbell. The genre is not the kindest to budding composers who are often left in the B-rate horror world to see their careers die and rot, but the Scream franchise was an exception for the rising talent of Marco Beltrami. The Scream scores became an early calling card for the composer, and within ten years, he would contribute scores for blockbuster franchises in the ranks of The Terminator and Die Hard. While the original Scream score didn't create a significant jolt in the film music world, the messy circumstances surrounding Scream 2 gave the scores a cult status much like the films. By Scream 3 at the end of the decade, Beltrami would survive rumors of replacement by finishing the trilogy of scores with perhaps the best rounded of the three, musically speaking. His style for the Scream scores plucked ideas from many different places, including the works of Elliot Goldenthal, Ennio Morricone, Christopher Young, Eric Serra, and Hans Zimmer. Most of these influences would make themselves evident in Scream 2, a score with a much broader personality. The original Scream was the more conventional entry, combining the slashing standards established by Young with the hip (at the time) synthetic styles of Serra. He also introduces the famous theme for Sydney, the Neve Campbell character. The haunting solo female vocals for this theme are indeed the voice of the franchise, presenting both the scores' most beautiful and tortured moments. Heard with some dissonance and electronic distortion in "Sidney's Lament" and with faint hints surviving in "A Cruel World," this theme would be offered a full rock-rhythmed performance in "NC-17."

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The most intriguing cue in Scream is the only one that appeared on either of the two commercial albums for the first two films. In "Trouble in Woodsboro," Beltrami unleashes the ruckus of a wild rock and techno-based rhythm with various chain-rattling sound effects and a synthetic choir for the ultimate in eerie sound. The remaining two cues from that score feature the stock horror elements. In Scream 2, Beltrami would pull more ideas from Goldenthal's sophisticated palette as the franchise would become more robust in its orchestral prowess. The lovely theme for Syd would largely be confined to the "It's Over, Sid" cue, the most harmonic presentation of the theme on this album. While Beltrami would maintain this theme and certain motifs throughout all three of his scores for the franchise, the ideas for the Deputy Dewey character are perhaps the most recognizable from Scream 2, and the most maligned. The spaghetti Western style from the days of Morricone's dusty classics are in full force in Scream 2, and their bass and guitar antics culminate in some synthetic whistling in "Dewpoint and Stabbed" and a powerful rendition in "Sundown Search." The opening moments of the "Deputy for a Friend" cue would be reprised at the outset of the victorious performance of Syd's theme at the end of Scream 3. Unfortunately for Beltrami, the most memorable music from Scream 2 wouldn't be his. Danny Elfman would compose a frenzied, choral-enhanced three minutes called "Cassandra Aria" for the film, a piece still unreleased on CD ten years later. And much of the music for Dewey would be replaced in Scream 2 by Duane Eddy's guitar performances for Hans Zimmer's Broken Arrow, a replacement generally considered effective in the film. On album, the Scream and Scream 2 scores would finally be released by Varèse Sarabande in 1998, but with only 12 minutes from Scream and 17 minutes from Scream 2. As such, it was one of the label's more controversial capitulations to the fees of the musicians' unions. Without Elfman's piece, the album is dissatisfying, and compared to the 30 minutes eventually available from the label for Scream 3, this duo album is only barely adequate.

Scores as Written for Films: ***
Scores as Heard on Album: **
Overall: **

Bias Check:

For Marco Beltrami reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.58 (in 12 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.95 (in 12,128 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.