AFOS: "Kiss Kiss Ban Ban" playlist

Airing this Wednesday at 10am and 3pm on A Fistful of Soundtracks is the Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series episode "Kiss Kiss Ban Ban" (WEB73) from February 27-March 5, 2006.

This ep, which focuses on rejected or unused original music from soundtracks to movies like Thunderball, Ocean's Twelve and Hell Up in Harlem, got a nice mention in the RiffTrax forums in 2008. The "Kiss Kiss Ban Ban" title has double meaning. It refers to both Shirley Bassey's bizarre pronunciation of "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" in the rejected Thunderball theme "Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" and the banishment of these tunes from the final cut.


1. Bernard Herrmann, "Prelude (from Torn Curtain)," Alfred Hitchcock Presents...Signatures in Suspense, Hip-O
2. Los Angeles Philharmonic, "The Killing," Bernard Herrmann: The Film Scores, Sony Classical
3. The National Philharmonic Orchestra, "Main Title," Alex North's 2001, Varèse Sarabande
4. The National Philharmonic Orchestra, "Space Station Docking," Alex North's 2001, Varèse Sarabande
5. James Brown, "The Payback," Dead Presidents, Capitol
6. Shirley Bassey, "Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," The Best of James Bond: 30th Anniversary Limited Edition, EMI
7. Dionne Warwick, "Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," The Best of James Bond: 30th Anniversary Limited Edition, EMI
8. Johnny Cash, "Thunderball," The Man in Black: 1963-1969, Bear Family
9. Blondie, "For Your Eyes Only," The Hunter, Chrysalis
10. Jerry Goldsmith, "The Dig," Timeline: Music Inspired by the Film, Varèse Sarabande
11. Lalo Schifrin, "Music from the Unused Trailer," The Exorcist, Warner Home Video
12. John Barry, "Moviola," John Barry: Moviola, Epic Soundtrax
13. Jerry Fielding, "The Water Hole," Music for The Getaway: Jerry Fielding's Original Score, Film Score Monthly
14. Jerry Fielding, "Casing the Joint," Music for The Getaway: Jerry Fielding's Original Score, Film Score Monthly
15. David Holmes, "$165 Million + Interest (into) The Round Up," Ocean's Twelve, Warner Sunset/Warner Bros.
16. The Smithereens, "A Girl Like You," 11, Capitol


Other than "The Payback," my favorite part of WEB73 is hearing Shirley Bassey's "Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" back-to-back with Dionne Warwick's version, as if the double shot is a battle between Bassey and Warwick like that awesome moment in Dave Chappelle's Block Party when the Roots brought Jill Scott and Erykah Badu together onstage for a "Duel of the Divas Who Sang 'You Got Me.'" (Scott wrote the chorus of the 1999 Roots track and was featured on the original recording, but MCA, the Roots' label at the time, wanted a more famous artist to be part of the Things Fall Apart album's first single, so the band replaced Scott with Badu on the released version.) The duel in Block Party ends in a draw--Scott and Badu are both terrific onstage--although I prefer Scott's original "You Got Me" because in 1999, I couldn't understand some of what Badu was singing during the chorus of the Things Fall Apart version. As for which of the two versions of "Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" is better, it's Bassey FTW, even though like with Badu's "You Got Me," I have no idea what Bassey's singing during the chorus ("Mr. Kiss Kiss Ban Ban's not a foal"?).

Reruns of AFOS: The Series air Wednesdays at 10am and 3pm. To listen to the station during either of those time slots or better yet, right now, press the play icon on the blue widget below the "About me" mini-bio on this blog. Don't be a foal like Mr. Kiss Kiss Ban Ban. Press play!

I'm live-tweeting Empire Records next Wednesday at noon

I've always wanted to either live-tweet or RiffTrax director Allan Moyle's 1995 film about record store clerks who attempt to save their store from the clutches of a strict, Blockbuster Music-like chain. Empire Records constantly airs on cable and has become a cult favorite, but in 1995, the movie was overshadowed by its hit soundtrack album (I remember borrowing the Empire Records cassette tape from a university friend because I dug "A Girl Like You" by Edwyn Collins and "Liar" by Donald Glover's favorite band), and it was barely released by Warner Bros., which must have been dissatisfied with the final cut. At times, the movie appears to have been edited together with glue and Popsicle sticks, so it's not hard to see why the studio quietly dumped it into theaters.

But what I don't understand is the cult status of this movie, which stars Anthony LaPaglia, Liv Tyler and a pre-Jerry Maguire Renee Zellweger. Empire Records is neither an offbeat but genuinely good flick that was buried and poorly received during its initial release like The Big Lebowski (or Office Space) nor a so-ineptly-made-it's-entertaining curio like Dolemite. It's just bland studio product that at its worst, takes the most overwrought parts of John Hughes' writing in The Breakfast Club and amps them up to 11.

So either join me on Twitter next Wednesday, April 14, in the afternoon as I snark on the extended "Remix! Special Fan Edition" of Empire Records (the DVD doesn't have a commentary track, so this live-tweet would be like the commentrak the DVD should have had), or check out the live-tweet recap I'll post on this blog afterward.

Memorable quotes from commentary tracks #2

"That's not passion. She's getting granite burns on her ass. 'Ow! Hey, next time let's do it on some volcanic rocks so I'll be more comfortable.' Would it be going too far to gouge my own eyes out right now? Well, this movie promised hot bouncer-on-doctor action, and it's not lettin' us down. Yeah, right about now, I'm nostalgic for scenes of fat guys punching each other."

