1980s Movie Montage MegaMix

My Mixtape’s A Masterpiece is a weekly feature in which a guest compiles a 12-song playlist around some theme. This week, Rafael A. Ruiz presents some of his favorite primo tracks featured in movie montages from the ‘80s.

“The hour's approaching, to give it your best
And you've got to reach your prime.
That’s when you need to put yourself to the test
And show us a passage of time
We're going to need a montage...”

By the early 2000s, the ‘80s montage was a beloved cliché. Cheesy explosions of studying, training, flying planes, karating, volleyballing, building spaceships, committing heists or dance fighting your way out of systematic oppression. Within movies themselves, these sequences would become small set pieces to help us through a cumbersome part of the narrative with pizzazz and style.

The first examples of pop montages set to popular music within non-musical films came a bit earlier. THE GRADUATE (1967) and BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969) both used popular artists of the time (Simon & Garfunkel and Burt Bacharach, respectively). In 1971, both MCCABE & MRS. MILLER and HAROLD AND MAUDE used a single artist (Leonard Cohen, Cat Stevens) as their soundtrack, stopping the narrative dead to provide a backdrop for their songs. As the decade progressed, movies like AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973) and MEAN STREETS (1974) would use nostalgic needle drops as a bed of sound to add atmosphere.

The technique wouldn’t explode into consistent usage until the advent of MTV in 1981. Music videos were first derided as trash and empty, but quickly transformed into a generation-defining pop art format. The early ‘80s proved a breeding ground for the next generation of stylistic filmmakers (Russell Mulcahy, Mary Lambert, and Julien Temple leading eventually to David Fincher, Michael Bay, Spike Jonze, and many more). You’ll see a majority of these picks are within a tight few years in the middle of the decade (1983 through 1986). It was a fertile period of exploration and my following selections are listed in chronological order.

Readers will no doubt have a laundry list of alternative ideas equal to or better than my selections. Just know that I had a whole other list of choices dancing at the edge of inclusion: TOP GUN, THE KARATE KID, RUNNING SCARED, TEEN WOLF, THE BREAKFAST CLUB, TOOTSIE, PRINCE OF DARKNESS, EXPLORERS, THE MANHATTAN PROJECT, THE MONSTER SQUAD, and, of course, THE NAKED GUN.

1. “Diamond Diary” by Tangerine Dream (from THIEF)

Some montages like to start a movie as an almost silent film, emphasizing atmosphere over plot. Tangerine Dream had already done SORCERER (1977), but their partnership with Michael Mann would become career-defining for both parties. Tangerine Dream’s nine minute track covers the full progression of a diamond heist from beginning to end as the characters silently work in the lattice work of fire escapes, drenched in a perpetual downpour.  The music is rhythmically faster than the film’s languid edit pattern, playing to the interior emotions within our thieves: Calm on the outside, racing with adrenaline on the inside.

(Editor’s note: The song is currently not available on Spotify, but it is included in the YouTube playlist below)

2. “Maniac” by Michael Sembello (from FLASHDANCE)

Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson pioneered the MTV aesthetics assimilation into popular movies. Training sequences became fast cut, hyper-sexualized montages that emphasized the physicality of the main characters, who were dripping effort and sweat in equal measure. This is something they would elevate into a fine artform by TOP GUN (1986) when the movie stops dead for two and half sweat soaked minutes to watch everybody play volleyball. It’s the movie outright admitting, “you paid to see beautiful people, here are the goods.” While FLASHDANCE has multiple fantastic set pieces (including “Flashdance…What A Feeling”), the genius moment of this particularly trendsetting sequence is how Sembello’s relentless synth and cowbell base line is matched by fast impressionistic edits until the music sharply halts to reveal Jessica Beals desperately gulping down water after the water, revealing the pain behind the gain.

3. “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by Bauhaus (from THE HUNGER)

Tony Scott started his stylish career with this virtuoso six-minute opening sequence. Decadent Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie visit a New York City nightclub where Bauhaus plays their gothic rock classic. The two vampires pick up some party goers to take back to their deco mansion. But the song keeps playing, intercutting with the atonal musical score, repeating lyrics at unsettling moments, “Undead, Undead,” reminding us to fear these modern predators and their new wave trappings.

4. “Push It To The Limit” by Paul Engemann (from SCARFACE)

There had been crime spree montages before this 1983 remake but once the world IS Tony Montana’s, we’re shown an over-the-top whirlwind montage of success. Brian De Palma created a new template for this archetypical moment by playing everything hyperbolically and ironically. Too much money pours in. Examples of excessive wealth and decadent tastes are presented. Except the tiger. That’s tasteful. And everybody smiles a little too big. This format quickly became a mainstay on TV shows such as Miami Vice and then was elevated/perfected in Martin Scorsese’s multiple crime epics (GOODFELLAS, CASINO, WOLF OF WALL STREET, THE IRISHMAN).

