Van Halen on the silver screen. Greatest thing we’ve ever seen! Ben Sherlock of the online movie news website Screen Rant has picked the ten best uses of Van Halen songs in film and ranked them all.
Here’s a look at the top five:
1) “Everybody Wants Some!!” In Better Off Dead
“The darkly comic John Cusack cult classic Better Off Dead has the most memorable use of a Van Halen song in a movie simply because that Van Halen song is played by a stop-motion hamburger.
Cusack stars in the movie as a down-on-his-luck high schooler who contemplates suicide after his girlfriend leaves him for another guy. In one bizarre non-sequitur scene, his fast-food meal sings ‘Everybody Wants Some!!’ to him.”
2) “Panama” In Superbad
After Fogell’s cop friends pretend to arrest him to give him some street cred at the party in Superbad, they decide to take their police cruiser to a parking lot to smash it up.
Officer Slater, played by Bill Hader, blasts Van Halen’s “Panama” from the car stereo as he promises to do his signature move. However, he skids the car and botches the stunt, instead crashing into a bunch of shopping carts.
3) “Jump” In Eddie The Eagle
Starring Taron Egerton and Hugh Jackman, Eddie the Eagle is a quintessential sports underdog story drawn from real-life events. Eddie’s 71.5-meter jump at Calgary in the Winter Olympics set a British record at the time.
When this triumphant moment is depicted in the film, Van Halen’s “Jump” sets the mood perfectly. Matthew Margeson wrote an original score for Eddie the Eagle, but “Jump” is the movie’s most memorable music moment.
4) “Everybody Wants Some!!” In Everybody Wants Some!!
Richard Linklater made Everybody Wants Some!! as a spiritual successor to his hangout classic Dazed and Confused, with characters who are a couple of years older and songs from a slightly later era.
While Linklater couldn’t secure Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused” for the movie he named after it, he was able to secure the titular Van Halen classic for the soundtrack of its spiritual sequel. “Everybody Wants Some!!” plays when Jake leaves flowers and a note on Beverly’s door.
5) “Edward Van Halen” In Back To The Future
When George McFly is refusing to go to the Enchantment Under the Sea dance at school, effectively ensuring that his son Marty will never exist, Marty appears to him in the middle of the night and claims to be “Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan,” who orders him to take Lorraine to the dance. He wakes him up with a loud guitar lick performed by Eddie Van Halen.
Van Halen wrote and recorded the technically untitled piece specifically for Back to the Future as a favor to record producer Quincy Jones. The tape is labeled “Edward Van Halen,” because Van Halen wouldn’t allow the producers to use the band name.
6 – 10): For the rest…
View the rest of Screen Rant’s “The 10 Best Uses Of Van Halen Songs In Movies” list at Screen Rant‘s website HERE right after this brief intermission…
Van Halen – “Dirty Movies”
