10 Movie Soundtracks That Think Outside Of The Box Office

Welcome to Soundtrack September! All month long, with the help of some special guest bloggers and readers, I’m going to be celebrating the world of original motion picture soundtrack recordings. There will still be the usual array of reviews of current movies and other whatnot but they will be surrounded by soundtrack centered posts.

I'm kicking off Soundtrack September with this list of soundtracks that weren't content to just be simple collections of score selections or pop song tracks. They featured dialogue excerpts as tracks - sometimes full chucks of audio from the composite track of the film instead of the standard isolated music track. Often these albums contain material that's not in the movie they represent - different versions of songs, cut lines from post production, and new voice-overs. In their reshaping of the movie material they became works of art in their own right. Here are my 10 favorites from the many soundtracks out there that think outside the box office:

1. THE MONKEES: HEAD (Colgems Records 1968/Rhino 1994) The Monkees only theatrical release was a critical and commercial flop on original release but it's picked up a well deserved cult following over the years in no small thanks to its psychedelic soundtrack. It's a merry mishmash in which 7 songs (including "The Porpoise Song", "As We Go Along", and "Can You Dig It") emerge out of the chaos of sound effects, repeated out-of-context lines (as if there's a context in the film) and assorted trippy effects reportedly under the influence of Frank Zappa (who has a cameo in the movie and the album). The original album did not feature Mike Nesmith's "Circle Sky" performed live in the film - it substituted an inferior studio take of the song. Happily, a 90's Rhino re-release restored the ferocious live version as well as a nice handful of bonus tracks (including a cool radio spot).

The icing on the cake? The Original Album Coordinator who did the bulk of the vigorous editing on this project: Jack Nicholson (co-screenwriter and producer of HEAD seen above with the Monkees).

2. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK: THE MOVIE ON RECORD (Columbia Records, 1981)

In the late 70's and early 80's a lot of "story of" albums were produced of the STAR WARS films, Disney features, Muppet movies, etc. that feature audio excerpts with a 40's style narrator guiding listeners through. For the first Indiana Jones adventure a soundtrack was released separate from the one of the score by composer John Williams. Billed "The Movie On Record", it was an album of "Actual Dialogue, Music, and Sound Effects" but most importantly - no narration. 4 time Academy Award winner Sound Designer Ben Burtt (creator of the voice of WALL-E among other iconic work) admitted in an interview that much of this album was made from little of the original soundtrack; he recorded new effects and recreated the dialogue with the film's cast as voice actors much like old radio shows. The album won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word LP in 1982.

3. THE ALBUM OF THE SOUNDTRACK OF THE TRAILER OF THE FILM OF MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (Arista, 1975) This is only a soundtrack in the loosest sense - approximately 40% of it is movie material; the other 60% has the Pythons bogusly broadcasting from a fictional theater (The Classic Silbury Hill) for the "premiere" of the film. John Cleese plays a reporter who talks over the opening scene with patrons telling him to shut up, the production is halted while the projectionist fights a grizzly bear for the next reel, an announcer (Graham Chapman) repeatedly tells us that this is the "Executive Version" of the record, and so on. The records of the

Monty Python films that followed - LIFE OF BRIAN and THE MEANING OF LIFE had a bit of this embellishing but not with the whole team and to the extreme of this supremely silly yet essential soundtrack.

4. APOCALYPSE NOW (Warner Brothers, 1979) This soundtrack is pretty much the full composite track of the motion picture spread over 2 records. It's a trippy absorbing listen that's worth seeking out. The soundtrack for the REDUX version (2001) removes the dialogue bits and presents composer Carmine Coppola's score, along with The Doors "The End" and Flash Cadillac's "Suzy Q", but I prefer the original recording. It reminds me of the days before home video when a soundtrack was all one had to invoke the mood of one's favorite movie. Removed from the imagery, Martin Sheen's voice over narration works just as well on record as it does in the film, the jungle sounds surround the listener, and Marlon Brando's haunting "the horror...the horror" evocation echo in the psyche. Or maybe that's the Thai sticks talking...

5. NATURAL BORN KILLERS: A SOUNDTRACK FOR AN OLIVER STONE FILM (Interscope Records 1994)

"I suggested to Oliver (Stone) to try to turn the soundtrack into a collage-of-sound, kind of the way the movie used music: make edits, add dialogue, and make it something interesting, rather than a bunch of previously released music."

- Nine Inch Nails founder Trent Reznor in an interview with MTV.

As producer/compiler Reznor provides another absorbing listen and one that introduced many to Leonard Cohen via 2 stellar songs off of his 1992 album "The Future". My only complaint is Reznor mixing a bit of Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis dialogue on top of Bob Dylan's cover of the 50's standard "You Belong To Me". Such a thing just should not be done.

