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Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Justice, Shadows, Italians and Other Abstract Nouns

I guess the theme for this week is “strange pop cultural connections I should have made with a certain Italian horror movie years ago.” This might seem like a strange theme to some people, but it’s pretty normal for me. In fact, I think it’s popped up several times before.

On Monday, I blogged about a certain actress Eva Robin’s, whose unique name spelling and she-male status had bypassed me each time I’d seen the Dario Argento film Tenebre. And here I had thought I knew everything there was to know about Tenebre. Not so, even yet. Somehow I missed that the film’s title theme was remade by Justice on the duo’s 2007 track, “Phantom” — a song I own and at one point listened to frequently without ever realizing how much of a debt it owed to a movie I like.

Here’s Justice’s “Phantom”:


And here’s the kickass theme to Tenebre:


The band that plays the Tenebre theme is Italian prog rock group Gobin, who still perform today. Argento featured the band in a number of his films, perhaps most memorably in Suspiria. I had reason to think of the band earlier this week because the trailer for the very gothic and unexpectedly exciting Jane Eyre adaptation by Cary Fukunaga. I swear: Never has Jane Eyre seemed so exciting.

Here’s the trailer:


And here’s the Suspiria theme that is featured in the trailer at about twenty-seven seconds in.


At this point, I should probably point out that this week doesn’t even mark the first time a Dario Argento film was unexpectedly referenced in something else I was enjoying. Comedian Drew Droege has been releasing this awesome videos parodying Chloe Sevign. The Halloween Hallowe’en video uses one of the backgrounds from Suspiria. Watch for it around the 1:10 mark.


So way to go Dario Argento, I guess.

Final note: Now there’s a post tag cluster I never expected to see.

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