Enjoy this roundup of (mostly 80s) horror movie theme songs!
Mixtape Alert: Classic Horror Movie Themes
movies
The Casual Elitism of Only Lovers Left Alive
Eve: “Yasmine. She’s Lebanese. I’m sure she’ll be very famous.”
Adam: “God, I hope not. She’s way too good for that.”
An elite indifference lurks at the heart of Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), Jim Jarmusch’s anti-love story between an unlikely pair of ancient vampires Adam and Eve, played by a criminally underfed Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton.
Kill Your Children: Candle Cove & The Void
(Spoilers below.)
We can thank Rosemary’s Baby and Alien for dragging childbirth into modern horror. “I know your secret,” mutters The Void’s bad guy Dr. Powell as he teases the protagonist for his relief at his wife’s recent miscarriage. The instinct to resist impregnation (or even multiplication) is at the heart of Ripley’s first encounter with a xenomorph. Hell, eggs themselves were used to warn audiences in 1979 that it was probably already too late, that the reproductive wheels had been turning since before they were in line for popcorn.
The Problem Of Charlie Bucket’s Greed
[Update: I re-watched Willy Wonka three years after writing this post and have a few more thoughts. I don’t know why I assumed it took place in England; it must have been the Dickensian last names that threw me, along with the quintessentially English schoolteacher. But none of the other kids (or Charlie’s family members for that matter) have English accents. I can’t pin down exactly where the story is supposed to take place, but I guess it must be somewhere in America, which makes Wonka’s nationality less intrusive. (I understand it was filmed in Germany, but that doesn’t help explain the plethora of American accents.)
Jason Herrboldt 