Earlier this year, the radio edit of Bonnie Tyler’s iconic “Total Eclipse of the Heart” passed 1 billion streams on Spotify, which means she has netted maybe $ 120 from people playing it again and again. (The full version, which runs over 7 minutes, has yet to crack even 100 million plays, because Spotify listeners are cowards.) It’s 43 years old at this point, but in some ways it’s even more popular than it was when it topped the charts in 1983, because it simply will never die.
As any karaoke host can tell you, it’s a bit of a cheesy song, yes, but it’s also just plain awesome, with Jim Steinman’s trademark over the top lyrics and production making it impossible to ignore and, more often than not, difficult not to sing along. It’s that very quality that has made it a popular choice for movies and TV shows over the years, with IMDB tracking well over 100 instances of it appearing on soundtracks.
Now, with some pop songs, once a movie uses it to great effect, it kind of “owns” that song, to the extent that anyone else using it would seem almost sacrilege. Isn’t it jarring when “Red Right Hand” pops up in a movie that ISN’T Scream? Or “Goodbye Horses” outside of Silence of the Lambs? Few even try, as a result. They know they’re going to be seen as copycats, even though the songs weren’t written for those films.
However, there are at least four genre films that have used Ms. Tyler’s immortal power ballad, and they all work without detracting from each other. The most recent is Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, which used it at a key moment at the end of the second act. But this is the internet, and we have to rank things, so can it claim the title of BEST use (so far)? Let’s find out!
(Warning: spoilers for all films!)
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Dead Snow 2: Red vs Dead
Tommy Wirkola’s sequel wasn’t quite as fun as the original, but the first one’s success probably helped them secure a big enough budget to throw (the reportedly expensive) “Total Eclipse” in during its climax, where hero Martin (Vegar Hoel) decides to dig up his girlfriend Hanna (killed in the first movie) and resurrect her as a zombie.
It may rank last here, but I’ll give it this much: it’s the only one of these movies to use this beloved love song during an actual uhh… love scene. It’s also the only one where the song isn't actually playing diegetically within the film, making it feel more like a random (if still charming) choice made during the edit rather than something they had planned all along.
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
At a key moment in the film, sisters Grace (Samara Weaving) and Faith (Kathryn Newton) have had a big fight and gone their separate ways, only to find themselves in one-on-one fights where they could really use their sibling’s help.
During Grace’s fight with Francesca (Maia Jae), they knock into a DJ booth set up for a wedding that the villains had interrupted earlier, which kicks off this planned playlist. As the familiar piano kicks in, one might wonder what kind of wacko would choose this for their wedding song (if you’ve never really listened to the lyrics, it’s not exactly a happy story!), but it certainly makes for a fun backdrop to watching the two women beat the crap out of each other.
Plus, Francesca is Grace’s (now-dead) husband’s ex-lover, so the tortured lyrics about lamenting a former flame just add to the equally over the top nature of their fight.
The only bummer is when they intercut between this and Faith’s fight with Titus (Shawn Hatosy), which is more of a straight-up beating akin to Patricia Arquette's motel scene with James Gandolfini in True Romance.It’s hard to watch and has a tonal shift with the comparatively silly catfight in the other room, so all those “Turn around, briiiight eyes!” refrains aren’t quite as amusing when they play over poor Faith being beaten to a pulp by an angry man.
The Strangers: Prey at Night
Director/admitted Jim Steinman superfan Johannes Roberts said he originally planned to use one of Steinman’s songs for every soundtrack cue in the movie, only for the music budget to prevent it. So he could only keep two: Air Supply’s “Making Love Out of Nothing At All” (which battled with “Total Eclipse” at the top of the charts in 1983; Steinman being the only songwriter in history to accomplish this feat) over the burning car climax, and “Total Eclipse” during the centerpiece pool fight between Luke (Lewis Pullman) and one of the Strangers.
The song, playing off an old jukebox that Luke inadvertently activated as he scrambled to turn on the lights, plays throughout the entire fight, occasionally muffled by the characters being underwater.It elevates what might be a decent but rather standard setpiece into one of those things that makes the movie worth watching (and it comes off even better now in the wake of the woeful new trilogy from Renny Harlin).
Urban Legend
Urban Legend director Jamie Blanks passed away last month (with the news breaking on the day Ready or Not 2 hit theaters, incidentally), prompting me to rewatch the movie, which has always been my favorite of the post-Scream glut of new/slick slashers from the late ‘90s/early ‘00s. And once again, I was reminded of how well the song was used here.
While it was used to contrast brutal violence (or necrophilia) in the other ones, here it worked as a fun meta gag. Michelle (Natasha Gregson Wagner) is about to be the first victim of the killer, who is using urban legends as his/her MO and has chosen “the killer hiding in the backseat” one to get things started.Oblivious to the danger behind her, Michelle throws on “Total Eclipse” and botches a few lyrics, but then the chorus kicks in, and she sings “Turn around….” over and over, oblivious to the fact that she should be following her own advice.
And then, just before she loses her head, she foreshadows it with “Every now and then I fall apart,” heh. It perfectly sets the fun tone that permeates the rest of the movie, not to mention it kicked off the tradition of using the song in a heightened way instead of just another track to play in the background.
Let’s face it, love it or hate it, we can all agree that there’s nothing subtle about the song, so using it in that way would just be wrong.
In fact, if IMDb is correct/complete, Urban Legend was the first feature film ever to use “Total Eclipse of the Hear” on its soundtrack (only a handful of TV shows had used it prior).
Since then, it’s been featured in several other shows and movies outside of the horror genre; the Bruce Willis comedy Bandits actually has an entire scene about how good it is (despite also being corny), our beloved Jamie Lee Curtis danced to it in the acclaimed The Last Showgirl, and I doubt anyone could forget the profane version from The Dan Band featured in Old School.
But there’s something about the song's bombastic excess that makes it a perfect fit for genre films that have a wink in their eye, and it certainly helped make all of these movies that much better.