6. THE ADVENTURES OF BOB & DOUG McKENZIE IN STRANGE BREW (Polygram Records, 1983) The album cover denotes "Excerpts From The Original Sountrack" so much like the MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL album this functions as a comedy record in its own right. The success of Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas's "Great White North" record paved the way for the SCTV characters of Canadian descent to enter the world of movies, so it's kind of funny to have Moranis stress more than once that this that this is not their second album - it's the soundtrack album. Funny because they never made another album and with all the additional material here they might as well consider it their second album. As a comedy record it's a good one - some bits from the movie work better disembodied from the visuals and the track "Shakespeare Horked Our Script" amusingly calls attention to the fact they stole the basic narrative from "Hamlet". It's never been released officially on CD but like much on this list it can be found on the internets.

7. PULP FICTION (MCA Records, 1994)

From RESERVOIR DOGS to DEATH PROOF, Tarantino's soundtracks have featured dialogue tracks (INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is the first that doesn't) but PULP FICTION is by far the most popular - it seems everyone I knew had this in their CD collection in the 90's. It's a hip movie mix; tracks by Urge Overkill, Dusty Springfield, and Kool & The Gang rub shoulders with John Travolta's "Royale with cheese" bit, Bruce Willis's immortal "Zed's dead, baby", and Samuel L. Jackson's "Ezekiel 25:17". 15 years after the movie, these tracks are still effective - program them into an iPod shuffle and see for yourself.

8. GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM (A & M Records, 1988) Sure, the comedy of Robin Williams is far from hip these days but back in the day (the late 80's) his routines were quoted ad nauseum. The rapid fire lines from his starring turn in Barry Levinson's Vietnam-set dramedy were no exception. The dominance of James Brown's "I Feel Good (I Got You)" in family feel-good comedies (or at least their trailers) can be traced to this film but don't hold that against it. Era songs by Louis Armstrong, The Marvelettes, and the Beach Boys make up the playlist of Williams as Armed Forces Radio Services DJ Adrian Cronauer. Incidentally the weekly NPR program "Sound Opinions" uses the sound bite of Williams' "This is not a test, this is rock 'n roll!" in their opening to this day.

9. UHF: ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK AND OTHER STUFF (Warner Brothers, 1989) Nobody would expect a soundtrack from a Weird Al Yankovic movie (his only movie) to play by soundtrack rules and this hodgepodge sure doesn't. It makes this list because of tracks directly from the film like the commercial parody "Spatula City" and the phony trailer for "Gandhi II" which make great compilation fillers or fodder for college DJs. However the non movie related tracks like a spoof of R.E.M.'s "Stand" called "Spam" and "Generic Blues" are just throw-away Weird Al but they still don't disqualify it.

10. BONNIE AND CLYDE (Collector's Choice, 2009) Though it's not the first soundtrack album to feature dialogue - that would be THE GREAT ESCAPE - BONNIE AND CLYDE provides the template for the composite movie mix that Reznor and Tarantino would run with. The dialogue tracks offer cushioning and punctuation for the musical score - as spare as they are. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway's exchanges are enhanced by the then very innovative presentation on vinyl. It's a hard to come by record nowadays but again, one worth seeking out.

Okay! There are many more soundtracks that feature dialogue in an inventive mix (PATTON, ANIMAL HOUSE, BLADE RUNNER, etc.) so if you have a favorite - please send it on. Also if you have soundtrack favorites of any kind (classical scores, pop songs, musicals, etc.) please email me (filmbabbleblog@gmail.com) your favorites (instead of leaving them as comments on this post please) and I may include them this month during Soundtrack September! Hope to hear from you.

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Quentin Tarantino's World War II: Electric Boogaloo

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (Dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

Warning: This review is riddled with Spoilers!

"Once upon a time...in Nazi occupied France". So begins Quentin Tarantino's long awaited mock epic war movie in which slaughter and blood are upstaged by talky tension. This is expertly displayed in the first scene (or chapter as the title card calls it). An SS Colonel (Christoph Waltz) proud of his nickname "the Jew Hunter", questions a French farmer (Denis Menochet) who is suspected of hiding a missing Jewish family. The scene takes its time with their back and forth before the camera pans down to show us that the farmer is indeed harboring the family beneath his floor boards. The set up and powerful payoff of this chilling opening confirm that the pulse and tone of Tarantino's best work is intact and while subtlety was never a strength of his, he is learning to exercise some patience and restraint. However, patience and restraint both stand down for most of the rest of the film.

