Ask The A.V. Club - March 21, 2008
Sometimes They Come Back… Cooler
Perhaps you could help me with
identifying a movie. In the late '70s, my brother and I used to watch
Saturday-afternoon horror movies on the local UHF station. As you can probably
guess, these movies were the typical low-budget fare that was popular at the
time. One of our personal favorites was a biker horror movie in which all the
bikers started committing suicide, and then came back from the dead. As far as
B-movies go, this one was at the bottom. Most of the movie was hysterically
funny, but there were one or two moments that were genuinely scary. My favorite
part was when a very overweight biker (Meat Loaf?) jumped off a bridge to join
his undead friends. In the next scene, at his funeral, he drives out of his
coffin on a motorcycle. I would love to get a copy of this movie, but have no
idea how to find it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Edward
Chris Mincher lends you a hand:
"Ride With The Living Dead!" read the
tagline of 1973's Psychomania, an English flick with a generic
title that did little to prepare viewers for the suicidal zombie-biker mayhem
that was to ensue. Though a little obscure here in the States, the movie is a
genuine cult classic in Britain, especially for anyone fascinated with the true
horror on display in the film: Austin Powers-esque '70s-era British fashion. (Go-go
boots, bad interior design, hot pants, etc.) Hell, I'd want to kill myself,
too.
The gist of the plot: A biker gang, a
skull-helmet-wearing posse called "The Living Dead," spend their time wreaking
havoc on a small town, but that's not good enough—they have to make a
pact with the devil, too. Believing they're set up for eternal life, the oddly
articulate members of the crew follow their leader by killing themselves one by
one. This in itself proves entertaining, as the enthused Satanists do
everything from drowning themselves with chains to riding their bikes into
furniture vans (and, yes, jumping off a bridge) to complete the task. The
payoff: Each returns as an indestructible zombie that terrorizes the
town—at least, until their undoing via a bizarre frog-worship ritual. (At
that point in the plot, making sense is no longer a priority.)
There are two ways to view the film: straight
kitsch, or an exploitive attempt to play off fears that bikers and hippies were
a threat to society. The scene you describe seems to back theory number two:
The main biker guy is buried on his bike—all bikers should do this—then,
after a bunch of hippies sing a folk song about biker-life, he bursts from the
ground ready to fuck shit up. Ahhhh! Killer-zombie-creating folk songs!
Somebody shut up Bob Dylan right this minute! (The soundtrack, overall, is a
guilty-pleasure collection of slick Brit-rock.) Weird trivia: Oscar-winner
George Sanders (Best Supporting Actor for All About Eve) had a bit
part in the film, his last—he killed himself before the movie was
released. Shrewdly, he wasn't buried on a motorcycle.
Ask
Another Special Guest Star
In
commercials, films, and TV shows, I'll frequently hear what sounds like a
familiar, much-beloved song, but then there's a slight change in the melody,
indicating that the producers of that ad, movie, or show were not able to
secure the rights to the original song, i.e. a recent KFC commercial that
almost sounds like "Sweet Home Alabama," or Lewis Black's intro music on The Daily Show, which almost sounds
like "Back In Black." I'm seeing the same thing with the stars of commercials,
too: an ad for high-definition programming with a woman who almost looks like
Alanis Morissette (or Courtney Cox, if you're my girlfriend), a pizza
commercial with a gentleman who almost looks like John Cleese, a men's shampoo
commercial with a guy who almost looks like Harrison Ford. I understand the
reasons behind these choices—if you can't get "Sweet Home Alabama" or
John Cleese, get the next best thing—but is there a name for such a
technique? And are there musicians and performers out there who make their
entire living not by impersonating the work of AC/DC or Alanis, but simply
coming close enough to being them?
J.
Tyler Webb
For the word straight from the horse's
musical mouth, Christopher Bahn went to a musician of his acquaintance, Mike
Ruekberg, who works for the advertising industry when he isn't pursuing his own
projects. Here's his response to your letter, J. Tyler:
Sadly,
this is a large part of what I do for a living. I'm not sure if there is a
formal name for it, but terms I've heard and used include such obscure insider
jargon as "rip-off," "knockoff," and "copy."
It's
really as simple as it seems. Ad agency likes a popular song or artist,
wouldn't dream of spending the huge money required to acquire said song or
artist, hires a music house (or lone music dude) to, uh, approximate the style
of said song or artist. Are there musicians who make their entire living this
way? Yes indeed! I myself make a
decent (though not my entire) living singing jingles in the style of whatever
artist I'm asked to approximate. My own specialties range from '70s
soft-rock-style singing to full-throated AC/DC-style screaming. And back when I
used to write jingles full-time, we were always hiring singers based on whether
they could "do a good Aretha," or "a great Tom Waits," etc.
Obviously,
current musical trends play a strong role in what music houses are asked to
approximate. Back in the late '90s, every agency was asking for ad music that
sounded like Fatboy Slim. Then everything had to sound like Alanis. Then a few
years ago, you couldn't avoid endless rip-offs of the "Lust For Life" drumbeat.
Then it was Coldplay, especially "Clocks." I've noticed that every TV spot from
the last few months seems to be ripping off the innocent-yet-melancholy
acoustic music from the Apple iPhone TV spots.
And
of course, the goal is to come close to the style without getting so close that
you end up in court. Which does happen once in a while.
