screen queen
Freddie and co’s greatest movie hits…
1 ‘BRIGHTON ROCK’ BABY DRIVER
if any director knows Queen, Edgar Wright does. Between its young-romance narrative and Brian May’s mid-track guitar squall, this frenetic deep cut rides shotgun with the brakes-screeching car fight. “Your killer track,” indeed.
2 ‘BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY’ WAYNE’S WORLD
m ike Myers almost quit Wayne’s over Queen. The producers wanted Guns N’ Roses; the star insisted on “thunderbolt and lightning” operatics, which, supposedly, banked Freddie Mercury’s approval. The song’s back on the big screen next month in Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody.
3 ‘DON’T STOP ME NOW’ SHAUN OF THE DEAD
i f he couldn’t get Queen, Wright had Boney M’s ‘Rasputin’ in reserve. But Shaun’s bar brawl is now unimaginable without Mercury’s hit, right down to Penelope Wilton and Lucy Davis’ deliciously co-ordinated bobbing heads.
4 ‘VULTAN’S THEME (ATTACK OF THE HAWK MEN)’ FLASH GORDON
w ith a roar of “Dive!”, a suitably overstated Brian Blessed launches a synth-driven, laser-strafed scrapper from Queen’s space-camp 1980 score. For full pomp-rock overload, double-bill it with the riff-buffeted maximalism of ‘Battle Theme’.
5 ‘WHO WANTS TO LIVE FOREVER’ HIGHLANDER
w ho said immortality was fun? May had recently lost his dad when director Russell Mulcahy showed him a grief-stricken montage from his hilly fantasy. May’s response was a ballad awash with sincerity.
6 ‘UNDER PRESSURE’ GROSSE POINTE BLANK
w hat John Cusack’s assassin Martin Blank’s face doesn’t tell us in this comic beat-’em-up, the music does. The choice of Queen’s David Bowie duet lands bang on-Pointe, peaking in time with Blank’s transformative eyeball exchange with an ex-classmate’s baby.
7 ‘RADIO GA GA’ T2 TRAINSPOTTING
n ostalgia…” Snuck in beside the hipper likes of Young Fathers and Wolf Alice, the stadium-sized song that defined Live Aid transforms a club scene into something high on flashback joy. Sick Boy just can’t keep his hands down.
8 ‘WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS’ HIGH FIDELITY
John Cusack continues his Queen connection as the music-shop crate-digger who drops his hipster cool when he discovers his ex isn’t shagging the new bloke yet. As he air-boxes with joy, Queen’s epic singalong matches his victorious mood.
9 ‘WE WILL ROCK YOU’ A KNIGHT’S TALE
m edieval jousting and rock? Brian Helgeland’s period romp is ridiculous, of course, but Queen’s jock-rock stomper couldn’t be more apposite. Singing, stomping, clapping and sloshing their ale, the on-screen crowds get the joke: even the horse dances a jig.
10 ‘THE HERO’ FLASH GORDON
h ow do you end a gloriously gonzo thing like Flash?
Like this: with Ming’s dirty laugh ushering in full-bore flurries of triumphalist pomp. Guitars squall, Mercury roars, and the whole thing ends with an explosion. Because of course it does. Kevin Harley