Being a fan of movie soundtracks I have picked up over 200
assorted soundtracks from television and movies on compact disc over the years.
Below is a list of some of my favourite soundtracks
available from Amazon.
Batman
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Batman -
The score to the smash hit 1989 movie by Danny Elfman. |
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Batman Forever -
No Danny Elfman this time, but still a very good score (even if the film was not!). |
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Bride of Frankenstein - a classic score, not the original, but sounding
very close. See also Frankenstein, below |
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Carl Stalling - the main composer of
the music played in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Warner Brothers
cartoons, it is only over the past decade or so that his contribution to those
cartoons has been acknowledged.
Danny Elfman
Over the past twenty years, Danny Elfman has become one of the top movie
composers with scores to titles such as Batman (see above), Dick Tracy,
Spider-man, Hulk, Mission: Impossible and many more. Those scores which are
still available and which I recommend are listed under the movie title, but a
few years ago a couple of compilation cds were released...
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Frankenstein - a great collection of tunes and dialogue from the
Universal Frankenstein movie series. |
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Hulk - the theme to the interesting movie directed by Ang Lee |
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King Kong - contains the score to the classic movie, plus dialogue as
well which goes through the entire plot. |
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North by Northwest - one of the great Hitchcock movies, along with a
great score by Bernard Herrman |
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Sci-Fi's
Greatest Hits - The makers of the Television's Greatest Hits
series (see below) with the Sci-Fi Channel have brought us four volumes which
include themes from television shows and movies.
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Volume One - Final Frontier - This first CD covers
lots of familiar ground like the Star Wars themes (not the
originals, but very good interpretations), Star Trek (which
sounds like the animated version to me), Star Trek: The Next
Generation. Also includes some neglected themes like Space: Above
& Beyond, Battlestar Galactica. |
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Volume Two - The Dark Side - More horror and suspense
orientated, with the themes from The Outer Limits (both b&w
and colour series), The Twilight Zone, The Prisoner and quite a
good version of The X-Files. |
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Volume Three - The
Uninvited
- With fewer tracks than the other titlees in the series, and
clips from the famous Orson Welles "War of the Worlds"
radio broadcast included, this may seem like they were padding
this one. However, there are many excellent themes in here,
including: Mars Attacks!, Predator, Jaws, Gremlins, UFO. |
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Volume Four - Defenders of
Justice -
The final entry in the series includes such super hero themes as:
Batman (the 60s television, the 80s film and the recent animated
series are all covered), The Flash, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
(the animated series), RoboCop (both film and television series),
The Terminator. |
The Simpsons
One of the greatest animated shows has a number of excellent soundtracks
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Spider-Man - the theme by Danny Elfman from the enjoyable movie directed
by Sam Rami |
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Star Trek
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Star Trek Volume 3 -
The last CD (so far) from GNP/Crescendo of tracks from the original series. |
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Star Trek Sound Effects -
These are effects from the original series. Not worth buying unless you are desperate for a sound effect which you cannot find on the many hundreds of Star Trek web sites. |
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Star Trek: The Motion Picture 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition
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Not only does this excellent CD contain Jerry Goldsmith's marvellous score to the mediocre film (parts of this score was later adapted as the TNG main theme), but there is also a bonus CD containing material released on an album released in the 1970s featuring many of the original cast. |
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Star Trek V: The Final Frontier -
This was also done by Jerry Goldsmith, who wrote the excellent score to the first film. Unfortunately he used most of the same score again for this film... so get the score for the first film and you more or less have the score to this film as well. |
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Star Trek: The Next Generation Volume 1 -
Originally Jerry Goldsmith was hired to write a brand new score for this new series... unfortunately it took Jerry too long and by the time he had finished it the executives at Paramount went ahead with a version of the score originally created for the first movie. |
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Star Trek: Generations -
The film which finds Picard and Kirk fighting against Soran... surprisingly it does not feature anywhere the tune that Jerry Goldsmith wrote which appeared in the very first Star Trek film or later in the TNG series. |
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Star Trek: First Contact -
The second film featuring the TNG crew, this time against the Borg. This enhanced CD also features an amusing game where you have to try and keep yourself from becoming a Borg. |
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Star Trek: Insurrection -
This was a disappointing movie (and soundtrack) after First Contact, coming
across more like two episodes of the regular series.. |
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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Emissary -
In my opinion, the main theme to this series is probably the worst of the franchise... but the series is one of the best in terms of storylines. |
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Star Trek: Voyager Caretaker -
Realising what a mistake they made with the DS9 theme... Paramount wisely got Jerry Goldsmith back to compose the main theme to this series... and a fine job he did with it. |
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Enterprise - but then they go and get someone to sing the main title....
not one of the best soundtracks... |
Star Wars - one of the movie series of
the last 30 years that changed the industry. The original score by John WIlliams
still remains a classic.
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Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace - after waiting for so long for
the next installment it was difficult for any movie to maintain the
excitement of the original series, but this tried it's best. |
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Star Wars and other Galactic Funk - when the original Star Wars movie
was released in 1977, a single of the soundtrack made it high into the
charts, but it was this version done by 'Mego' which was released.
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Superman - The Man of Steel has
appeared in quite a few different movies and different television shows over the
years.
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It's A Bird, It's A Plane... - in the 1960s surprisingly there was a
musical done of Superman! Come 1976 when talk of a new Superman movie was
doing the rounds, the musical was broadcast on television, which this
soundtrack is taken from. |
Television's
Greatest Hits - One of the first series of compilations of
television theme tunes, it now stands at seven volumes.
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Volume One - Some excellent television
themes are on this CD, including The Lone Ranger, Man from
U.N.C.L.E., Addams Family, Dragnet, Superman among others. But
why are some of the tracks not original - Mission Impossible and
The Munsters being among them. |
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Volume Two - Continuing the series
with some more excellent tunes: Car 54 Where Are You?, Time
Tunnel, I Spy, The Green Hornet, Spider-Man. They also include
The Outer Limits, but have put on the theme from the second
b&w season which in my opinion is not as good as the theme to
the first season. |
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Volume Three, 70's &
80's - If
you were a fan of the main television series during these two
decades then this CD is for you. Among my choices here are: Hart
to Hart, Starsky & Hutch, Simon & Simon, Magnum, and The
Rockford Files. |
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Volume Four - Black &
White Classics - This title goes back and cover some of the shows
the first couple of CDs missed. Among them are: Burke's Law, The
Untouchables, The Fugitive, Johnny Staccato. |
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Volume Five - In Living
Color -
60s and 70s shows are predominantly covered here, including:
Thunderbirds, Six Million Dollar Man, Kolchak, The Invaders. |
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Volume Six - Remote Control - 70s and 80s shows are
covered by this title, including: Police Squad, Moonlighting,
Soap, Benson, Matt Houston, TJ Hooker, Knight Rider, The
Incredible Hulk, The New Twilight Zone. |
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Volume Seven - Cable Ready - The final entry in the
series so far, this includes more recent shows like: The
Simpsons, Ren & Stimpy, Seinfeld, Sledge Hammer, The
Equalizer, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Lois & Clark,
Tales From the Crypt.
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X-Men
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X-Men - the score to the first movie, the score has it's moments. |
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X-Men 2 - the score to the second movie, still sounds similar to the
first even though it's by a different composer. |