Side
note: In the past, artists might have also refused to license a song to an
advertiser to avoid the stigma of "selling out," or because they didn't want
their song to conjure up images of potato chips in a listener's mind. Now that
radio airplay has gotten much more difficult for brand new artists or older,
less timely artists, TV commercials have become an important way for artists to
get exposure to a large audience. Artists from venerable (The Who) to new
(Feist) are lined up around the block, desperately trying to license their
songs for TV commercial use. Therefore, it's gotten cheaper for ad agencies to
license songs. All of this, of course, is depressing on dozens of levels.
Oh,
and I forgot to mention one important thing: I must say, in total, unironic
honesty, that I totally love and enjoy the art/craft of singing and/or writing
in the style of other artists. It is great creative "exercise," I always learn
lots of things in the process, and it brings me a pathetic amount of
satisfaction and joy. In my humble opinion, any "artist" who thinks they're
above the occasional "tribute" to another artist is simply being arrogant and
snobby, or is trying to hide the fact that they don't have the skills to
attempt such a thing.
(Not) To Be Confused With George Orwell
I'm
trying to figure out the name of a movie or miniseries I saw on PBS in the late
'70s or early '80s. Here's what I remember:
1.
male protagonist with curly hair
2.
he somehow had the power to reshape the world with his thoughts
3.
to make the world a better place, he wished that everyone was the same color,
and everyone became gray, except maybe him
4.
his good intentions turned the world into a dystopia
5. one of the only things left from the
"old world" was a 45 of "With A Little Help From My Friends" by the Beatles,
which was played at some point
Any
clue what this was? Thanks,
Joe Tank
Tasha Robinson is clueful:
Joe, you're thinking of the 1980 TV adaptation of
Ursula K. LeGuin's Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novel The Lathe Of Heaven. In LeGuin's novel, a
psychiatrist in a dystopic future learns that one of his patients, George Orr,
has dreams capable of altering reality. So the psychiatrist builds a machine to
boost his abilities to the point where they can change the entire world, and he
uses post-hypnotic suggestion to control what George dreams about. Alas, in the
manner of all matter of classic tales about monkey paws, deals with the devil,
magical wishes, and favors granted by demons, the psychiatrist's meddling with
the world invariably makes it worse, due to factors he failed to predict.
I've never seen the adaptation, but I recognized
the plot just from items #2 and #4 above, and the IMDB
trivia from this adaptation makes it eminently clear that this is the
film you recall: Apparently the presence of "With A Little Help From My
Friends" became a copyright issue and kept the film from being re-aired for
many years, but these days, it's available on DVD, apparently with different music in the relevant
scene.
It's The Final Countdown
When I was in fourth or fifth
grade, my class watched a movie that haunts me to this day, and not in a good
way. Here's the problem: I can't recall the film's title, but I'm pretty sure
it was "Absolute Zero" or "Countdown Zero" or something with the word "Zero."
The film—which wasn't very
long—involved a family living in the future. I assumed it was the future,
because they had clocks that would announce the time, along with some sort of
pleasant instructions, such as, "Five o' clock, five o' clock. Time to relax,
time to relax." I remember a scene where little kids played in the front yard,
and talked about how they were building a spaceship.
Then, the movie's mood shifted from
contentment to screeching terror. I believe that the little daughter
successfully built something portal-to-hell-like in the garage or attic. In the
final scene, the parents faced a closed door, screaming in horror and grasping
one another, as intense light, wind, and drill noises poured out from the other
side of the door. The door finally opened, but all the audience saw was the
little daughter, smiling, who turned around and said simply, "Peek-a-boo."
Please, A.V. Club, can you find out
anything about it? What was it called? Who made it? Or did I really dream the
whole thing?
Sarah
Tasha
Robinson is in your dreams:
When
I first read this letter, Sarah, I immediately thought of Ray Bradbury's "There
Will Come Soft Rains," a haunting short story from The Martian Chronicles. It's a sort of day in
the life of a robot house that's survived a nuclear war, and that ticks on
happily throughout the day, making meals and disposing of them, cleaning up
after and attempting to entertain its long-dead owners. The house has a bouncy,
repetitive speaking pattern that sounds exactly like the one you're describing
("Tick-tock, seven o'clock, time to get up, time to
get up…") but no other part of the story matches up.
The
rest of your story, however, is pretty clearly from another Bradbury story,
"Zero Hour," from the anthology The Illustrated Man. In that story, a little
girl plays a game she calls "Invasion," occasionally dropping hints to her
initially oblivious mother about how the world will change once her friend
Drill gets through his portal from Mars. And so it does. (There's
a fairly creepy radio script version of the story here, with a lot
more detail.)
There was a 1955 TV
adaptation, apparently, but depending on when you were in fourth
grade, it seems more likely that you were shown the 1992
adaptation made for the TV show The Ray Bradbury Theater. I haven't seen the episode, but I can't
help but wonder if Bradbury, who wrote the script, incorporated his chatty
clock from "There Will Come Soft Rains" into that episode, since it doesn't
look like "Rains" was adapted for the show at any point. And I'm not sure why
else you would associate the two, unless you ran across both stories somewhere
else at some point.
A.V. Club intern Elissa Pociask contributed
research to this week's column.
Next week: HBO musings and kung-fu.
Send your questions to [email protected].