Every so often a nude scene gets paired with a song that, for better or worse, ends up making it that much more memorable, and it seems like there’s no consensus as to whether this Tunesday falls into the “better” or the “worse” category.
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Perhaps it’s because today’s pick comes from polarizing filmmaker Zack Snyder, arriving right after the HBO Max release of his personal cut of Justice League in 2021. His two-hour-and-twenty-minute follow-up was a Netflix action film about a zombie outbreak in Las Vegas that got many views and meh reviews from anyone who wasn’t already a fanboy frothing at the mouth.
Sabine Varnes, Mónica López, Kelly Phelan Nude in Army of the Dead
The soundtrack of Army of the Dead is one of the many complaints, with Screen Rant magazine reporting that “…many audiences found themselves completely detached from the movie thanks to its jarring and unnecessary needle drops. The music feels very superficial and surface-level, with most of the songs not even matching each other's tones.”
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You get a hint of what Snyder’s trying to do with the music right in the film’s opening moments, which juxtapose a Liberace wannabe playing piano whilst topless zombie showgirls attack a balding high roller to the tune of Richard Cheese and Alison Crowe’s cover of Elvis’s “Viva Las Vegas.”
Sabine Varnes, Mónica López, Kelly Phelan in Army of the Dead
00:08:20 Topless zombie strippers Sabine, Monica, and Kelly wreak havoc on the Liberace Museum! (33 secs)
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The slow-motion savagery, along with the bouncing breasts of Sabine, Mónica, and Kelly, pairs fairly well with this loungy version of the Sin City staple, but things just go downhill from there until eventually we get to Snyder using The Cranberries’ “Zombie” which, despite the title, feels all sorts of wrong (seriously, does he not know what that song is about??) Maybe if there were more naked boobs at that moment, we’d think differently. Maybe.
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