I’d Really Like to See…More Absurd Musical Adaptations

This originally appeared as part of Zoom In Online's weekly "I'd Really Like to See..." blog series on December 18, 2008.

Yes, they adapted The Fly into an opera.

Years ago, there was an episode of “The Simpsons” that featured “Planet of the Apes: The Musical,” which was brilliant on multiple levels. In about 90 seconds, “The Simpsons” presented a fantastic "what if" that convinced me, and I’m sure plenty of others, that a Planet of the Apes musical should be made. The songs in the show incorporated some of the more popular moments of the film into catchy melodies with a wink to the viewer and took a grim science fiction tale, added song and dance numbers, and managed to maintain entertainment value (although it was in a very different way than the source material intended).

While at the moment we can only hope and dream for “Planet of the Apes: The Musical” to become a reality, there are other films taken from source material that seemingly should never be made into musicals. One of my favorite films of all time is Little Shop of Horrors. Who would have thought a Roger Corman film about a killer plant from outer space would form such a wonderful union with doo-wop song and dance numbers? And Little Shop is not alone. Alan Cumming, Kristen Bell, and Neve Campbell were among the stars of a 2005 film adaptation of Reefer Madness as a musical. That’s right -- the cult film that used to be shown in classrooms to preach the evils of marijuana. While they haven’t made them into films, there are on-stage productions of Evil Dead, The Toxic Avenger, and The Fly that exist or are in the development stages.


Although I can’t speak to the all-singing, all-dancing iterations of Toxie and Brundlefly, I have had the good fortune of seeing “Evil Dead: The Musical” and can attest that it’s a rollicking good time that ranks alongside Little Shop of Horrors. In fact, with all of the talk of remaking Evil Dead in recent years, I would imagine that remaking it as a musical on film would be the best way to go, if for no other reason than to bring a completely new approach to the story.

In fact, think of how much added entertainment and quality could be added to the cineplexes if every film remade nowadays was remade as a musical. I would much rather have seen musical versions of Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Halloween than the respective versions by Marcus Nispel and Rob Zombie. Dr. Loomis from the Halloween films is already over the top in nature, after all, so the only thing he’s missing is a catchy musical number. Just imagine:

I stared into that boy’s cold and empty eyes
Then it came to me why he caused his sister’s demise:
The boy has no soul, and no matter how much a man begs,
The Shape will cut him down ‘cause he’s Evil on Two Legs.

And of course the musical would feature timeless numbers such as “Babysitting Tonight,” “Shot Him Six Times (Right in the Heart),” and “Where Did He Learn to Drive?”

Certainly this should not be limited to the horror/sci-fi genre. There are plenty of films that have equally inappropriate settings to incorporate singing and dancing into. Gazing into the vast era of 70’s disaster movies, for example, we can draw inspiration to find that “Earthquake! The Musical” has a great ring to it, as does “Poseidon: The Musical” (another remake that could have been improved by some nice tunes). I could go on and on getting into multiple genres subgenres that are ripe for adaptation: war films, blaxploitation, hicksploitation, revenge films; the possibilities are endless.

Since the film industry gravitates further and further toward remakes, it’s going to be more difficult to see something fresh and exciting. Maybe the studios should consider catchy tunes to go along with their remakes -- what’s more fresh and exciting than that?