I Know What You Did Last Summer

[The Deadman]

[The Deadman]

This honestly looks f*cking terrible. 90% of the scenes shot in this teaser are just people making out. Might pass on this.

[IMJ]

I saw the original movie in the theater and don't remember a single thing about it. It was one of the most forgettable flicks I've ever seen. I think I was more interested in the soundtrack for some reason. At that time Hollywood was still riding high on the Crow and making a push for every movie to have some kind of "attractive soundtrack".

[Andrew NDB]

I still remember it being weird to me even then as a kid that the "Godzilla" soundtrack was such a big deal at the time. Like, it was probably bigger than the movie.

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

I still remember it being weird to me even then as a kid that the "Godzilla" soundtrack was such a big deal at the time. Like, it was probably bigger than the movie.

Yup. I was actually thinking of that one exactly when I made that post just above. The Puff Daddy song!

[sdp]

Originally Posted by IMJ

I saw the original movie in the theater and don't remember a single thing about it. It was one of the most forgettable flicks I've ever seen. I think I was more interested in the soundtrack for some reason. At that time Hollywood was still riding high on the Crow and making a push for every movie to have some kind of "attractive soundtrack".

did movies not have heavily marketed soundtracks before that? I thought all movies had that since every movie growing up had one, i think the trend ended around the mid 00s since that's also when the CD format in general died.

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by sdp

did movies not have heavily marketed soundtracks before that? I thought all movies had that since every movie growing up had one, i think the trend ended around the mid 00s since that's also when the CD format in general died.

So there was definitely the occassional stand out soundtrack before the Crow. Popular ones would be like Footloose, Top Gun, & Cocktail. But The Crow had a combination of factors that sort of re-branded the movie soundtrack for a generation and propelled that forward as a primary-marketing-piece for movie releases for years to come.

-The Crow soundtrack hit at the right time. It appealed to the alternative rock movement that was going on at the time. It also helped that it somehow blended every counter-culture music movement that spanned a few decades - you had Wax Trax Chicago Industrial on that album, alternative rock, Progressive Metal, Indie.
-The Crow soundtrack had some pretty killer original tracks that people were clamoring for.
-The Crow soundtrack had "Big Empty" by Stone Temple Pilots who were riding high off of the "Core" album and "Plush" and "Big Empty" was a new track meant for their second album.
-The Crow soundtrack also had several urban stories behind it that created a mystique. There was what had happened to Brandon Lee, there was STP's intention to originally publish a song called "Only Dying" on it which got changed to "Big Empty" after Brandon's death.
-The Crow soundtrack really scratched the itch for new material from bands of that era for teens at just the right age to be excited about that kind of stuff. I already mentioned STP, but there was clamor for new Nine Inch Nails material, Rage Against the Machine was putting out a track that was previously only a demo of theirs, and a track from the Cure that basically brought that band back into the fold for a generation that otherwise would've looked them over. And it was a perfect fit for the musical movement of that era.

The soundtrack sold almost 4 million units, which was actually huge for a counter culture movie that had completely counter culture material on the soundtrack. That's a good haul for something without Whitney Houston on it and a movie that wasn't meant for a family audience. And Hollywood took note and after that, everything had original content on it, hoping to ride that wave - Godzilla, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and so many more. After The Crow, soundtracks weren't just a compilation of what was used in the film, but every movie needed a "tag line" "clinch" song - even Titanic had Celine Dion's song and that was otherwise filled with Celtic instrumental overtones. But it became like that for every movie that saw a release - they need that soundtrack track as opposed to "oh look, people like our Whitney song on the soundtrack".

There were lots of good soundtracks before The Crow, but The Crow dropped right in the middle of my generations musical zeitgeist and it was huge. It put attention on soundtracks for everything after that instead of simply having a soundtrack.

[The Deadman]