The song is called Monkey and it is performed by the group Low.
Why is this relevant and why am I making this post? Because I saw the movie a while back and I have since been on a bit of a search to track down this song. Over the course of that search, I came across many other people asking the same question but none providing the answers.
So anyway, here is your answer: Monkey by Low from the album The Great Destroyer.
The song isn’t even new. It was a 2005 album, but the Killshot producers must have had it in the back of their minds for a few years and realized they had something pretty good to fit into an appropriately themed movie if they ever made one.
Proof that I’m right? You can listen to a clip in the widget below. As you can see, it has also appeared in the film Cry Wolf.
From his 1987 album Third World Child came arguably the greatest hit of Johnny Clegg, the multicultural white South African pop icon whose Zulu street music influences made him an international star.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, his music was popular with Hollywood soundtrack producers and such was the case when Rain Man (scored by the legendary Hans Zimmer) was released in 1988.
The film, starring Tom Cruise (whose films of this era were typically soundtrack gold) and Dustin Hoffman, became a box office hit and a critical success, earning Hoffman the Oscar for Best Actor due to his endearing and authentic performance as an autistic savant.
Included in the film’s multicultural-themed score was Johnny Clegg’s Scatterlings of Africa, one of his most widely recognized and revered pieces. Another of his hits, Cruel, Crazy, Beautiful World was also featured in multiple films including Opportunity Knocks and Career Opportunities.
The Back to the Future soundtrack will be forever associated with Huey Lewis and the News, with their signature hits The Power of Love and Back in Time that accompanied the film and its marketing.
But an often-overlooked and little-known song was penned for the movie by timeless rock legend Eric Clapton, whose career has spanned many decades and many genres. In this case, he produced one of his quintessentially 1980s works that fit in seamlessly with albums like August.
In his recording of Heaven is One Step Away, Clapton not only produced one of his catchiest songs from this era, but left his imprint on a film that itself left an enormous imprint on a generation of moviegoers and made a cultural icon out of Michael J. Fox.
The film also featured a strong supporting cast that included Christopher Lloyd (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), James Tolkan (Top Gun), Lea Thompson (Red Dawn), Crispin Glover (The Doors), Casey Siemaszko (Young Guns) and Thomas F. Wilson (not much else but he was great as Biff).
This is not the first time we’ve referred to The Heavenly Kid as one of the great examples of an 80s soundtrack set to a quintessentially 80s storyline. The teen ghost comedy starring Jason Gedrick and Lewis Smith was one of the sleeper hits of the middle of the decade, and the music was a key factor in the film’s appeal.
In this case, we have Howard Hewett’s Obsession, which could be construed as the “bad love” theme between geek-turned-stud Jason Gedrick and the formerly unattainable hallway bombshell.
Howard Hewett’s greatest success came with the band Shalamar, which was also a notable soundtrack contributor in the 1980s (Footloose). The band was also a launching point for future superstar Jody Watley.
The Heavenly Kid also featured Nancy Valen and future sitcom stars Richard Mulligan (Empty Nest) and Jane Kaczmarek (Malcolm in the Middle).
In a classic film where the musical score was an enormous part of the movie’s appeal and effectiveness, Tryanglz contributed multiple songs. The Tahnee Cain-led band provided much of the contemporary 80s metal appeal to the pre-futuristic-trauma Sarah Connor character (Linda Hamilton). Before the future of humanity rested on her shoulders, it was all acid wash and hairspray.
Such was the world represented by Tryanglz. Indeed, that music proliferated in the early going of the film, where the primary characters were portrayed by Hamilton, 1980s aerobics queen Bess Motta, and go-to-dumb-stud Rick Rossovich (Roxanne).
With the disappearance of the latter two characters, and Sarah Connor’s tangible ties to 1984, so disappeared the music of Tryanglz and we saw the rise of Brad Fiedel’s ominous and futuristic synth score.
One of the more notable soundtracks of the 1980s was The Terminator, not only for the strong instrumental score by Brad Fiedel, but also for the hardcore chick rock provided by Tryanglz.
The band, fronted by Tahnee Cain, provided the key music for the nightclub scene in Tech Noir, where Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) and The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) all cross paths for the first time.
