Gil Hates Everything

Every so often I’m privileged (I believe that’s the word) to listen to something like this, and a healthy combination of enthusiasm and WTF stylings leads me to appreciate it against my better judgement. I don’t know that this is necessarily a recommendation, but it wasn’t dull…

How to describe this? It’s a sung-through sci-fi movie about organ-repossession (I wonder whether the writers haven’t read much SF** and thus believe this is an original idea). The movie features an extremely random bunch, including Anthony Head, Sarah Brightman, and Paris Hilton, and the full soundtrack has 64 songs – count ’em, 64! In 97 minutes! Holy fuck. Although, the CD soundtrack I have here has 22 tracks and lasts for 44 minutes, so shrug some of the others are gonna be short.

The plot reads like typical random cult movie junk, but people always love cult stuff for the junkiness and for the performances, which on the strength of the CD sound appropriately demented. So I shan’t take up our time with that; instead let’s talk about the music.

What does it sound like? Well, it’s been kicking around since 1996 and was finally expanded to movie length and made in 2008, so it’s tricky to tell what was an influence and what it prefigured. It reminds me most of all of David Bowie’s fabulously overblown cyberpunk album “Outside” (I’d love to see a movie of that, and for that matter Bowie could get the lead out and do the other four fucking albums he said would follow it…) and in places it skims the fringes of “The Wall”, Evanescence, the Human League, Slipknot, the “Hardware” soundtrack, and “The Phantom Of The Opera”. So if the thought of a crazy multiplexed fusion along those lines floats your boat, then, boy, are you one movie purchase away from bliss.

Often in rock musicals, the music is more what I was thinking of, but the words end up being a bit asleep at the wheel, and sure enough, nothing much really grabbed me by the lyrics on this soundtrack. And the quality falls off somewhat towards the end, where the quest for emotional effect leads to their grasp not matching their reach. But it was an atmospheric-enough listen. Individual tracks worth listening to are “Legal Assassin”, “Zydrate Anatomy”, and “Gold”.

I get the feeling that watching the whole thing, particularly late at night with a couple of beers, would be a memorable experience. But I can’t vouch for whether it would be a good one. You’d certainly have to have a broad tolerance for “cult” (I remember Robin telling me that one of his tutors at Sussex defined “cult” as “something which a few people think is the best thing ever, but which is actually crap”). Cult has gone slightly mainstream these days, but this sounds defiantly underground.

Random Panda awards this… christ, I dunno. The whole point of cult is that it either scores ten or zero, and that people who respond to a recommendation of a cult-ural artifact either thank you or slap you. I’m not sure which would be worse, given my audience, so I’m going to sit on the fence – which I realize outlines me against the sky ;-) I personally want to see it, mostly because I like saying “What the fuck?” But my actual appreciation of the big cult stuff is ropey (I don’t like Rocky Horror, Living Dead, Repo Man, Monty Python, or Bruce Campbell) so I could well regret it. Your mileage will vary so much it’s not even funny, so take this as a recommendation if you like being recommended weird shit, or are under 25 and therefore don’t care about wasting 97 minutes of your life because it’s going to last forever. And otherwise, run away ;-)

Random Panda will be back tomorrow with “Ring Of Fire”, a musical about vindaloo… what? Oh, my mistake, apparently it’s the Johnny Cash jukebox musical. I haven’t heard a lot of Johnny Cash, so this might be educational if nothing else.

** Organ-legging dates back to the original bodysnatchers of the 1800s, Burke and Hare, and in SF is covered in detail in a collection of Larry Niven stories from the 70s, collected in the awesomely-titled “The Long Arm Of Gil Hamilton”.

(originally posted 2009)