Forgotten Movie Songs #23: "Nights Are Forever" from TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE

1983's Twilight Zone: The Movie was, like most anthology movies, a hit-and-miss affair. The first two segments, from John Landis and Steven Spielberg, didn't really make a mark. But the Dan Ackroyd/Albert Brooks wraparound (by Landis), and the final segments from Joe Dante and George Miller were real fun (especially the latter, an adaptation of Richard Matheson's "Horror at 37,000 Feet," with John Lithgow perfect as a freaked-out airplane passenger). My favorite feature about the movie, though, was Jerry Goldsmith's diverse score. The first part is all military-drumbeats, to go along with the stark Vic Morrow story. The second is lush and flowery, to match the gushy Spielberg episode. The third episode is filled with wacked-out cartoon-inspired orchestrations, as the Joe Dante episode required. And the fourth bit is a straight-out horror score, with a screechy violin as its scary lead.

And then, somewhere in that first episode, we hear the song "Nights Are Forever" being played over the jukebox. It's just buried in the mix there, but it became the centerpiece of the Twilight Zone soundtrack when I bought it on vinyl in the early 80s. I just couldn't get enough of the song that summer, and played it constantly. It somehow never became a hit, even though it featured Jennifer Warnes, who'd just scored a #1 hit with another movie song "Up Where We Belong" (from An Officer and a Gentleman). Hearing it now, I still like the song, even if its sparkly 80s orchestration is quite dated.

The song is called "Nights Are Forever." The music is by Jerry Goldsmith and the lyrics are by John Bettis. It's sung by the sultry Jennifer Warnes.



Faceless voices talking
Smoky rings of seared lives
Strangers telling stories
No one really buys

Through the neon starlight
Women watch the men move
Through the broken music
Of what they need to prove

Nights are forever
When you have no one.
Well, nights are forever
When you're just trying to hang on.

Standing in the shadows
Staring holes in my clothes
We both know what's coming
This is how the game goes

Nights are forever
When you have no one.
Nights are forever
When you're just trying to hang on.

All is all I want
You to give.
Love me like
We only have this night to live.

Dancing makes me hungry
Lying bores me to tears
Let's just take each other
The way we appear.

Nights are forever
When you have no one.
Well, nights are forever
When you're just trying to hang on.

Nights are forever
When you have no one.
Nights are forever
When you're just trying to hang on.

Forgotten Movie Songs #8: "Moondust" from MEATBALLS

In the late 70s and way into the 80s, composer Elmer Bernstein was the comedy filmmaker's go-to guy. The legendary composer had been providing music for movies and television since the early 50s, and most of the titles were serious affairs like The Tin Star, Sweet Smell of Success, Walk on the Wild Side, The Magnificent Seven, To Kill A Mockingbird, Summer and Smoke, Hud, Birdman of Alcatraz and 1969's True Grit. But, in 1978, he delivered a particularly witty score to the smash hit National Lampoon's Animal House. Since the maker of that film--John Landis--pretty much owned American comedy cinema

after 1978, Bernstein was tapped again to provide scores for Landis' subsequent films Trading Places, An American Werewolf in London, Spies Like Us, Three Amigos! and The Blues Brothers. And other comedy voices requested Bernstein's services as well: he did both Airplane! movies for Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker, and formed a fruitful partnership with Canadian producer/director Ivan Reitman.

Reitman had produced Animal House, so I suppose you could posit that he's perhaps a more important figure regarding this shift in Bernstein's career. Every time a Reitman movie popped up--Ghostbusters, Legal Eagles, or Stripes, to name only a few--you could bet that Bernstein would be there to write both songs and an underscore for the movies. This was certainly also so for Reitman's 1979 comedy Meatballs, starring a young Saturday Night Live veteran named Bill Murray in his film debut. This messy, raucous but ultimately sweet, very Canadian movie about one summer at the somewhat mismanaged Camp North Star featured the loosey-goosey Murray heading a cast of young unknowns playing both kids and counselors (only the lead kid, played by Chris Makepeace, went on to do anything significant--he was the star of Tony Bill's excellent 1980 tween-comedy My Bodyguard).

