Scarface (Music From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) – Various – Released December 9th, 1983
This month sees the 40th anniversary of one of the most influential gangster movies of all time.
1983’s Scarface stars Al Pacino as Cuban immigrant-turned-coke kingpin Tony Montana and a young Michelle Pfeiffer as Elvira, his loveless love interest.
The movie was directed by Brian De Palma with a screenplay written by Oliver Stone. It was intended to be a remake of the 1932 movie of the same name, itself loosely based on the life of Al Capone.
For this modern reimagining the action shifted from Prohibition-era Chicago to Miami at the height of the 80s coke boom. The stories diverge as a consequence, though many thematic points remain, namely the story of one man’s ruthless rise to power in the criminal underworld and the dark side of the American dream.
It’s worth noting, also, that both movies were criticised for their levels of extreme violence and the glamourisation of crime.
As crime movies go, De Palma’s Scarface is one of the very best. So if you’ve not seen it, stop reading immediately and watch it, then come back here – you can thank me later.
So yeah – spoiler alert for a movie that’s four decades old – as per Newtonian law, Tony eventually gets his comeuppance in what has to be one of the greatest shootout scenes of all time.
It’s the very embodiment of 80s excess, all guns blazing and nostrils flaring, setting the tone for every other action movie to follow.
In the end Tony Montana was the architect of his own downfall.
But did we take the narrative to heart? Did we ultimately view it as a cautionary tale of the dangers of greed and excess before vowing never to be tempted to veer off the straight and narrow path?
Did we fuck?!
The World Is Yours
Though the movie was a snapshot of a specific time and place, its allure is timeless.
It’s lovingly referenced in the PS2 classic Grand Theft Auto Vice City and is even cited in other gangster movies including New Jack City and Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels.
And then there’s the world of hiphop.
Tony’s line about America, “first you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women”, that’s it right there.
Whereas Goodfellas glamourised crime and The Godfather movies romanticised it, Scarface does neither.
Instead it told a street-level story about a man who came from nothing and the ruthless determination it takes to be the boss.
Its flush with shows of strength, and flamboyant displays of money and power, not to mention the girls, the guns and the drugs.
And as for Tony’s villa? That’s the prototypical hiphop mansion blueprint right there.
Scarface is hands down the most referenced movie in hiphop history, from golden age legends like Biggie and RZA, to nu skool icons like Killer Mike from Run The Jewels.
I had this movie on VHS back in the day and it enjoyed heavy post-pub rotation. Later I bought in on DVD.
The DVD special features included a documentary made by Def Jam comprising interviews with various members of the hiphop community including Russell Simmons, Nas, Snoop Dogg, plus Method Man, Ghostface Killah and Raekwon from the Wu Tang Clan, not to mention the rapper Scarface who took his name from the movie.
So forget Dre, forget Ice Cube – Scarface started this gangsta shit. You ask either one and they’ll tell you the same thing.
Cube’s music is laced with Scarface references; Dopeman quotes the Frank Lopez’s second rule, “don’t get high on your own supply”, the hook of “Don’t Trust ‘Em”, features a loop of dialogue from the film (from my favourite “come on pelican!” scene), while the end track from Predator is called “Make Way For The Bad Guy.”
And let’s not forget before Ice Cube had a good day, Tony Montana saw the lights of the Goodyear blimp first, and it read, “The World Is Yours.”
Say Hello To My Little Friend
Now I’m aware that this entry differs a little from previous articles, since we haven’t even mentioned the music yet.
So let’s mention the album’s MVP – Giorgio Moroder.
Moroder composed the score for the movie, which is the best part about the soundtrack album.
He also wrote and composed the songs on the album, all of which are cheesy as fuck and comprise 80% of the original soundtrack album.
So honestly, I have mixed feelings about this one. I love the score, but the pop songs eeehh…
Thing is, just because they’re not my style, doesn’t mean they don’t fit the movie perfectly.
