10 Rubbish Horror Films With Decent Soundtracks

How do you know when a movie’s going to suck? When there’s a tie-in album full of previously released songs that aren’t in the film.

Corporations love soundtrack albums – they’re easy to compile, they’re usually best sellers and, best of all, they promote the movie. Which is all they’re meant to do.

In the 1980s, corporations started swallowing up movie studios and linking their products with the book, TV and music companies they already owned, beginning the practice known as “Synergy.” Saturation advertising in corporate-owned magazines and on TV shows had one message - see the movie, read the book, buy the soundtrack.

Synergy obeys a simple formula: obtain content, gather an audience then sit back and watch the cash roll in. It also reduces movies to little more than the filmed equivalent of the Happy Meal, but that is by the by. Corporations don’t really make films. They are selling a product.

Sometimes that product is fun to watch, but mostly there’s a “been there, done that” feel to the narrative, and the overall blandness suggests the test marketers worked overtime sucking the life out of the movie. Ask anyone who sat through the Michael Bay produced remake of The Hitcher.

When Hollywood hands you a lemon, you make lemonade. None of the following films are even remotely worth your time, but the soundtrack albums are great. 

The second sequel to The Crow suffers from the same problems that affected The Crow: City Of Angels – it’s another soulless reprise of James O’Barr’s material, only without Brandon Lee, Alex Proyas and the cool urban hell production design.

So lifeless that it was sent straight to video, Salvation is the kind of movie you watch out of curiosity and remember for the soundtrack. Rob Zombie’s on there, performing the “Naked Exorcism Mix” of Living Dead Girl, and there are rumours that he was set to direct at one point but fell out with Dimension Films. Whatever his vision would’ve been, it couldn’t have been any blander than this by-the-numbers rehash.

Top Tracks: The Infidels (feat. Juliette Lewis) – Bad Brother

Filter – The Best Things

Pitchshifter – Everything Sucks (Again)