Meatballs still holds a place in my heart as perhaps the most sentimental of all the Bernstein-scored comedies. God knows I like me some sentiment, if it's used correctly. One of my favorite moments in the film has Murray taking all the camp counselors out for a night away from their young charges, where they can "smoke and drink and fool around" by the light of an island campfire. Bernstein contributed a few songs to the film (including the rabblerousing, kid-chorused "Are You Ready For The Summer?"), but the song he and his well-seasoned lyricist Norman Gimbel chose to accompany this romantic interlude was the perfectly gentle "Moondust." Sung in a Charlie Rich-like baritone by Canadian vocalist Terry Black, it coaxes the kind of tears you might get while experiencing what you're sure is one of your life's happiest moments. This tune radiates love and friendship. On the Meatballs soundtrack, it's understandably reprised again at the end of the film, when everyone's saying bittersweet goodbyes at summer's end. It's an affecting lullaby--obviously influenced by Johnny Mercer's "Stardust"--and certainly lovely enough to make this list of movie songs that need more recognition.

It's called "Moondust." Music by Elmer Bernstein, lyrics by Norman Gimbel, and performed by Terry Black:



Let’s say it was the moondust
That drifted down from heaven
To fall upon your shoulders
And nestle in your eyes

Let’s say it was the moondust
With all its ancient powers
Much more than any mortal
Ever could devise

And it made me love you
And it made me never want to go away
And it made me helpless
And it made me always wanna stay that way

Let’s say it was the moondust
That hides behind the moonlight
That fell and set us free
With its moondust melody

And it made me love you
And it made me never want to go away
And it made me helpless
And it made me always wanna stay that way

Let’s say it was the moondust
That hides behind the moonlight
That fell and set us free
With its moondust melody
And set us free
With its moondust melody

Film #132: An American Werewolf in London

In the early 1980s, there were few American directors whose style was as crunchy as John Landis'. It's difficult to explain what I mean by the term "crunchy"--I just know it's the correct word to describe many of the movies Landis made from 1977 to 1992. The only times he failed us were with the unbearable Spies Like Us, the equally awful Sly Stallone vehicle Oscar and his merely bland but hugely costly episode for Twilight Zone: The Movie. But the period's good stuff far outweighs the bad: Kentucky Fried Movie, National Lampoon's Animal House, The Blues Brothers, An American Werewolf in London, Trading Places, Michael Jackson's Thriller, Into the Night, Three Amigos, Coming to America, and Innocent Blood. All are primo American comedies of the 1970s and 80s. Actually, along with Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Albert Brooks and maybe Zucker/Abrams/Zucker (Airplane, Top Secret) and Ivan Reitman (Meatballs, Ghostbusters), he's one of the era's top comedy autuers. But, honestly, if we're to look closely at Landis' work, he's as much a director of musicals as comedies. Of course, Michael Jackson's Thriller is his purest musical, and now with the death of the King of Pop, it may be his most pored-over film. But then consider Otis Day (in real life, he's Lloyd Williams) and the Knights singing "Shama-Lama-Ding-Dong" and "Shout" in Animal House; James Brown rocking the cathedral, Aretha Franklin tearing apart her diner, and Ray Charles moving the crowds in The Blues Brothers; the tuneful Randy Newman numbers Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Chevy Chase perform in Three Amigos; and the energetic African dance number in Coming to America. With this, and the colorful music-based sequences in many of his other films (including American Werewolf), Landis is very much a musically-minded director.

I guess if I'm to look into my heart, the word "crunchy" really refers primarily to Landis' cutting methods. Whether working with editors George Folsey Jr. or Malcolm Campbell, his films always display the unmistakable branding of post-production expertise. Landis' editing, more so than that of most directors, has a palpably mathematical quality about it. It swiftly gets us in and out of scenes, often with a barely registered punchline or an extra shock to the system before we go. And it thrives on juxtaposing chaos with calm. Look at the insane ending to The Blues Brothers--that off-screen clicking of a hundred guns, and then we cut to that quiet shot of Jake and Elwood at the firing end of an impossibly well-placed number of gun barrels. Or look at Animal House, where we have all this wackiness ensuing outside and then we get a quick, calm look at Flounder (Stephen Furst) asking a store cashier "Can I have a thousand marbles, please?" Or how, right in the middle of the horrifying transformation scene in American Werewolf, Landis humorously cuts to a short insert of the scene's only witness: a grinning Mickey Mouse figurine.

