Great Film Scores That Don't Make Great Albums

It's funny, from your thread title, my first thought was Die Hard. I bought the original ST back in the day, only because I liked the end track when Gudonov gets it. Imagine my surprise (and anger) that the track was not on there, as it was taken from James Horner's Aliens ST. I didn't know that until I got the Aliens ST, and surprise, there it was. And it wasn't even used in Aliens.

Die Hard - good example of a great score, bad album.

OUT OF SIGHT and OCEAN'S ELEVEN - terrific David Holmes scores, ruined on disc by excessive use of film dialogue and exclusion of strongest cues (for example, "Rodney Yates," the groovy tune used to establish Atlantic City in OCEAN, only available on Holmes' Let's Get Killed).

(OCEAN'S TWELVE, however, is a vast improvement, with not a single syllable of dialogue and damn near every Holmes cue included in its entirety.)

Other disappointing CD soundtracks:

DAWN OF THE DEAD - You have to purchase both the special edition Goblin score from Cinevox (+ bonus tracks) and DeWolfe cuts from Trunk Records to have the widest scope of music from the film. Too bad the sound quality on the Cinevox disc leaves something to be desired...and you still don't get all of the cues!

JACKIE BROWN - Needs to be revised to include The Guess Who's "Undun," The Delfonics' "La La La Means I Love You," The Supremes' "Baby Love," The Spinners "Cissy Strut," and all of the Roy Ayres music from Coffy. As it stands, kind of a rip-off.

KILL BILL VOLS. 1 & 2 - Again, needs more: Vince Tempera and Fabio Frizzi's "Seven Notes in Black," Lily Chou-Chou's "Wound That Heals," Ennio Morricone's "From Man to Man," "For a Fistful of Dollars," and "The Demise of Barbara and The Return of Joe," Nora Orlandi's "Dies Irae," and all of the Robert Rodriguez cues, among many, many others.

There's a two-disc bootleg of the complete score recording of Die Hard floating around out there. It's a massive improvement, and has the bells at the beginning. It also made me take notice of something I hadn't caught before with the score--Kamen regularly references and homages several classic tunes that are either hummed, whistled or slightly sung by characters in the movie. The most obvious one--the one I already knew about--was Ode to Joy, hummed by Hans during the elevator ride. But there's also cues for "Singin in the Rain" (hummed by Theo), "Winter Wonderland" (hummed by Powell) and "Let it Snow" (used for the end credits and whistled by McClane). The cues are used several times through out the complete score, and almost every one has a "sinister" cousin (ever wondered if Singin in the Rain could be a suspense cue? Here's your score). So if you're able to find it, it makes for a much more rewarding listen than the official but truncated Varese release.

That track is by the Meters, and is excellent.

not sure if this counts...

I'm not sure if this counts, but one of my favorite movies from the '90s was The Replacement Killers. Not the greatest action film in the world, but a decent one and one with a great score and soundtrack. Imagine my horror when I found the soundtrack album only had the score when the film had great songs in it.

The song when we first meet Mira Sorvino's character (some unavailable version of She Makes Me Wanna Die by Tricky). The song from when Danny Trejo and Til Schweiger first arrive (unknown). All lost. I couldn't even bear to buy the score album knowing those 2 really good songs were nowhere near it and knowing there was no soundtrack album. Such a travesty. Maybe if the film had been more of a hit they would have released the songs in some form. Shame.