Customer Reviews

Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas & Horton Hears A Who!

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Let me start off by saying that I love the Grinch - it's simply not Christmas without him. But this soundtrack of the classic TV special is not what I had expected it to be. All the dialogue and songs are here exactly as heard on the TV program, but really if we wanted to hear the exact TV special, we could just as well pop in the tape or the DVD. Boris Karloff's dialog and Grinch are divine - no gripes here. When you're listening to the songs as interspersed throught the dialog as originally intended that's OK too. I like the idea of reprising the songs complete with no dialoge, except during "You're A Mean One Mr. Grinch" there are some large gaps in the song where dialogue exists. The songs in tracks 11-14 could stand better editing for better continutity.

What blows my mind though is that Turner (which now controls the film) has stooped so low as to package this delightful soundtrack in such moronic packaging as this. How cheap! I can honestly say that this is the poorest excuse for a CD case I have ever seen in a Turner/Warner product. The Grinch deserves better than this.

The Jim Carey movie notwithstanding, there are 2 soundtrack versions of the 1966 TV special: this one from Turner and the other version with the white cover from (I think) MCA. The other version is not taken directly from the soundtrack as this one IS, but is more of a studio recording. While you can't surpass the performances as seen on TV, I do prefer the MCA version of the album. The performances by Boris Karloff (on both albums) are essentially identical, and the Grinch's lines on the MCA disc are taken directly from the soundtrack. Thurl Ravenscroft's singing of "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch" is only slightly different between the two albums, but on the MCA disc is done with better continuity (and more clarity) and that is the rendition of the song you usually hear on the radio at Christmas time. I especially love the addition of the word "deplorable" in "You're A Mean One" on MCA's album, as follows: "Your soul is an appalling dungheap, overflowing with the most disgraceful assortment of deplorable rubbish imaginable....."

I like the 1966 "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" very much. It is much better than the 2000 movie that I was greatly dissapointed by. The musical score of the 1966 TV movie excelent. The quality of the score is brough up and emphasized from behind the narration of Boris Karloff. And though I was a little dissapointed that the dialogue wasn't filtered out so the score was only heard, I still give it five stars. I have never seen "Hotron Hears A Who", so I wasn't that impressed by the soundtrack to that. For this holiday season, buy the 1966 soundtrack to "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", not the 2000 soundtrack.

i remember watching the grinch, every christmas season & loving the plot& the inside jokes , but most of all i loved the music. last christmas i purchased this disc & was'nt at all disappointed. not only does it included the grinch & horton hears a who, but delightful sinly bonus tracks plus liner notes with chuck jones that drew the grinch. weather christmas is coming or not it's a great disc to listen to, happy days to all. highly recommended!

This is a really nice CD that includes all the music from the Grinch plus the entire sound track of the original classic cartoon. We listen to the story every year as we drive cross country for Christmas.

if you loved the movie as a child, you should love the soundtrack as well... normally I don't buy mp3s because of the cloud storage issue, but I downloaded my purchase to the computer... I got the full album only because somehow I saved up like $16. of mp3 credit, so this was my free album :)

One of the tensest -- and most memorable -- moments in all of "Horton" comes shortly after Horton has been "roped and caged", and they're about to submerge Horton's clover -- dustspeck and all -- into "a hot steaming kettle of beezlenut oil" --

"Boil that dustspeck! Boil that dustspeck! Boil that dustspeck!
Boil! Boil! Boil! Boil!
Beezlenut! (Rah! Rah!) Beezlenut! (Rah! Rah!)
Beezlenut! (Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah!) Beezlenut OIL!"

On the SAMPLE CLIP, you can JUST catch the start of this memorable chant -- but they quickly fade it out. HOWEVER, the WHOLE THING -- chant and all! -- is indeed included on the CD itself.

On that basis ALONE, I've felt it worth awarding this CD a full five stars (that, plus the fact that "Horton" is in stereo. Strange that "Grinch" is NOT, though -- "Grinch" is mono only.)

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N.B.: This review has been EDITED to be the complete REVERSE of my ERRONEOUS earlier, first impression -- SILLY ME! I had quite overlooked that what I was listening to was a Sample Clip, and not the CD track itself! I offer sincere and heartfelt apologies to anyone who relied on my earlier review based on that piece of pure idiocy.

One of the tensest -- and most memorable -- moments in all of "Horton" comes shortly after Horton has been "roped and caged", and they're about to submerge Horton's clover -- dust speck and all -- into "a hot steaming kettle of beezlenut oil" --

"Boil that dustspeck! Boil that dustspeck! Boil that dustspeck!
Boil! Boil! Boil! Boil!
Beezlenut! (Rah! Rah!) Beezlenut! (Rah! Rah!)
Beezlenut! (Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah!) Beezlenut OIL!"

On this CD you can JUST catch the start of this memorable chant -- but they quickly fade it out! How disgusting!

So I've been forced to give this (otherwise memorable) CD only three stars instead of five. Boo-hoo.

Came quickly. Works fine. Takes me back to when I was a kid.

I was in the process of making a holiday mix CD and decided to purchase individual songs.
"You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch" was a must-have.

However, I should have either:
a) Read the reviews before purchasing with 1-click (as one reviewer said, this CD is just a transcription of the movie we all grew up with. Why would I want the exact same thing on CD?!?) OR...
b) Known that the song wasn't 5 minutes long, even if you put the two parts of the song together. 0:59 seconds of the track is the song I wanted, and the rest is Boris Karloff reading the story. It's cutoff in a random spot, so it's completely unusable on the mix CD.

What a waste of 99 cents. :(

SUPER FAST SHIPPING GREAT PRICE GREAT VALUE I WOULD BUY FROM THIS SELLER AGAIN.