Monday 10 October 2011

Why you should buy the Last House on the Left soundtrack right now...

I try not to write about famous dead people on here too often these days as it prompts internal debates about why I find it perfectly okay to write about dead people I never met but won't ever mention people I know who died in real life. Then I start to question why the things I write about on here don't seem like real life and find myself speeding towards a head-on collision with a major existential crisis...

But I'm ignoring such concerns today to talk about David Hess who sadly passed away over the weekend. Hess was most famous for playing the ultimate bad guy, Krug, in The Last House on the Left. Which is a film I don't like very much (although I don't think it should've been remade either). The point is, Last House on the Left has an amazing soundtrack. And it's not at all scary. In fact, it's just really, really sad. Example 1...


I first saw the film in my early twenties and have never felt the need to watch it again. But I have listened to that soundtrack a thousand times since, easily. Example 2...


It's the kind of album that shouldn't work out of context, but it actually works best that way. Oddly it does suit the film too, and the moments that really work are the moments that are accompanied by Hess's haunting tunes. It's the soundtrack I will always keep coming back to. If you haven't heard it in its entirety I can't recommend it enough.

That's why it's worth mentioning who David Hess was. Because in 1972 he wrote and performed the greatest horror film soundtrack ever produced.

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