Great songs from poor movies

[Wendigo]

It dawned on me as I was writing in another thread that some really poor movies have songs that live on in your head for hours or days afterwards.
My favourites are.
2000 Maniacs - The South's gonna rise again
Raiders of the Living Dead - The Dead Are After Me
Godzilla vs the Smog Monster - Save the Earth
Night Train to Terror - Everybody But You

I love hearing these tunes, any other suggestions?

[scoundrel]

Casino Royale (not the new one but the 10th rate spoof with David Niven, Woody Allen et al). A poor movie but with a few good moments. Dusty Springfield sang The Look of Love, a really great song, so good that even Casino Royale couldn't spoil it.

I like the idea for this thread Wendingo.

[TCO95]

The soundtrack is played by Steve Vai. Movie stars the karate kid Ralph Machio.
Here is the guitar duel between the two.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPB2qbxuiLM

[Estreeter]

The soundtrack is played by Steve Vai. Movie stars the karate kid Ralph Machio.
Here is the guitar duel between the two.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPB2qbxuiLM

I thought that The Karate Kid and Crossroads were the same film:p

[Wendigo]

Cheers all, I used the word great with a lot of irony but that's the kind of person I am.
There is room for both REALLY GREAT great songs and GRATING "great" songs here......
With some movies I have watched the plot has almost vanished from my memory but years on I still remember themes and songs.
Another few classic examples are "To Have And To Hold" from the closing titles of the superbly bad Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster and on the subject of closing themes all I can remember from Sleepwalkers (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105428/) is a vague half remembered image of a creature and the superb instrumental Boadicea by Enya. This was ruined when I recorded it by some idiot announcer talking over it. I bought her album The Celts on cassette and on CD solely on the strength of hearing part of it from that movie

[TCO95]

'Beach Blanket Bingo' and the like had soundtracks by Dick Dale, The Searchers, Beach Boys, Jan and Dean et al. With the plots those movies had the music was usually the only reason to watch. :D

[tmee2000]

The unforgettable theme song from Godzilla vs Hedorah (Smog Monster):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybzMSUXpvyg
Our German friends will know and love this as
Frankensteins Kampf Gegen Die Teufelsmonster:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ikbMrtgvXc

[Wendigo]

Our German friends will know and love this as Frankensteins Kampf Gegen Die Teufelsmonster:

Cheers tmee2000, I've only heard it in English and Japanese.
I've got loads of Godzilla movies and it always amused me when the German translators came up with Frankenstein.

[tmee2000]

I'm clearly missing something cultural here but- are they on drugs or something?!? How do you get Godzilla=Frankenstein? If that's the required standard then I could get a job dubbing dialogue there. So much for the super-efficient Germans.
This movie does expose two disturbing facts:
1: Japanese oil refineries have no fire control whatever;
and
2: Japanese workers fall down dead at the drop of a hat.

[lemi_amar]

I'm clearly missing something cultural here but- are they on drugs or something?!? How do you get Godzilla=Frankenstein? If that's the required standard then I could get a job dubbing dialogue there. So much for the super-efficient Germans.
This movie does expose two disturbing facts:
1: Japanese oil refineries have no fire control whatever;
and
2: Japanese workers fall down dead at the drop of a hat.

Yes, the Translators are just Idiots, they ruined a lot of good movies, and an awful lot of not so good movies. But that was in the beginning of the 80's (or was it the late 70's?) mainly, when Video boomed... they didn't even show that kind of ultrasilly Jap trash before that. Just ultrasilly Italy trash and ultrasilly selfmade trash.

[Nylon]

'Song To The Siren' by This Mortal Coil from David Lynch's Lost Highway

To be fair the film isn't too bad, it's just that the song is completely inappropriate. A moment of lust with a soundtrack of total surrender to love ...

[Adam West]

Speaking of poor movies, Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster has an absolute classic "That's the Way It's Got to Be," by the Scottish band The Poets. They were managed by Andrew Oldham, who managed the Rolling Stones.

Great, great song and it's played during the pool party scene right before the "love starved aliens kidnap the Earth maidens." For a cheap movie, it's still the coolest.

[pharoahegypt]

i vaguely recall watching an old porn movie of my dad's back in the early 1980's; before i was legally allowed to watch them of course...... there was this tune during one particular heavy sex scene that stayed in my head for years afterwards..... imagine my amusement when i heard/watched it on an old top of the pops and realised who/what it was..........

'the doors - light my fire'....!!!! classic porn film backing track if ever was one....!!!

[shodan2011]

From the monstrosities that are The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas and Scooby Doo 2, I give you:

The New Radicals - You Get What You Give
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPAEFnVZVOs

[dogsbreath]

The Yardbirds in Blow UP (1966 version).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zeza1xeWKM

[deepsepia]

"Shadow of the Gallows" by Waylon Jennings (lyrics by Shel Silverstein), from the very strnge 1970 movie "Ned Kelly"

I say "very strange" because Mick Jagger plays Ned Kelly, and the soundtrack is by American country artists. There's a completely ahistorical conceit that Kelly is somehow parallel to American rural anarchism . . . But Kelly wasn't Jesse James. And trying to graft Mick Jagger's bourgeois rebellion onto Ned Kelly is equally weird.

But "shadow of the gallows" is a pretty song, even if it has some unconvincing lyrics about being gnawed by dingoes.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y42JUXS59M


Interesting trivia: Shel Silverstein is mostly known as a cartoonist, but he was also a Nashville songwriter, contributing unlikely lyrics to country music, things like "A Boy named Sue"