--Michael J. Nelson, from the RiffTrax commentary for Road House

Pain don't hurt, whereas parts of Road House are pretty excruciating

All this week, everyone has been chiming in with their Patrick Swayze memories, from their love of Dirty Dancing and Ghost to the night they laughed their asses off during the classic SNL episode when Swayze spoofed both his sex-symbol image and his appeal to gay viewers and then played generous straight man to Chris Farley in the then-newcomer's breakout sketch, the Chippendales audition. Because I'm a guy who has zero tolerance for chick flicks, I'll always remember Swayze not for Dirty Dancing and Ghost, but for his creepy Donnie Darko supporting turn as a child-molesting motivational speaker and action films like Road House, where the mulleted star's dance background and willingness to do many of his own stunts played a huge part in making the fight sequences the best element of that Joel Silver camp classic.

Since 1989, Road House has been a source of great comedy, from Dana Gould's bit about Dalton's Zen bouncer thing-as-U.S. foreign policy to Michael J. Nelson's MST3K "(Let's Have) A Patrick Swayze Christmas" musical number and RiffTrax audio commentary (a more enjoyable commentrak than the Road House DVD's Kevin Smith/Scott Mosier one, which is a funny commentrak when Smith isn't tediously reading off pages and pages of Internet jokes about Dalton's superpowers because he ran out of things to say).

Road House is the white Dolemite. Like the Rudy Ray Moore camp classic, the Swayze vehicle is a bad movie, but extremely fun to watch and endlessly quotable.

Over at big WOWO, Byron Wong calls the modern-day western one of the best American martial arts flicks ever made. He raises a good point about how "Swayze didn't have to otherize us. Unlike Chuck, Steve, Jean-Claude, and just about every other White martial artist out there, he didn't have to hire a crew of Asians, blacks, or Latinos to beat up."

I agree with Byron that Road House's martial arts sequences are terrific--the complete opposite of Dolemite's fight sequences--and the movie surpasses anything Van Damme and Seagal have done (with directors who aren't Peter Hyams and Andrew Davis, that is). But outside of the convincing fight sequences and Swayze's charismatic star turn as the world's only NYU philosophy major-turned-internationally famous bouncer, Road House is pretty incompetent for a glossy '80s big-studio movie. Keith David (They Live, There's Something About Mary), one of my favorite actors-turned-announcers, shows up halfway through Road House, and then the movie leaves him stranded with nothing to do. Road House is loaded with almost everything I don't like about '80s big-studio filmmaking--the only '80s Hollywood touch that's missing is the John Hughes-style racism. The movie outdoes the first season of NewsRadio in the crappy clothes department. Swayze wears a weird-looking wraparound gi thing as a shirt, which, combined with the mullet, makes him look like Luke Skywalker's soap opera actor cousin from below the Mason-Dixon Line on Tatooine.


Road House is like a bad '60s Elvis flick, but with a pubes-flashing Sam Elliott as second fiddle instead of Bill Bixby--and Jeff Healey doing all the singing instead of the Big E. Healey has a painfully awkward "musician appears as himself and gives us his endorsement that the hero's a cool guy" scene, which was a staple of '80s movies, although that kind of cameo existed long before the '80s (Duke Ellington's scene with Jimmy Stewart in 1959's Anatomy of a Murder is the earliest example of a "musician cameoing as himself and helping to up the star's street cred" moment I can think of). The Healey tracks, which include a pretty good cover of Bob Dylan's "When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky," overshadow a Michael Kamen score that sounds exactly like all the other drab scores Kamen wrote for the Silver action factory. There are attempts at wit that fall flat and make little sense, like the vague and homoerotic-sounding "I thought you'd be bigger" running gag, which seems to be a jab at Dalton's height--or not. I assume this botched attempt at a Silver catchphrase refers to how his height is below average for someone who's a cooler. So why didn't the script have the characters say "I thought you'd be taller" instead of "I thought you'd be bigger"? Oh, '80s Hollywood.

I never saw Point Break, Swayze's other signature action film, until shortly after his death was all over the news. I happened to have a long-unwatched Netflix copy of the 1991 bankrobbing surfer flick lying around my apartment, so as I watched the film for the first time, I was surprised by how well-made it was. The foot chase sequence, which concludes with the angsty emptying-of-the-gun moment that Hot Fuzz memorably mocked, is the best foot chase I've seen since the one in Raising Arizona. (During the DVD, I also constantly cringed over how Point Break's superbly shot surfing and skydiving sequences would have looked if the film were made in this current age of CGI instead of pre-CGI 1990.) Point Break is a better Swayze actioner than Road House, thanks to the skilled direction of underrated Hurt Locker helmer Kathryn Bigelow, but if I want a campy and unintentionally funny good time, I'll turn to Road House. Gay guys have their Valley of the Dolls, The Apple and Showgirls, while us straight guys have Dolemite, Color of Night, Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, Death Bed: The Bed That Eats and Road House.

Ever since Swayze went Swayze, I've been looking all over the file folders in my computer for Dana Gould's Road House bit. I finally found it. During an August 28, 2004 performance at the Largo in L.A., the stand-up and former Simpsons staff writer amusingly observes how America is "the world's bouncer." I like how Gould couldn't remember the Ben Gazzara character's name, so he gave him the name of the main villain from Rocky IV.