Friday, March 26, 2010

Run Like Hell (Wall film)

Run Like Hell 2:27
     (written by Gilmour, Waters)

Lyrics:
(See Run Like Hell from the Wall album for sung lyrics.)

A remixed version of the album track, this song is fully two minutes shorter.

Choreographer Gillian Gregory coached the skinhead crowd in their movements.
Alan Parker: "I remember my feelings as the assembled skinheads dutifully performed their fascist 'dance' for the first time to the playback tapes, complete with choreographed sieg heils, donning their pink masks and so wiping out their personalities and taking away their individuality as they became anonymous, acting as one in an unthinking, programmed, mechanical mass. At the end of the piece, on stage, Bob goaded them into action with his crossed arms 'hammer' salute. This they followed with a zombie-like precision, perfected on the terraces of West Ham and Millwall." [Dallas 127]

West Ham, located east of London, is an area rife with members of the Nazi National Front — coincidentally enough, the West Ham football club uses the hammer as its symbol. Packed into two of the most upsetting minutes in film, this sequence also featured the Hammer Guard brutally destroying a Pakistani cafe and home in Brixton (actually filmed near King's Cross station), a subject all too relevant to the European Community at a time when Germany is rocked by race riots. The sequence also includes footage of the Guard breaking up two interracial lovers and beating the black male senseless while others rape his white girlfriend as punishment for her 'crimes.' Any thinking and caring person must be repulsed by these scenes, but they were felt necessary to convey the full horror of what Roger's music spent so much energy condemning — and consequently they became a justification for said condemnation, if any was needed.

Alan Parker: "The rape scene was the most repugnant of all, and any amount of jokes didn't detract from the unpleasant vicarious involvement you have as filmmakers. On the final cut we kept the scene down to a minimum, as some of the shots were a little too much for us to take in rushes, let alone an audience in a cinema." [Dallas 128]

Alan Parker: "[The Run Like Hell sequence was] probably the ugliest I'd ever directed." [Dallas 128]

TRACK LISTING
Overture/Prelude
When the Tigers Broke Free Part 1
In the Flesh?
Thin Ice, The
Another Brick in the Wall part 1
When the Tigers Broke Free Part 2
Goodbye Blue Sky
Happiest Days of Our Lives, The
Another Brick in the Wall part 2
Mother
What Shall We Do Now?
Young Lust
One of My Turns
Don't Leave Me Now
Another Brick in the Wall part 3
Goodbye Cruel World
Is There Anybody Out There?
Nobody Home
Vera
Bring the Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb
In the Flesh
Run Like Hell
Waiting for the Worms
Stop
Trial, The
Outside the Wall

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