: (Marco Beltrami) During the resurgence of
slashing teenie horror flicks in the 1990's, few franchises fared better
than the one born from
. 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 without good reason while elevating the cult status of its
surviving lead played by Neve Campbell. The success of the 1996 original
was rooted in its convoluted character mysteries, causing young
audiences to see the film several times in the theatres to detect hidden
clues and meanings and thus making a monstrous financial success out of
a movie that cost practically nothing to produce. A sequel was rushed
quickly and without much artistic thought, but it fared just as well for
the same young audiences. Also of intrigue in the franchise is its
characters' recognition of the frivolous and awkwardly humorous
ridiculousness of the horror movie genre in context, an angle notable at
first but largely lost upon the concept by its wayward, belated fourth
entry in 2011. Despite the genre's dominance at the box office in the
late 1990's, these kinds of films are 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
franchise was an exception
for the rising talent of Marco Beltrami, these scores becoming an early
calling card for the composer, and within ten years, he would contribute
music for blockbuster franchises in the ranks of
. While the original
score didn't
create a significant jolt in the film music world (songs, as usual,
carried the day commercially), the messy circumstances surrounding other
composers' music in
gave his own material for the
concept a cult status much like that of the films. By
at
the end of the decade, Beltrami had survived countless rumors of his
replacement by finishing the original trilogy of scores with perhaps the
best-rounded and most listenable effort of the three.
In general, Beltrami's contribution to these films
successively improved until
Scream 4, which curiously reverted
back to the generally non-descript personality of the original entry,
and is perhaps even worse in quality. His style for the original two
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 made themselves more
evident in
Scream 2, a soundtrack with a much broader
personality. On album, these first two scores were provided together on
a short product in 1998, hence the fact that this Filmtracks review
initially covered the two scores together. In subsequent decades,
Varèse Sarabande followed up this original product with proper
releases of each score separately, so the analysis of
Scream and
Scream 2 has been divided into two reviews. Some crossover
discussion remains because of the initial 1998 album. Despite the allure
of its oddly gorgeous primary theme, the original
Scream score
was a rather conventional entry in its era, a basic effort by Beltrami
to take a tiny budget and produce a partially synthetic, partially
orchestral score with less than 50 performers. In terms of technique, he
combined the slashing standards established by Young with the
contemporary synthetic styles of Serra and occasional touches of
orchestral complexity from Goldenthal and spaghetti Western mannerisms
from Morricone. For the most part,
Scream is stocked with over an
hour of music that doesn't really make great use of any of these
elements; the suspense and horror material is based upon standard
dissonant atmospheres and series of shrieking stingers that seem
frightfully generic in retrospect. One exception is the fluttering of
high woodwinds as a "gut-sinking" device during the more suspenseful
moments of anticipation. The Morricone influence for the Dewey character
became a point of controversy in the first sequel, as the filmmakers
claimed that test audiences didn't prefer it. The memorable themes in
the score involve those for Sidney, the Neve Campbell character, and the
town of Woodsboro. Beltrami intentionally left the iconic villain
without a motif to accentuate questions about his identity.
The famous, haunting solo female vocals for Sidney's
theme are indeed the voice of the franchise, presenting the scores' most
beautiful and tortured moments. In
Scream, however, this idea is
not as frequently utilized as you might expect, leaving many of the
better developed renditions for the sequels. You hear most of the
original performances on the short 1998 Varèse album, including
the end credits version with some dissonance and electronic distortion
in "Sidney's Lament" and a fuller, more palatable rock-rhythmed
performance in "NC-17" (later titled "Sidney Wants It" on the 2011
album). The latter album also includes a fleeting solo vocal performance
foreshadowing
Scream 2 in "Sid's House." The most engaging and
creative cue in
Scream is "Trouble in Woodsboro," in which
Beltrami unleashes the ruckus of a wild rock and slightly Western-based
rhythm with synthetic wails, various chain-rattling sound effects, and a
synthetic choir for the ultimate in eerie sound. Why Beltrami chose to
abandon this oddly effective and memorable combination of Serra and
Morricone in the rest of the score is a curious question and a
disappointment. Outside of these highlights in
Scream, the
remainder is surprisingly anonymous. On the 1998 album, the two short
snippets of outward horror material are irrelevant, but on the 2011
expanded product, the listening experience is challenging to tolerate.
Only in the two lengthiest killing sequences, "The Cue From Hell" at the
beginning and "They're Crazy" at the end, does Beltrami utilize
percussion and string techniques that begin to rival Young's
applications in the genre. The rest finally yields a solid narrative for
the score on album, but not by any means a pleasant one. Overall, the
1998 Varèse album contains only 12 minutes from
Scream and
17 minutes from
Scream 2, one of the label's more controversial
capitulations to the fees of the musicians' unions. Without Elfman's
music from
Scream 2, the album was always ridiculed, and compared
to the 30 minutes eventually available from the label for
Scream
3, this duo album was never considered adequate. In 2011,
Varèse Sarabande finally followed up their previous product with
an expanded treatment of
Scream alone. Limited to 2,000 copies,
it's a chore to appreciate the fuller original score at an hour in
length. A solid 75-minute album of the best music from all four scores
in the franchise, including the Elfman contribution, was always the best
but unlikely solution.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Marco Beltrami reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.73
(in 26 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.79
(in 17,244 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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