(Editor’s note: The version on Spotify is a cover by Brian “Hacksaw” Williams, but the original is in the YouTube playlist below)

5. “Never” by Moving Pictures (from FOOTLOOSE)

The CITIZEN KANE of ‘80s dance montages, this movie has several very other very worthy set-pieces I didn’t include (“Let’s Hear It For The Boy”, “Holding Out For A Hero”) but there’s nothing like the Rage Dance sequence set to “Never” in 1984’s FOOTLOOSE. Well, nothing except for the dead-on parody in 2007’s HOT ROD. Kevin Bacon is frustrated with the small town restrictions on this rebellious lone wolf.

So he does what any hot blooded American teenager would do: find an unlit abandoned warehouse, drink, smoke and DANCE that oppression away. It’s absurd and magnificent in equal measure.

6. “Relax” by Frankie Goes To Hollywood (from BODY DOUBLE)

What is this, seriously? Is “Relax” a porno movie within a movie? A satirical musical number that is a deconstruction of classic Hollywood?  Is it an allegory for how movie stars are just prostitutes and sex workers in their own way? The fact that it’s all of these things at once is the genius of De Palma. It’s also a great defining moment for how he sees Hollywood. There’s a sleazy quality to the music. Lead singer Holly Johnson even operates as an MC guiding our hero through the debauchery until both of them surrender to the bacchanalia.

7. “Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker, Jr. (from GHOSTBUSTERS)

The title track to this monster hit works both as a theme to the movie and an in-world jingle for the business itself.  The movie knows it has a great hook (that catchy guitar/drum machine/synth keyboard beat) and uses it liberally throughout the movie. We’re initially teased the theme in the opening titles but when it finally plays properly about 40 minutes in, we get an awesome 30-second instrumental intro that blows up into a full on multi-frame, splitscreen success montage as our heroes become overnight media sensations. It presents plenty of local NYC color and real media figures (Larry King!) to ground us in a believable reality. The fact that our heroes are also exhausted and overworked allows an ironic counterpoint to the ebullient music.

8. “Number One” by Chaz Jankel (from REAL GENIUS)

This cult classic is so good at montages (it has three of them!) that I went back and forth between which one to choose. While the first one (set to Comsat Angel’s “I’m Falling”) is a great ode to the mechanization of teaching, the second montage is flat out the greatest learning montage I’ve ever seen. Teen movies often like to shorthand intense learning (BACK TO SCHOOL, THE MANHATTAN PROJECT). REAL GENIUS properly conveys the effort and time it takes to actually learn while also communicating an incredible amount of story and character growth. It feels like a series of actual events, each distinct from one another. It also has enough time to convey a freakout before everybody hunkers down and gets back to work.

9. “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want (Instrumental)” by Dream Academy (from FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF)

John Hughes always was an expert at a choice needle drop.  In a movie filled with musical sequences and straight out musical numbers, this interlude at the Art Institute stops the shenanigans in its tracks to consider the inner emotional life of Cameron (Alan Ruck). At first playful and ironic, the sequence finally focuses on this sad sack as he contemplates his existence in the pointillize dots of a small child in Suerat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”. As we cut closer and closer, the soft tones of the alto sax and synth work communicate his existential loneliness more than words ever could.

10. / 11. “Training Montage” by Vince DeCola / “Hearts On Fire” by John Cafferty (from ROCKY IV)

While “Eye of the Tiger” from ROCKY III (1982) seems like an obvious choice, the training montage in the follow up is the zenith of he-man perfection. Comparing the two titans (Rocky Balboa and Ivan Drago) as they train for their climatic boxing match, one uses the elements of nature while the other uses machines. Like FLASHDANCE and others, the edits cut sharper between the two men as they mirror each other’s exercises. Vince DeCola’s power chords put in synthpop intensity to the climax—but that’s not enough. We get a WHOLE other song (“Hearts on Fire” by John Cafferty) for the second half of the montage. That’s right. TWO SONGS for one montage. That’s because Stallone never does anything half measure.

12. “Ode To Joy” by Ludwig van Beethoven (from DIE HARD)

Compared to other montages, this one needs a few qualifiers. It is the shortest sequence (it’s barely over a minute) and there’s even some dialogue during it. But that’s irrelevant to the game changing moment that happens when Hans finally opens his highly coveted Nakatomi Vault. Director John McTiernan suggested that composer Michael Kamen use the 9th Symphony to add “Joy” to a story of violence. But this choice did something more than that. It created a symbiotic relationship between classical music and the action film, infusing a sense of modernity to the symphonic and a sense of elegance to the shoot ‘em up. This game-changing moment would be a cliché within five years as every action movie used classical music to promote its epicness legitimacy (including DIE HARD sequels and DIE HARD clones, like CLIFFHANGER).

YouTube playlist for Rafael Ruiz’s “1980s Movie Montage MegaMix”