I mean, I wouldn’t wear any of the outfits either. To quote Elvira, they look like somebody’s nightmare, and yet Scarface doesn’t work without them.
And that’s it, that’s what it’s all about Manny.
Wealth, money, power, coke and the garish aesthetics of the most tasteless decade in all of human history.
So go grab the yeyo and a shirt with the biggest collars you can find, it’s time to hit the dancefloor…
Make Way For The Bad Guy
The first track on the album is also my favourite song from the movie, Push It To The Limit by Paul Engemann. In the movie it appears right at the beginning of Act 3.
In the 1980s the MPA in America had a law that required all movies to include a musical montage scene, commonly referred to in the industry as the Balboa law.
Push It To The Limit is perfect montage fodder, it’s like the Eye Of The Tiger for coke traffickers. Except its better, because in this instance, amidst the shots of sacks of cash, overheating money counters and Tony’s tacky-looking mansion, you get to see an actual tiger.
The tiger’s fate is the only plot thread left dangling in the movie, incidentally. The poor bastard was just left there chained up with no room to roam about.
Maybe if Tony cared more for the animal’s welfare it might have pitched in when the Bolivian hitmen rocked up which may have helped to change the final outcome.
Also, would Tony have also named his tiger Tony? Would a newly-landed Cuban “political refugee” from the Mariel landing be familiar with American breakfast cereal mascots? Would he end up arguing with Elvira about it while she rolled her sunken eyes while reaching for a refill?
These are the types of thoughts that pop into my head at 4am when I should be sleeping.
But yeah – 80s musical montages, they’re generally atrocious and I generally view them as lazy filmmaking, a formulaic method to denote the passage of time that requires little to know creativity, but if I had to pick one 80s montage scene to defend, I’d pick this one.
Why? Because of its execution. The scenes, the edits and the lyrics all work together in unison to serve the story rather than simply padding out the runtime.
Push It To The Limit not only fits this scene perfectly, it embodies the character of Tony Montana and the crass, epicurean and painfully synthetic spirit of the 1980s generally.
So I’ve passed well over 1k words now and covered one song so far, plus lots of tiger theories and stuff about hiphop.
Truth is I’m not going to include all of these songs on here because they’re mostly atrocious, seriously I’d rather have Manny do that creepy tongue thing in my ear than listen to most of these, so just giving you the highlights.
Track two is a track from Debbie Harry (her first solo track, afaik) called Rush Rush.
It’s pure disco queso once again, but for the purposes of this movie, and depicting the era its set in, this tune couldn’t be better.
It’s got a funky synth bassline which I do kinda like and a chorus that goes, “rush rush to the yeyo.”
Lucky for us it would only take a few years before disco denizens would find much better drug to rush on. It certainly would have helped the characters in the movie dance a lot better.
Speaking off, let’s talk about track six, She’s On Fire by Amy Holland.
I’m including this one too because I love the accompanying scene, it’s where we take the first of many cringy visits to the Babylon club.
Elvira’s not impressed by this venue and my DJ instincts tell me she likes her choons more banging.
Given her thin anaemic appearance and sulky expression my guess would be she’s more into gothic German techno.
But instead she ends up having to dance with Tony, the only Cuban born without rhythm, while he busts moves like a dad at a wedding and blows cigar smoke in her face. And it just gets better from there.
He makes a fantastic impression in this scene, he really does.
Now let’s rewind back one, to what’s hands-down the best piece of music on the entire album, Tony’s Theme.
Giorgio Moroder’s score for this movie is one of the era’s greatest. It belongs up there with Vangelis’ Bladerunner score and John Carpenter’s theme to The Thing as one of the very best of the 80s.
From the funky Mariel montage music at the beginning to the piercing menace of the chainsaw sequence, the Andean gallop we hear on our first trip to Bolivia, contrasted with the ghostly Sosa theme that reappears more and more the closer we get to the finale – all brilliant.
