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Review of Scream (Marco Beltrami)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... on the ridiculed 1998 album if you seek just a small but
surprisingly adequate taste of the most memorable Marco Beltrami cues
from the first two scores in the Scream franchise.
Avoid it... on the longer products if you expect the stock suspense and horror material from Scream to compete favorably with its contemporaries or, for that matter, its own sequels.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Scream: (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 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 Scream 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 The Terminator
and Die Hard. Having never been enamored with the horror genre
prior to his hiring on the original Scream, the composer took
inspiration from Craven and felt embarrassed as he bungled his way
through the score's creation. While his resulting music didn't create a
significant jolt in the film score world (songs, as usual, carried the
day commercially), the messy circumstances surrounding other composers'
music in Scream 2 gave his own material for the concept a cult
status much like that of the films. By Scream 3 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 entry of the three.
In general, Beltrami's contribution to these films successively improved until Scream 4, which enjoyed a far lesser budget for its recording and 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 replaced 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 for Sidney, 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. The recording highly economical, often sounding bigger than the ensemble would entail, especially in his first cue (and trial run for the filmmakers), "The Cue From Hell." 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, embodying the scores' most beautiful and tortured moments. In Scream, however, this idea is not frequently utilized, leaving many of the better renditions for the sequels. You hear most of its 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" (titled "Sidney Wants It" on later albums). The longer albums also include 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 uniquely effective and memorable combination of Serra and Morricone thereafter is curious and disappointing. Outside of these highlights in Scream, the remainder is surprisingly anonymous. On the 1998 album, the two short snippets of outward horror are sideshows, but on the expanded products, 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 genre applications. The rest finally yields a solid narrative for the score on the longer albums 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, especially compared to the 30 minutes eventually available from the label for Scream 3. In 2011, the label finally offered an expanded treatment of Scream alone, one limited to 2,000 copies. It's a chore to appreciate the fuller original score at an hour in length. This presentation was reprised in Varèse's 2016 12-CD "Little Box of Horrors" novelty set and 2022 6-CD set containing all four of Beltrami's scores for the franchise, the latter with a bonus CD adding six minutes of mundane, unreleased stingers and short transitional cues on a separate disc. Also included in 2022 is an orchestra-only version of "The Cue From Hell" and a rather unappealing song by the composer for the movie. That set's appeal is in the later scores, the original Scream score appropriate for franchise enthusiasts only. **
TRACK LISTINGS:
1998 Varèse Album:
Total Time: 29:58
2011/2016 Varèse Albums: Total Time: 63:28
* composed by Christophe Beck 2022 Varèse Album: Total Time: 78:57
* composed by Christophe Beck ** performed by Dillon Dixon
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert of the 1998 album includes no extra information about
the scores or films. That of the 2011, 2016, and 2022 albums feature notes
about both. In the 2016 "Little Box of Horrors" 12-CD set, the product
bundled with other scores in a stylized exterior box. The 2022 set is
contained in an awkwardly unfolding Ghostface-shaped sleeve, with each CD
held within a slim cardboard case.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Scream are Copyright © 1998, 2011, 2016, 2022, Varèse Sarabande, Varèse Sarabande, Varèse Sarabande, Varèse Sarabande and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 7/21/98 and last updated 1/22/23. |
