The years directly sandwiching the millennium were buckwild for the entertainment industries. A long way off the financial, artistic and spiritual shafting of the 2007 recession, those in charge of signing off on productions seemed to do so with the reckless abandon of someone who doesn't get that Instagram polls aren't anonymous. There was less resistance to concepts that weren't guaranteed to make a shit-ton of money (which is why the only cinema listings at the moment are based on comics or have The Rock in), and more artistic license placed in the hands of creators (which is how films like Josie and the Pussycats ended up being made).
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Like, there are just so many things that have no place outside the cultural window of 1998 to 2002: the Teletubbies, Brendan Fraser; the fact that Tom Green got 20th Century Fox to distribute a film called Freddy Got Fingered about a failed sandwich assembler with daddy issues off the back of an MTV show that mostly involved sucking off cows, men falling down, and a song about putting your bum on stuff. For better or worse, those years produced some of the most unique and influential films ever made – Dogma, Ghost World and SLC Punk!, for example. But they also produced a colossal amount of shite that realistically should never have seen the light of day, like The Hole – a psychological thriller in which four privately educated British teens bunk off a school trip to get pissed down a hole and then die. The funding-to-shite scale is most askew, though, at the intersection of 'teen film' and 'stoner comedy'. On that note, let's consider Rodman Flender's 1999 horror spoof Idle Hands.With an all-star cast of Devon Sawa, Seth Green, Elden Henson, Jessica Alba and Vivica A Fox, Idle Hands follows a teenage boy called Anton (Sawa) who is mostly interested in weed and wanking. Aren't we all. Anyway, in a thinly veiled metaphor for sexual awakening, Anton's right hand becomes possessed and goes on an unstoppable killing spree – murdering his parents, his two burn-out mates (Green and Henson) and a few cops, as well as groping the girl next door, Molly (Alba – and don't worry it was the 90s so any unwanted advances were packaged as flirting, so it's fine). To prevent further carnage, Anton cuts off his own hand with a meat cleaver.
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The hand, however, continues its rampage independently, leaving Anton to "finish it off" along with Molly, his friends (who come back from the dead after deciding white light of heaven was "too far" a journey), and a druidic high priestess whose job it is to hunt the hand (Fox). Long story short: the hand is defeated by a puff of weed after it scalps The Offspring's Dexter Holland at a Halloween party and Anton ends up in a full body cast unable to masturbate for the remainder of his days. This masterpiece cost an estimated $25 million to make and grossed $4.2 million at the box office – although that is, in part, because it was rated R and therefore kept its core demographic of horny teenagers at bay.Ordinarily, this would be the point where I flip the script and list some of the film's redeeming qualities in an effort to assert its underrated cultural importance. After all, it's become a cult treasure for a reason and sold pretty steadily on DVD after its release. But there's no secret magic here. No deeper meaning. It is, simply, a garbage film. Will I continue to watch it every Halloween? Yes, of course, but would I stick my neck out for a film that's essentially Evil Dead II via Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back but somehow even worse than that sounds? Absolutely not. Instead, I would ask you to turn your attention to the soundtrack. The musical selections are key to understanding just how much of a bad-but-watchable product of its time it is. So now we're going to chart the dumb charm of Idle Hands through some fairly terrible music, because Halloween.
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Graeme Revell – "Idle Hands Theme"
The Offspring – "Beheaded"
Read More: Revisiting Josie and the Pussycats, The World's Greatest Fictional Pop-Punk Band
The Living End – "Second Solution"
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All that said, I'm pretty sure The Living End only appear on this soundtrack because their name is "The Living End" and this film really isn't that deep. They also played some shows supporting The Offspring in 1997, so this is yet another thing we can blame Dexter Holland for.Your Refused-loving boyfriends have discovered LL Cool J's fourth studio album and decided they can do its title track justice by turning it into a wanky post-punk interlude. Unfortunately the only element of the original they didn't decide to scrap was the rapping. Seems fair to assume this gained its place on the soundtrack because the rights to the original were too expensive, although it does have the added benefit of accurately representing the number of characters wearing cargo pants.Remember when four terribly dressed men who have looked middle-aged for three decades released a song about a man with an ego so fragile he'd sooner list the many fictional and gratuitously violent deaths of his ex than just admit she dumped him? This was considered so good it warranted not one but two music videos: the one seen above, and an animated version depicting a stick figure woman getting shot in the back of the head, which aired approximately 20 times per day on the short-lived British music channel P-Rock between The Transplants and Tsunami Bomb. We could have some lovely discourse about casual misogyny in punk here, but it's probably not worth it over a song that appeared on an album titled, Hitler Bad, Vandals Good.
Zebrahead – "Mindtrip"
This song is so 1998 it just bought me a zebra-print rug and braided my soul patch.
The Waking Hours – "Mama Said Knock You Out"
The Vandals – "My Girlfriend's Dead"
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Lionrock – "Rude Boy Rock"
Static X – "Push It"
Read more: Remember When Every 00s Film Had A Pop Punk Band In It?