In the second "chapter" we meet Brad Pitt and his crew of "Basterds" - a team of Jewish American soldiers intent on killing as many Nazis as possible. As Pitt puts it in his unconvincing yet still appropriately comedic Southern accent: "We're not in the taking prisoners business, we're in the killing Nazi killing business, and business is boomin'!" Along the way a few big 3-D style block letter intros to characters like Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger) thrown in (with Samuel L. Jackson narration no less) prove that you can't completely take the 70's comic book cinema leanings out of Mr. Too Cool For Film School. The Basterd crew also includes Eli Roth, B.J. Novak, and Sam Levine (Freaks And Geeks) Once we fully get that our heroes are way into collecting scalps and branding Swastika's into survivor's heads it's on to the next chapter.

The only hiding member of the first scene to escape, Mélanie Laurent ends up owning a Paris theater under a different identity. To her dismay when changing the marquee she catches the eye of a soldier (Daniel Brühl) who played himself in a film made by Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth). Despite voicing her disinterest, Brühl proceeds with his plan to premiere his film at her cinema with an Nazi audience topped off by Goebels and other German bigwigs like Hermann Göring, Martin Bormann, and the Furher himself, Adolf Hitler (a blustery red faced Martin Wuttke). Laurent with her projectionist boyfriend (Jacky Ido) plots to burn the theater down with all the Nazi's locked inside. Meanwhile the Basterds have a plan of their own for the same event.

Even with his preposterous accent, Pitt's performance is one of his finest. So much better as a Basterd than he was as Benjamin Button, mainly because here he actually has a character to play. His salt of the earth manner peppered with no holds barred brutality is a joy to behold. As the slick but slimy opportunist Colonel, Christoph Waltz has the most dialogue and he makes the most of every word of it, he's definitely worthy of a nomination. The action primarily revolves around these 2 men with Laurent's well timed turn rounding it out. There are few lulls as the story strands come together and the pace pleasingly pulsates quickly towards the end where an intensely satisfying conclusion (which I won't spoil) awaits.

It's too early to tell where INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS falls in Tarantino's canon but it's sturdier and significantly more solid than his last few films (the KILL BILL flicks and DEATH PROOF). If you go looking for historical accuracy or anything resembling reality you'll definitely come up short, but if you go expecting Tarantino's patented brand of film geek gusto infusing an alternate history graphic novel of a movie, you should do just fine.

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Chatting With The Creators Of Cinema Overdrive Part 1 of 4

Next week a new series starts at the Colony Theater in North Raleigh, NC (Yes, this is another local-centric post) entitled "Cinema Overdrive". As readers should well know, I've been a huge fan of the theater's ongoing series "Cool Classics @ The Colony" which has long provided area movie goers with special showings of 35 Millimeter prints of long loved cult movies like ERASERHEAD, LABYRINTH, THE BIG LEBOWSKI, and PURPLE RAIN. "Cinema Overdrive" however, goes much further. As the description on their website says they present "the best in high-octane cult/horror/exploitation/drive-in and forgotten films that are waiting to find an audience."

The series kicks off next Wednesday (August 12th at 8:00 PM) with DEATH RACE 2000. Future showings will be of SHOGUN ASSASSIN, VICE SQUAD, PIECES, and LADY TERMINATOR (see the picture montage above). I had a cool chat with a couple of the creators (the other being Adam Hulin who I hope to talk to soon) of this exciting new series: Denver Hill and Matt Pennachi. Both are 35 MM film collectors and fellow film fanatics so it was an engrossing conversation I'm anxious to share. In this first part we discuss just what "Cinema Overdrive" is about, what was wrong with the movie GRINDHOUSE, and why everybody should make it out to SHOGUN ASSASSIN in September.

Dan: How did “Cinema Overdrive” come together? What was the impetus for it?

Denver: Well, Matt and I have been friends for a couple of years. We both collect 35 millimeter, and I’ve always been a fan of “Retrofantasma” (Pennachi’s former series at the Carolina Theater in Durham, NC). That actually inspired the “Cool Classics” and we had the opportunity, I just said “hey, do you want to try this in Raleigh?”

Matt: Yeah, well one thing I’ll say about “Cinema Overdrive”, there’s other repertory series in the area including “Cool Classics”, but with ours we’re bringing a little danger back to movie going. All the others are kind of safe, this one - the faint of heart may not necessarily need to apply. If you have even the worry that it may not be politically correct enough for you, you shouldn’t buy a ticket. The 70’s weren’t very politically correct.

Denver: But that’s what we want though – we want to challenge. Like with “Cool Classics” it’s like maybe one of your favorite movies but you never saw it in the theater, but with “Cinema Overdrive” it’s probably a movie you’ve never seen before. It maybe offend or shock or just make you go “Oh my God!” you know, but we just want to bring the excitement back.

