The Midnight Meat Train Soundtrack Review

The Midnight Meat Train starring Brooke Shields. There’s a porno joke in there somewhere, but I’m too lazy to fish it out. As much as we’d like Brooke to do a video nasty, this movie is actually some kind of horror exercise based on a Clive Barker story.

Is it just me, or does the title of this film make it sound like it should have come out thirty years ago? The Midnight Meat Train. It just screams gory 1970s exploitation flick a la Bloodsucking Freaks or Cannibal Holocaust, doesn’t it? As far as I can tell, though, this movie had something of a budget and features not one frame of midget S&M. Thank god we have the recently leaked Verne Troyer sex tape for all our perverse little person needs.

But enough of this discourse. I’m not here to pontificate upon the name Midnight Meat Train (although I would like to point out I heard a rumor the Meat part of the title was suggested by a fan at a preview screening who thought Midnight Train sounded too dull). Heck, I’m not even supposed to be talking about the goddamn film. I’m here, good citizens, to talk about the music of Midnight Meat Train (or as I like to call it, Brooke Shields Rides The Subway & Doesn’t Get Naked At All).

Composed by Robert Williamson and Johannes Kobilke, the soundtrack to MMT uses all the requisite dissonant noise, orchestral swells, and heart-pounding percussion to sound authentically creepy, but in the end it just doesn’t offer anything transcendent or iconic. At best, this stuff is interchangeable with the background music in Resident Evil. It certainly didn’t have much effect the sunny Monday morning I listened to it as I drove through lower Manhattan to return my weekend rental car. Even when I made that scary illegal u-turn, Meat Train‘s score added little to the excitement.

I can only think of two instances in which this soundtrack would be applicable in my life: if I were a freelance photographer in the city attempting to track down a deranged serial killer like the protagonist in the film, or if I started a neighborhood haunted house. This kind of stuff would scare the pants off all those eight year olds who’d turn up dressed as Dora the Explorer. I can’t imagine what their reaction would be to my horrifying Freddy vs. Jason puppet show.

You know what’s funny? The titles of some of these Meat Train score pieces could be grade z schlock flicks unto themselves. “Blood Train,” “Mahogany’s Iron Hammer,” “Guardian Angel” – I’d pay top dollar to see any of those cinematically realized. “Engaged to be Engaged,” on the other hand, is probably the name of the next romantic comedy Kate Hudson is working on. In that one, Owen Wilson plays a lovable eskimo slacker with an unfortunate case of narcolepsy who mgffffpjhtdr – – –

Oh man, did anyone else just feel an intense stinging at the base of their neck just now? I feel like I just got tased. Anywho, The Midnight Meat Train soundtrack adds nothing to the annals of impressive horror movie music, but it might be good to make an insecure child in drag poop his pants. That, I suppose, is a feat worthy of two stars.