B-Sides

This week’s B-Sides is for all of you 1970’s folk rock fans. The song actually isn’t too bad, to be honest, but you’re probably not familiar with it because the film it stems from is one of the all-time worst.

A 1985 sci-fi comedy about a high school gearhead (Christine's John Stockwell) who passes off a crashed UFO engine he found in a junkyard as his science project, triggering an uncontrollable time warp in the school. My Science Project is as Eighties as Eighties gets, even more so its theme song by The Tubes.

If you’re going to make a movie about a vigilante seeking Rolling Vengeance against the rednecks that murdered his family and raped his girlfriend by running them over with a custom-built monster truck, you’d better have a hard drinkin’ theme song like “Coming Up on You” to serenade the slaughter.

It’s not easy being a 1960’s teen idol, especially when you’re trying to sing a romantic song about the girl you love in a low budget b-movie about a rampaging caveman. Arch Hall, Jr., gives it his all crooning a love song about his lady love, Valerie, even though his lady love was actually named Roxy.

If hearing Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks rap doesn’t blow your mind, seeing them do so as part of an elaborate song & dance music video for their 1987 spoof Dragnet might be enough to make it explode Scanners-style. This actually happened, folks.

This weekend’s B-Sides is without question the peppiest song and dance number ever put to music or film about a monstrous, man-eating worm. If you’ve never seen The Lair of the White Worm, then you’re in for a fun treat because both the song and the British hoedown scene in which it plays are a gas.

If you’ve listened to the newest Foycast, then you’ve already heard me discuss in detail the 1981 obscurity Longshot - the world’s only foosball movie. Odds are you’ll never see this film, but in this B-Sides you can experience the magic of its title song and dramatic final shot.

Anyone that knows me knows of my unapologetic love for the 1991 horror movie love note to b-movies that is Popcorn. Even its end credits song sings the praises of why we all go to the movies, hoping to be scared by monsters and maniacs, tarantulas and brainiacs…

With A&E’s “Bates Motel” premiering Monday evening, now is a perfect time for Norman Bates to make his one and only B-Sides appearance. What? You didn’t know a Psycho movie spawned a pop song and MTV music video? “Scream of Love” was the Psycho III theme song. Sorry, Norman; can’t blame mother for this one.

Ozzy Osbourne may have originated the song “Hellraiser” on his 1991 No More Tears album, but it is probably more well known for Motorhead’s Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth cover version and subsequent music video in which Lemmy challenges Pinhead to a card game for his mortal soul.

We’re doing something a little different this time. Usually the song featured in B-Sides is from a B-movie. This weekend’s B-Sides is a song made from B-movies - clips from 50 different B-movies comprising the “Grindhouse Megamix”.

With the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue hitting shelves this past week, it seems as good a time as any for one of the many musical contributions from the 1991 swimsuit slasher Bikini Island. A B-Sides you can enjoy even with the sound off.

To think the world’s only jellyfish man movie would have been lost to the annals of time had it not been rescued from obscurity by Something Weird Video. And if you think a jellyfish man is something weird, then just wait until you hear Neil Sedaka’s theme song, “Do the Jellyfish.”

What do you get when producer Charles Band, writer David S. Goyer, and director Albert Pyun decide to do their own horror version of Tron? If you didn’t answer Arcade, then you clearly do not know your Full Movie catalogue.

Before directing Detroit Rock City and unleashing a giant sperm on New York City in the “Wadzilla” segment of Chillerama, Adam Rifkin introduced the world to a horny, psychopathic phantom known as The Invisible Maniac. Not enough movie maniacs have their own personal theme songs, if you ask me.