Matt: I think we have the opportunity because I have enough respect and faith in film fans in the Triangle – I think there’s a lot of really savvy film people in this area.

Dan: Oh yeah, absolutely.

Matt: I mean if your idea of being a real film nerd is having an in depth conversation about Tim Burton, we’re probably not for you. But I mean if you really love…you know, we’re everything that Quentin Tarantino’s GRINDHOUSE was supposed to be.

Dan: What did you think of that film? That’s a movie that comes up when I think of the idea behind “Cinema Overdrive”. Was it too much that it was fake “Grindhouse”? I had a friend who said that “if only Tarantino and Rodriquez worked with real Grindhouse budgets”, you know?

Matt: I feel the same way. My major problem was when I first saw it I was like well, it’s relatively entertaining…but my main problem is when I heard it was that it was a 72 million dollar film I was like wouldn’t it have been more interesting if they said we’re going to try to recreate 1974 and put it on a inflation adjusted dollar and that means, okay Jack Hill would’ve made that for $800,000 - inflation adjusted that’s 3.4 million so meaning if we can’t get Kurt Russell and have to make the movie with Ken Wahl from Wiseguy, somebody call up and find Ken Wahl. That would’ve been a more interesting experiment to me. And the thing is, I think particularly with Rodriquez’s segment, he brought the poster to life more than the actual film. There were no “Grindhouse” movies that had people jumping on motorcycles with monstrous town-size explosions - they never could afford it.

Denver: Well, I didn’t like all the fake scratches and fake splices.

Dan: The “missing reels”?

Matt: First of all, the “missing reel” thing is something that never ever existed in a “Grindhouse” cinema. You know why? Because if you were in a shit-hole cinema and there was a reel missing there’s no way on earth they were going to let you know. Never.

Denver: You know, the Triangle is one of the top 5 growing areas in the country. We have people from all of the country moving here so there’s definitely a demand for all these types of movies that we’re showing.

Matt: Even though I don’t make it out because I have kids basically and my wife works in the evening, I love the concept of “Cool Classics”. It’s a lot of movies you know but it’s not fixated to one genre. There might be something mega-famous and safe like LABYRINTH and then there also might be something that’s famous in the sense that a lot of people know what ERASERHEAD is but haven’t necessarily seen it. (To Denver) Oh, Phil Blankenship, I told him about your PURPLE RAIN show, and he said PURPLE RAIN is just a home run ball – we did it out here in LA and it was the same thing. Patton Oswalt came! It’s like I said, ‘I wouldn’t have guessed it’, he was like “I wouldn’t have either but PURPLE RAIN is still huge!”

Denver: Yeah, we need to show that one again.

Matt: I’ll be honest I’ve never that movie. I’ve always meant to.

Dan: Last summer was the first time I’d seen it all the way through.

Matt: Did you like it?

Dan: Oh, I liked it a lot. There’s a huge cheese factor to it, but that’s what makes it great. The live sequences at 1st Avenue and the Morris Day whatnot, all of that is crowd pleasing stuff. In fact, not long ago on “Sound Opinions”, you know that show? NPR?

Matt: That’s a great show!

Dan: Yeah, they were doing one of their “album dissections” on “Purple Rain”, because it’s the 25th anniversary. One of them, Jim I think, was saying “You see it once and you don’t ever have to see ‘Purple Rain’ again”, and I was like ‘are you crazy? There’s a high re-watchability factor!

Matt: Maybe they haven’t watched it enough to know that.

Dan: Yeah, that’s the thing I was wondering, have they really re-watched it lately?

Matt: It’s like there’s millions of people that went out and saw KILL BILL: VOL. 2, right? Well at the end there’s that touching scene where the Bride and her daughter watch SHOGUN ASSASSIN. Well, how many people have seen SHOGUN ASSASSIN? If they come here in September we’ll show them SHOGUN ASSASSIN.

Dan: I’ve never seen it. There are so many films, that as a “film guy” I am ashamed to admit that I’ve never seen.

Matt: Oh my God! That movie is amazing theatrically. It’s just jaw dropping. I feel so ebullient when I run the print. I love this movie.

Denver: We joked about it at first but I think we really are trying to educate people about film.

Matt: It’s not like “Mystery Science 3000”, it’s like going to church. You go to have a social experience but you also go to learn about something that you have great faith in!

Next week: Part 2 of my chat with Denver and Matt. We'll discuss their premiere showing of DEATH RACE 2000 and go off on more crazy tangents surrounding "Cinema Overdrive" and other obsessive film fodder. Please stay tuned.

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