Since our last episode focused on a snow-bound body horror science fiction film involving a crashed alien space ship, we’ve decided to keep up that theme with this episode. This time around it’s a straight up masterpiece instead of a butt-obsessed literal cinematic shit-show!
In all seriousness, that was just a coinkidink.
We’ve taken a break from our regularly scheduled programming to honor a movie music legend, the late great Ennio Morricone. We filled the Cube with six selections from Morricone’s lengthy filmography, and chance decided upon… The Thing! This 1982 adaptation of John W. Campbell’s novella Who Goes There? was directed by John Carpenter (Memoirs of an Invisible Man), written by Bill Lancaster (The Bad News Bears Go to Japan), and starred Kurt Russell (The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes). It flopped heavily in theaters, steamrolled by the distinctly non-horrifying E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, but has since come to be seen as one of the greatest horror films of all time. And rightfully so.
When I was in high school, the one-two punch of this film and David Cronenberg’s Videodrome is what cemented my deep love of cinema. It’s just so, so good. So, what are you waiting for? Give this episode a listen!
The other five sides of the cube included Franco Zeffirelli’s 1990 Shakespeare adaptation (and Mel Gibson vehicle) Hamlet, Giuseppe Tornatore’s love letter to movies, Cinema Paradiso, Quentin Tarantino’s wonderfully bloody and claustrophobic take on the western,1 The Hateful Eight, Oliver Stone’s neo-noir U Turn, and (of course) The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. We’d have been fools to leave out the latter. Morricone’s score for that film is pretty much synonymous with the Western, even for the sad souls who haven’t seen the film.
In other words, no matter how the Cube rolled, we would have been in for a treat. That it happened to choose one of my favorite movies of all time is just lagniappe. So listen, enjoy, and don’t forget to rate and review us!
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