Imaginary Movie Soundtracks are just that -- the soundtracks to movies that doesn't exist. We pick the songs, write the story, and your mind makes the movie.
This week's soundtrack takes us off the planet Earth's surface into orbit around it, in an a decrepit space station. The station is in orbit around a dying planet Earth -- but the planet's not the only thing that's dying, as the denizens of space station Kalessin are being taken out by an unknown entity. We bring you the soundtrack to a sci-fi shlockfest we like to call Zero-G Slaughterhouse.
The opening credits roll as we start out on with an exterior shot of the ship, and slowly pull in. As the camera takes us along deserted corridors, showing us an outer space outpost slowly going to seed, we hear the strains of the Byrds' "Eight Miles High." Slightly cheesy, yes, but a song that gives the psychedelic feel we're after, as we eventually happen upon our main character.
Our hero is a disheveled man, in need of shave. He's like Snake Plisken, but minus the eye patch. The man has been stuck on this space station for nearly half a decade, with a crew made up of misfits and weirdos. (Brilliant misfits and weirdos, but oddballs nonetheless.) It's as the camera introduces us to him that we hear the first screams, and are introduced to the claustrophobic gorefest. There's nothing quite like coming into a room where the blood, rather than splattered on the walls, is floating through the air, suspended like cranberries in a bog. The eerie atmosphere is complimented by Shawn Lee and Clutchy Hopkins's "7 Inch," a creepy-as-all hell number with an ominous organ. It screams "mystery!"
What could it be? Our hero begins to investigate, talking with the usual suspects aboard the space station: the middle-aged, bespectacled scientist with a drinking problem that may get them all killed, the young military man who's not seen his wife in months and has resorted to peeping on the female crew members for his jollies, and of course...the captain, our hero, and his mysterious lapses in memory. As he begins to piece together the mounting deaths (each more spectacularly violent than the last, which we see from the killer's perspective, a la Halloween), the 13th Floor Elevators's "Rollercoaster" sets the scene. It's epic, psychedelic, and You gotta open up your mind and let everything come through sets the stage for an investigation. The sound is ominous, leading the viewer to believe that another death might be just around the corner.
We eventually see the killer, and it's an abomination. Mutated by the rampant radiation -- from which the station is not nearly shielded enough -- it appears to be a mouse that was caught in the ventilation system. After the station was blasted into space, the poor little thing was slowly blasted with radiation until it began to grow, mutate, and (most importantly to our plot) grow hungry. As we get our first good glimpse of the terrible thing, Mastodon's "Circle of Cysquatch" plays. The powerful metal gives an energetic kick, and the vocal flange of the Cysquatch gives voice to the space rat as it begins an even great evisceration of the crew, leading up to the inevitable showdown between it and the captain.
The showdown between captain and mutated alien mouse is scored by Torche's "Meanderthal." Like a stoner-metal version of the fight between Kirk and Spock in "Amok Time," the surging guitars and drums build and build as they throb, with each pulse of guitar signifying another blow landed. The song fades out as our hero, desperately wounded, finds a conveniently located raygun as the mutato-mouse gets ready to lunge at his neck. As the mouse hangs in the lack of gravity, it's hit by the gun's ray and violently disintegrates all over the place.
Roll credits, over which we see a nest of the creature's babies located deep within the ship's bowels, setting us up for Zero-G Slaughterhouse II: Bloodbath in the Beyond.
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