Thursday, April 5, 2012

The FTT Movie Review: Theremin, An Electronical Odyssey


Now appearing on Netflix Instant, it's the documentary of everyone's favorite horror music staple, the theremin. You've heard them on "Good Vibrations" and the theme to the original "Star Trek" television show, and in a lot of other things... but you haven't heard of the story of Leon Theremin, the man who invented this thing, played it, popularized it all over the world and was so unconventional as to marry a young black ballet dancer (in the '30s! Shocking!) and, basically, look like everyone's idea of a mad scientist.

Anyway, you get to meet the people who made an odd sort of living by pulling sounds from the air, and just how odd that makes you over time -- answer, very -- and realize that without this freaky little box, you don't get all kinds of music and bands and albums later. Many of which you probably don't like. But what the hey, there's always looking into the creepy, creepy eyes of Leon, and realizing that maybe Vincent Price didn't need to do much acting once he heard that soundtrack....

No comments: