The Mummy Score on DVD

by Roman Deppe

As so many are concerned about whether the DVD of THE MUMMY features the whole score or not, I thought they would be maybe be interested in the additional cues they can hear on the DVD and how much music was left out from album.

This music is a hidden feature on the new DVD. If you leave the Languages menu idle, the score starts playing -- it's that simple.

I taped the cues, and as you can't pause the music on the DVD I can't deliver exact timings, but I can at least give an overview about the missing cues. I made up names for the tracks, which should describe enough for which scene they were used, ordered chronologically.

1) Escape from Hamunaptra - basically the second part of TAUGER ATTACK. Similar in style and tempo - good, relatively short action cue.

2) Tauger/Cairo 1923 - Part 3 of TAUGER ATTACK, moving into a short, upbeat Arabic styled motif, which is repeated later in different version on the CD (GIZA PORT). Nice.

3) Ladder Artist - Short, funny cue when Evelyn destroys the library, falling down the ladder. Simple, funny, and effective, though in my opinion this scene didn't need any music.

4)The Map in the Key - Shortly the menace theme gets introduced.

5) Deal - Slowbuilding suspense cue, when O'Connell is hanging while Evelyn tries to make a deal to save him.

6) A contemporary piano piece, played on the ship. Whether Goldsmith composed this or not, I don't know, but I doubt it.

7) Arabic Folksong (see above)

8) Then There Was Light - Short statement of subtle wonder, when they bring the sunlight into the crypt.

9) In the Crypt - Similar to the suspense music in THE CRYPT found on CD, this kind of music gets repeated endlessly by the way and gets pretty annoying.

10) Evil Discoveries - see above

11) Scarab - Short piece of cool horror music when the Arab gets eaten by the first scarab.

12) Tauger Ambush - Another version of TAUGER ATTACK and NIGHT BOARDERS. Good action, but repetitive.

13) A World Like Her in a Girl Like This - Short and subtle and very nice statement of the love theme

14) The Book of Dead - Short suspense cue

15) First Plague/Mummy Alive/Scarabs Everywhere - Big, great action music. Non-stop. A fantastic and quite long cue, with a lot of different themes and melodies. Great! Segues into...

16) Evelyn meets the Mummy - Good action again, with suspense and some comic effects

17) The Mummy finds a Slave - Slow builiding menace, when the deceiving Beni finds a new master.

18) Arabic Source Music

19) Thank you for your Eyes - Again slow building, interupted by the Arabic song

20) Serious Trouble - Powerful, short action, with some nice choral bars, with a strange piano occuring at the end (which comes from the cat running over the piano in that scene)

21) Sun Eclipse - Another, subtle statement of the Mummy-Theme, when his power grows and when he stalks one of the Americans

22) Fly Plague - Cool action music, with swirling strings for the flies. Nice, but short and again the Mummy-Theme.

23) Artifacts - Very short music, just to accentuate the artifacts

24) Kiss - Percussive, loud cue, just similar to the ones above since Cue 18

25) A contemporary song

26) Airplane - Short heroic cue, when the plane shoots out over the dunes. Nice.

27) Sand Storm - Fantastic and long action cue, when the Mummy transforms into a sand storm and pursues the airplane. Of course, most of the material is not new, but there is some female choir which has nice, new moments.

28) End of a Soldier - Short, military trumpet cue, when the Colonel sinks in the sand with his plane. It's funny, because the music plays so sad. Nice irony.

29) Into the Crypt again - Short supsense

30) Escape from Hamunaptra again - Short, but good action cue, which more or less segues into THE SAND VOLCANO, some bits of SECRET OF NIMH can be heard in here (just because of rocks sinking into dirt or why ?)

31) Into the Sunset - Actually part of THE SAND VOLCANO, just with a slightly different ending

32) End Title - this is basically on the CD (like the love theme and O' Connell's march in THE SAND VOLCANO), but just in a different order and it's not really composed, just put together by the music editor.

All in all the extra music is about 35 minutes of new music (excluding the almost 9 minutes end titles), but only track 15 and 27 are 4 minutes or longer. The rest is not longer than 2 minutes, mostly not longer than 1 minute. Also the track REBIRTH from the CD is divided in three parts in the movie, but no additional music in there.

Many cues get quite repetitive and boring, but there are also enough worth listening to. But the available album includes the best parts and is just put together very well. A huge plus is on the other hand the Dolby Digital Sound which is just amazing and lets the whole score appear like a whole new one.

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