But Tony’s Theme is the piece that elevates Moroder to the same level as John Williams, John Barry and Ennio Morricone.
Only a handful of composers manage to encapsulate a character in music and achieve it with such efficiency.
Well before the Universal logo fades and the credits start rolling we know this story is going to be a tragic one, as Moroder’s melancholy chord sequence instantly signifies Tony Montana’s inevitable descent.
Baroque, yet modern, synthetic, yet operatic, the piece captures Tony’s dark and troubled soul perfectly.
So now let’s talk about the only innocent casualty in this movie who we were all nonetheless glad to see shot to bits, Octavio.
This is the scene where Frank orders a hit on Tony but the two goons he hires make an absolute balls of it. Tony escapes despite being utterly fucking twisted and chazzer-eyed, before immediately exacting his revenge in one of the movie’s greatest dramatic scenes.
There’s a lot of fan theories about Octavio, someone even made a “backstory” video about him on YouTube (it’s terrible).
For years I also wondered what the point of him was, if it was just something random or was there thematic significance?
Until I realised maybe he’s meant to be a mirror for Frank Lopez and that this is how Tony always viewed him, as just another fat clown dancing around Miami that eventually winds up getting shot.
The music playing is track eight, Dance Dance Dance by Beth Andersen – what a way to go.
Imagine the excruciating impact as a volley of 9mm bullets collide with your guts at supersonic speed, the searing agony as they rupture your digestive tract, terror, blood and stomach acid gushing out of you as your eyes grow dim and you realise you’re going to die in a heap on the floor listening to this shit music and wearing that ridiculous costume.
#JusticeForOctavio
Push It To The Limit (Of 80s Cheese)
This album is 40 years old this year and let’s not kid ourselves, it sounds it.
It’s from a time when cocaine was new and exotic, a designer drug for the glitterati.
Nowadays every boring cunt is on the stuff. Head to any pub toilets anywhere on earth and clock the sniffly cucharachas crawling under the cubicle doors and you’ll quickly realise that the yeyo’s long since become the least glamorous drug on earth.
Sure the showbiz burnouts, high-flying executives and sleazy financiers are all still pumped full of the stuff, but then so’s your boss, the local bus conductor and your newly-divorced aunty.
Nothing could be further from the Miami depicted in Scarface; a wild west with no sheriff, a white powder gold rush, a cinematic strip of art deco decadence, chainsaw brutality, fashion atrocities and sacchariferous disco depravities.
Scarface is the perfect gangster movie. It has a perfect script, a perfect director and a perfect cast.
Hiring Moroder to do the soundtrack was also a masterstroke. He delivers a score that’s also perfection, all the while acting as secondary cast director, by hiring other performers for the soundtrack.
Because you see, every song on this album is also character and, as with any movie, some characters are more prominent than others, but they’re all part of the story.
And every song on this album is so integral to this movie that if you were to change any one of them, you would detract from the overall story.
So luckily for us, when Universal had the bright idea to re-release the movie with a new hiphop soundtrack as a cynical cash grab, director Brian De Palma blocked them.
Sure, I would have probably enjoyed the actual music more than I do this 1983 fromage fest, but one of my favourite movies would have been ruined forever.
Full disclosure, I don’t own this album yet. I’ve kept my eyes peeled for a nice, second-hand copy for years but never spotted one and I’d much rather have an original 80s copy than a reissue.
The would change if they finally decided to release the Expanded Soundtrack on vinyl instead of just CD. (Because fuck CDs.)
Anyways, this article came out wonky and doesn’t follow the usual format to say the least.
Instead it’s half labour of love, half fevered delirium which I’m officially blaming it on foreign-sourced flu medication. (Dextromethorphan hydrobromide – now there’s the glamour drug for the roaring 2020s!”)
If it’s any consolation I think I’m feeling slightly better now, I think I’ve literally typed the fever outa me.
And now the only way I know how to finish this article is to wish you all a happy xmas and share my favourite line/scene from the entire from the whole movie….
