CD REVIEW - THE DEFINITIVE HORROR MUSIC COLLECTION


The Definitive Horror Music Collection
Various composers
Silva Screen SILCD1288
4 CDs

Released on 26th October (in good time for Halloween) is the latest in Silva Screen's "Definitive" collection, this time bringing us 4 discs of music , largely performed by the City of Prague Philharmonic, and featuring a good cross-section of music written for horror (or related) pictures down the years.
Disc 1 features suites and themes from recent offerings Drag Me To Hell, Twlight, Let The Right One In, Cloverfield, Sunshine, Pan's Labyrinth, King Kong, War of the Worlds, Saw, 28 Days Later, The Ring, and The Mummy Returns. Some of these I would hardly classify as horror, more like fantasy and sci-fi, but I'm completely mystified by the inclusion of the theme from TV show Dexter, and from crime thrillers Zodiac and Hannibal.
Disc 2 gradually works its way back through time with Goldsmith's The Mummy, Sleepy Hollow, The Haunting, The Sixth Sense, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Village of the Damned (the remake), Bram Stoker's Dracula, Army of Darkness, The Witches of Eastwick, Predator, Hellraisers I & II, They Live, Aliens, and Ghostbusters (!).
Disc 3 offers A Nightmare on Elm Street, Christine, Poltergeist, The Thing, Halloween II, The Fog, Dressed To Kill, The Shining, Dracula (the John Williams score), Phantasm, Alien, Halloween, The Fury, Suspiria and Exorcist II.
Finally, Disc 4 features The Omen, Young Frankenstein, The Exorcist, Duel, Taste The Blood of Dracula, Rosemary's Baby, Twisted Nerve, The Devil Rides Out, Dracula Prince of Darkness, The Haunting, Dracula (Bernard), Horrors of the Black Museum, The Thing From Another World, Bride of Frankenstein and Nosferatu.
Summing it all up, one certainly can't call this a "definitive" collection of horror music, as quite a few of the selections are simply not from horror films, though it's interesting to play the game of listing just how many fine horror movie scores are not represented. Nevertheless, this is a good and varied collection of music, pretty faithfully played, which will appeal particularly to younger cinema goers, and would serve as ideal background music for your Halloween party.
Got to www.silvascreenmusic.com where you can preview tracks, download them, or order your copy of the set on CD.