Tryanglz helped provide the film with the pop culture flavor of the 1980s. This contrasted against the ominous futuristic music and imagery that accompanied the characters and footage from a future so bleak as to produce machinery as chilling as The Terminator.
The film was also a launching pad for several other actors who used smaller roles in The Terminator to display their talents and achieve notable success. Included were Rick Rossovich (Top Gun), Bill Paxton (Twister), Lance Henriksen (Aliens) and Brian Thompson (The X-Files).
You could almost always count on some good 80s music to play over the end credits of any Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick, and 1987’s The Running Man was no exception. The instrumental score throughout the film was composed by the legendary Harold Faltermeyer (Beverly Hills Cop) and John Parr (St. Elmo’s Fire) provided the coup de grace: Running Away with You.
Adapted from a Stephen King story, The Running Man was one of the highlights of Schwarzenegger’s one-liner action era. The film also featured a strong array of supporting players, from respected character actors to TV personalities to legendary musicians and more: future fellow governor Jesse “the Body” Ventura (Predator), game show host Richard Dawson, Maria Conchita Alonso (Predator 2), fellow bodybuilding legend Sven Thorsen(Gladiator), Yaphet Kotto (Alien), Professor Toru Tanaka (Black Rain), NFL Hall of Famer Jim Brown (The Dirty Dozen) and the founder of Fleetwood Mac himself, Mick Fleetwood. Plus Frank Zappa’s kid Dweezil.
In what can only be called a fun song from a fun movie, we have the original video for E.G. Daily’s most memorable song, Mind Over Matter. This track appeared in the “final conflict” montage of Summer School as Mark Harmon’s band of high school failures buckles down and takes on the end-of-summer final exams.
The result was one of the most memorable film montages of the decade and a song that resonates with anyone who grew up in that decade. The video also features appearances (as Daily’s band) by most of the Summer School students, who included Courtney Thorne-Smith (Melrose Place), Dean Cameron (Ski School) and Shawnee Smith (Saw I to V). The film also starred Kirstie Alley (Cheers).
E.G. Daily, also often credited as Elizabeth Daily, was one of the most successful soundtrack specialists among artists of the 1980s, contributing to the scores of Scarface and Better Off Dead, among many others. She also went on to a successful acting (The Devil’s Rejects) and voice-over (Rugrats) career.
Robert Tepper seemed to be the go-to guy for Sylvester Stallone movies in the 1980s when they needed a good action montage. When it came to Jean-Claude Van Damme, the producers would turn to Stan Bush.
In addition to scoring Kickboxer, he also produced the following track, Fight to Survive, for the martial arts tournament montage in Bloodsport.
Kumite! Kumite!
The 1988 film was one of the better projects that involved Van Damme, and also had a good supporting cast with Donald Gibb (Revenge of the Nerds), Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland), the late Roy Chiao and Hong Kong martial arts and bodybuilding legend Bolo Yeung, who played villains across from both Van Damme and Bruce Lee.
Here is another example of a classic synth-driven 80s track propelling the “action” in an 80s action flick. In this case, we have Kickboxer from Jean Claude Van Damme’s heyday.
Unfortunately, this movie is no Bloodsport or Timecop and pretty much just plain sucks. But it’s got Van Damme, it’s got the splits, it’s got double high kicks to the faces of approaching thugs. It could have been worse.
Now, I know this opening credits sequence is going to look suspicious. Maybe not the best way to set the stage for a martial arts bloodfest: two guys cruising down a river in Thailand, arm over each other’s shoulder, buying flowers. The other guy is supposed to be Van Damme’s brother, okay?
Leave Van Damme alone! You’re lucky he even performs for you bastards!
In the interest of saving what I can of Van Damme’s reputation, I am not going to include the clip of him dancing in a Thai bar from early in the movie. Leave Van Damme alone!
I am a longtime fitness advocate and a veteran of many grueling battles in the gym.
You never know when you might be struck by lightning, so I am gladly sharing the knowledge and experiences I have accumulated over the years.
Here you will find articles about fitness, nutrition, motivation and bodybuilding. I write about and track my own training and progress in varied activities such as weightlifting and distance running.
I am also an avid sports fan, and write from time to time about hockey, mixed martial arts and other athletics, as well as film, music and occasionally social issues that pique my interest.
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