There are a lot more moments like this in American Werewolf, a movie that registers as Landis' best. It's funny, but it's also extremely terrifying--often very much in the same frame. Length-wise, at 97 minutes, it's the director's most economical work (his movies tend to run a little longer than necessary). American Werewolf tells a simple story, effectively, and then gets right on out of there. With its dismaying final shot, and the bouncily-scored credit crawl that instantaneously follows it up, it's a movie that delightedly sucker-punches us and then darts laughing down the street.Perhaps American Werewolf's most surprising element is its sweetness. In fact, one could say that Landis movies often take us aback with moments of unexpected sentiment. My favorite scene in The Blues Brothers has Jake, recently released from prison, falling instantly asleep on Elwood's tenement bed. Elwood hollers "Hey, you sleaze! That's my bed." And then Elwood, glad to see his brother again, covers him up and continues cooking toast over a Sterno flame. And I'm always soothed by how much I adore the romantic elements in Animal House, Coming to America, and Trading Places. However, even within this pantheon, the connection enjoyed by the American Werewolf leads is really something special.

Former Dr. Pepper spokesman and star of ABC's disco-themed sitcom Makin' It David Naughton plays an average guy wandering through the British countryside with his best friend Jack (Griffin Dunne). They're first seen getting off a truck with a bunch of sheep on it ("Goodbye, girls!" Jack says as the truck pulls off). It's telling--thought the boys sadly don't get it--that the only establishment they spot to duck into is called The Slaughtered Lamb. Taking refuge from the cold moors, David and Jack instantly suss out that they're unwelcome outsiders here, particularly when they ask about the creepy pentagram painted on the walls. This stuns the rowdy crowd of British townies into silence, and the two friends feel prodded into escape (after they're gone, the pub's patrons argue about whether they should have insisted they stay, even though they DO warn them to keep to the roads).

It's after they start hearing pained howls underneath the light of a full moon that David and Jack notice they haven't stayed on the roads ("Oops," Jack says). In a sickening, disorienting sequence, the friends run round directionless for a few minutes before realizing they've been spotted by something (the camera eerily sets itself in front of them). And then the carnage begins. For a movie that's billed as a comedy, this scene--like many more that will follow it--is brutal and unsettling, and gamely lets the horror movie element take hold. (SPOILER ALERT!) Jack's death is sudden, bloody, and frantic. But David survives, passing out after the townies pump buckshot into this gigantic wolf that's attacked them.

David wakes up in a London hospital with Alex (Jenny Agutter) as his instantly smitten nurse. He is feverish and slashed up, and drifts in and out of fitful sleeps where he has some potent nightmares (these are some of the film's best scenes, and if you haven't seen it, I'll do you a favor by shutting up). David also starts getting visits from the dead and decaying Jack (to me, Rick Baker's oozing, meaty work on Dunne's once-pretty face is really what won him the Oscar, the first competitive one for makeup, in 1981). Jack pleads with David to off himself, to spare the lives of others he's bound to kill, because now he is a werewolf, and we all know what that means. But David thinks he's merely going crazy, and he doesn't take Jack's advise to heart. In fact, upon his release, David finds he has something more to live for when Alex saucily invites him to stay with her for a while. This sparks a relationship that's tender and sexy--we like these two people together--and this inclusion of a bit of heart in the story pays off later in unexpectedly touching ways. David Naughton only appeared in a few more forgettable movies after American Werewolf, but he makes an brave impression here as a complete innocent to whom fate has been unkind. This may be the best portrayal of a lycanthrope ever (his piercing screams during the demanding transformation scene--set incongruously to Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Bad Moon Rising"--convince us that turning into a werewolf is quite a bit more painful than the serene lap-dissolves we were once familiar with from movies like the Lon Chaney Jr. Wolf Man of the 1940s). Of course, Baker's work here is magnificent, and inventive (the close up of the hair sprouting from David's skin was achieved by pulling on the strands from behind the patch of flesh-like latex and then running the footage backwards). But it's Naughton's performance that terrifies us (I love it when, in mid-transformation, David's human side makes a final appearance when he apologizes to the dead Jack for calling him "a walking meat loaf"). There are many amazing set pieces strewn about here: the stalking of a London businessman in a deserted tube station; the lovely, lathery shower David and Alex take together, set to Van Morrison's "Moondance"; the convention of the dead in a Leicester Square porno house (which plays a funny sex film called "See You Next Wednesday," a title phrase that's strangely appeared in numerous Landis movies); the aformentioned nightmares; the morning after, when David finds himself in the buff and penned up with a pack of wolves at the London Zoo (a scene that culminates with the immortal line "A naked American man stole my balloons"); and, perhaps most stultifying, the visceral car-crash chaos that erupts when the werewolf hits the busy British streets. These scenes, plus the perturbing, over-too-quick finale and the gorily amusing moments featuring the rapidly rotting Dunne (who should have gotten a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination), help insure An American Werewolf in London won't be sinking into obscurity any time soon.