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Judgement Night, what hath ye wrought?


Ireneo_Funes

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Back in the summer of 1995 I worked a temp job for a couple of weeks in a warehouse, packaging Christmas CDs for shipment to WalMart stores. Every day we'd listen to the same damn CD over and over on the shift leader's boom box: the Judgement Night soundtrack. I hated it. Even though I liked some of the bands on the record individually, I thought the rap/metal/alternative collaborations were contrived and bizarre (i.e. Sonic Youth + Cypress Hill).

 

Fast forward to 2005. This morning I found myself reading customer reviews of "Judgement Night on amazon.com. Suddenly, I realized that this album wasn't just a poorly conceived hack job thrown together for an even worse movie... it was seminal! Without "Judgement Night," we'd probably never have Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, and all their kin. Leaving aside the musical merit of the crop of rap/metal bands, the interesting thing here is just how important this album was, and how it's had a much bigger artistic and cultural impact than the movie.

 

So it got me thinking: what other soundtracks turned out to be more important, or demonstrably better, than the movies they supported? I can think of a couple: "The Harder They Come," and "Superfly." Any others?

 

Oh yeah, "Yellow Submarine," too.

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PLOT DESCRIPTION

Rock legend Neil Young directed this bizarre bit of sci-fi-accented satire under his nom de cinema Bernard Shakey, as well as starring as Lionel Switch, an amiable but half-bright auto mechanic who has a furious crush on Charlotte Goodnight (Charlotte Stewart), a waitress at the diner next door to his garage. Lionel dreams of becoming a professional musician, and idolizes Frankie Fontaine (also played by Young), a particularly sleazy lounge singer. One day, to Lionel's astonishment, Fontaine rolls up to his garage in a limousine, and Lionel has the spine-tingling honor of working on his car. Meanwhile, suspicious-looking bad guy Otto Quartz (Dean Stockwell) is scheming to buy the diner, which has something to do with a plot against the rattletrap nuclear power plant just down the road (the plant's maintenance staff is played by members of the pioneering new wave band Devo). Along the way, we're also treated to Lionel hanging out with his equally slow-witted pal Fred (Russ Tamblyn), enjoy the residents of the desert community performing an enthusiastic rendition of the old Kingston Trio chestnut "Worried Man," and witness Lionel and Devo jamming on a long and wildly discordant version of "Hey Hey My My (Into the Black)." Financed by Young out of his pocket, and featuring Stockwell, Tamblyn, Dennis Hopper, and Sally Kirkland several years before they enjoyed critical rediscovery, Human Highway received a mostly puzzled reaction from audiences during its handful of theatrical engagements. It went largely unseen until it was released on home video more than ten years after it was completed (with the box featuring a quote from one of Young's associates: "This is so bad, it's going to be huge!"). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

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Or how about Space Is The Place

 

SPACE IS THE PLACE, featuring musician Sun Ra became an instant cult classic and an important piece of African-American cultural literacy. When Sun Ra returns to Earth after traveling the galaxy in his music-powered ship, he sets off on a crusade to save the the black race by transporting them to another planet. The release of the director's cut brings back for consideration the issues dealt with in the film, and highlights the career of Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Solar Arkestra. The innovative combination of social commentary and psychedelic musical space adventure make this film an instant classic.
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Or how about Space Is The Place

 

SPACE IS THE PLACE, featuring musician Sun Ra became an instant cult classic and an important piece of African-American cultural literacy. When Sun Ra returns to Earth after traveling the galaxy in his music-powered ship, he sets off on a crusade to save the the black race by transporting them to another planet. The release of the director's cut brings back for consideration the issues dealt with in the film, and highlights the career of Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Solar Arkestra. The innovative combination of social commentary and psychedelic musical space adventure make this film an instant classic.

 

Sounds like segregation to me.

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