The Thing
Ennio Morricone
If you’ve actually been reading this blog all week you probably already guessed that I’m not particularly fond of orchestral soundtracks (you’re also probably very lonely and should get outdoors more often). When a score is too straight or too bombastic I get distracted by the artifice and can’t lose myself in the total atmosphere that great music should invoke, especially great soundtrack music. Of course there are some fantastic orchestral scores but generally I prefer when composers make it personal and follow a darker muse into terra incognita. Or as the longhairs in Danava put it so eloquently, shoot straight with a crooked gun. Morricone is a musician/composer of unfathomable depth and you don't need an essay from some cranky old jackass who should probably be doing the laundry to tell you that his deceptively minimalist music for John Carpenter’s spectacular re-make of The Thing is an orchestral score to be reckoned with. The plodding bass-driven tension builds to a frenzied climax of utter paranoia and contagious disgust that begins to resemble a swarm of pestilent blowflies and inadvertently becomes the perfect soundtrack to our current election War on Terrorism where every neighbor is suspect and every weirdo kid in black a potential Dark Knight shooter. “Somebody in this camp ain't what he appears to be. Right now that may be one or two of us. By spring, it could be all of us.” Roll up your sleeves. Time to burn that blood, pal. You should already know the drill but, just in case, pull down the shades and skip right to side two, song two: Humanity (Part 2). Man is still the warmest place to hide.
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