Danny Elfman – Scrooged (Original Motion Picture Score)

In 1988, Danny Elfman was still an imminent young composer who had yet to make his name. He would blow up (not literally) a few years later and is one of the most popular composers working in movies to date (with one too many comic-book movies under his belt). His score to Scrooged is "Pure Elfman" before the schtick got tired and familiar.

Full of dark melancholy Scrooged is one of his classic grim Fairy Tale scores and fits the movie perfectly. But that's not to say there not some truly fun pieces in here. The themes for "The Night the Reindeer Died" and Frank Cross own, terrifying, version of Scrooge are just brilliant and make me laugh every time. A lot of the sounds he creates for Scrooged would later be recycled, for better or worse, into his scores for Batman and Darkman but they work best here with gloomy Christmas setting.

It's a relatively short score, clocking in at 49 minutes in total, including alternates (there are no songs here, so you might want to make your own hybrid album if you want Put a Little Love in Your Heart on the list) but was a bit disappointed that the spooky Jingle Bells melody was not present in all three versions of "The Big Freeze". Like Home Alone, it just doesn't work at any other time of year, but Scrooged is a fine Christmas score to play in the background while you immerse yourself in a Yuletide novel.