I'm a sucker for movie references particularly when they come in the form of album or song titles. Several artists, who have a predilection for this sort of thing, come to mind and I would love to hear about others. If a song or album is known to be thematically inspired by a film, if not titled after it, this is also of interest.

Off the top of my head:

Songs
"Badlands" - Bruce Springsteen
"Atlantic City" - Springsteen
"Thunder Road" - Springsteen
"Nebraska" (inspired by "Badlands") - Springsteen
"Age of Consent" - New Order
"Vanishing Point" - New Order
"Thieves Like Us" - New Order
"In a Lonely Place" - New Order
"Insignificance" - Jim O'Rourke
"The Verdict" - Joe Jackson
"Woman Town" (said to be inspired by City of Women) - Gang of Four

Albums/EPs
Eureka - Jim O'Rourke
Insignificance - O'Rourke
The Ghost of Tom Joad (Grapes of Wrath) - Springsteen

Not sure where these fit in:
"Tom Courtenay" - Yo La Tengo
"Lee Remick" - The Go-Betweens (are they named for the film?)

I'm sure there are many obscure, and not so obscure, titles that I am missing.

There's that 'Just like Bogie and Bacall' song known as Key Largo (a hit around the same moment as Bette Davis Eyes)

The Cramps reference drive-in movie titles all the time, directly (Faster, Pussycat) or in parody-homage (The Creature from the Black Leather Lagoon)

Kindred psychobilly spirit Roky Erickson is deep into the same kind of stuff, but am not sure about direct titles just this second.

The title of the X-Ray Spex pogo-punk anthem The Day the World Turned Dayglo has always reminded me of a Robert Wise fifties sci-fi epic. Related?

"Now It's Dark" - Anthrax (references BLUE VELVET)
"One" - Metallica (JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN)
"Jennifer's Body" - Hole (VALLEY OF THE DOLLS)


"Michael Caine" - Madness
"Robert DeNiro's Waiting" - Bananarama

"The Rats are Coming, the Werewolves are Here!" -- The Doleful Lions

If Jim O'Rourke is off the top of your head, you're officially awesome.

The song may not have direct references to any particular horror film, but I always liked Skinny Puppy's "WORLOCK" - the video, once relegated only to underground clubs, is full of gory clips from ARGENTO films, MANIAC, HENRY, and others. Skinny Puppy was obviously heavily influenced by such films and the video/song is one of my faves of theirs.

It's on youtube (age confirmation required):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=P0qPn0HzzqA

"Eyes Without a Face" -- Billy Idol

The Pixies song "Debaser" was inspired by Bunuel and Dali's UN CHIEN ANDALOU.

The song "I'm Mandy, Fly Me" by 10 CC refers to the air hostess Mandy, in the wake of an air crash, rising from the sea "like the girl in DOCTOR NO."

Don't forget O'Rourke's Bad Timing as well. Still waiting for him to continue with the Roeg titles, or maybe a CD that doesn't begin until track 29. :D

Lots of rap albums would qualify, from Crustified Dibbs' Night Of The Bloody Apes to Cypress Hill's Black Sunday. From my desk I can see the Golden Palominos' Blast of Silence and Pantera's Vulgar Display of Power, which comes from a line in THE EXORCIST.

There's a whole vein of songs that appear to be inspired by swinging sixties/kitchen sink British cinema. Examples include:

Up the Junction (Squeeze borrowing title and general ambience from a 1968 movie)
Look Back in Anger (Bowie)
Room at the Top (Adam Ant)
"Waterhole (Expresso Bongo)" (Marillon)

and I'd imagine the group The Knack ("My Sharona") is inspired by the Richard Lester of the same kname.

Once Upon A Time In The West- Dire Straits

Wild Wild West- Escape Club

The Loved One- INXS

Of course, Bad Timing! Like the Track 29 idea. :D

Indeed. I think FIENDS OF DOPE ISLAND (recent album title) was an actual movie title, maybe? "The Hot Pearl Snatch" had to be some exploitation film title, as well, I'm betting. Of course, "I Was A Teenage Werewolf", which I still hope would get used over the opening credits of an inevitable remake.

I still nominate their "Wilder, Wilder, Faster, Faster" as the song every exploitation fan must hear!

Half-Japanese: "Rosemary's Baby" (see also Walt Mink's "Love In The Dakotas")

Roky Erikson: "Creature With The Atom Brain", "I Walked With A Zombie"

Stereo Total: "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte", "Tokyo Mon Amour"

Pere Ubu: "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo"

Stan Ridgeway: "Drive, She Said"

Stereolab: EMPEROR TOMATO KETCHUP album (referencing some obscure Japanese oddity I've never seen)

They Might Be Giants: "Destination Moon"





Robyn Hitchcock: "Don't Talk To Me About Gene Hackman"
The Jazz Butcher: "Peter Lorre" ("he's all right, he's okay")
Too Much Joy: "Willam Holden Caufield"
Sabalon Glitz: "The Lonesome Death Of Elijah P. Woods"

"Annie Get Your Gun" - Squeeze (first a musical, then a film)

I don't see a mention of The Misfits yet. How is that?

Although not a song nor an album. the band Godspeed You! Black Emperor is named after the Japanese documentary on moped gangs...

a few more:

Pram: "Carnival Of Souls", "Meshes In The Afternoon"

Man Or Astroman?: "The Man From U.N.C.L.E."

Beastie Boys: "High Plains Drifter"

Portishead: "Mysterons"

Pop Will Eat Itself: "Nightmare At 20,000 Feet"

My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult : "China De Sade"

Barry Adamson: "Achieved In The Valley Of The Dolls"

Bruce McCullough: "Eraserhead" ("I watch - ERASERHEAD!")



Future Bible Heroes: "Doris Day The Earth Stood Still"

Pop Will Eat Itself: "Harry Dean Stanton"

Nile Rodgers' first solo album, B-Movie Matinee, features the songs "Plan 9" and "Doll Squad." It also has a cool 3-D cover and was originally issued with a pair of anaglyphic glasses.

"Chainsaw" by The Ramones

"Desperado" -- The Eagles (David Carradine)
"The Right Profile" -- The Clash (Montgomery Clift)
"She Said, She Said" -- The Beatles (Peter Fonda)

"In a Lonely Place" - The Smithereens (even uses the most famous lines from this Bogart picture)

"The Man With the Golden Gun" - Alice Cooper (kind of a cheat - it was written by the Alicer Cooper band in hopes of getting it used as the theme song for the then-upcoming movie being made; one listen will tell you they were really trying their best!)

Kate Bush has certainly shown her movie-addiction over the years. Of course there's "Hammer Horror", but she has stated in interviews that her first big hit, "Wuthering Heights" came to her after watching a movie adaptation. "Hounds of Love" has a snippet of CURSE OF THE DEMON in it. "Infant Kiss" supposedly from seeing THE INNOCENT (although a couple of lines in the movie sound straight out of "Hounds of Love" to be honest).

The Flesheaters - "A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die"

Why no Misfits as of yet? Because it'd be too hard to type the entire catalog! :D

Rob Zombie - almost the same response as with the Misfits, even down to the name of his former band, White Zombie. But hey, let's list a few anyhoo..."Living Dead Girl," "Meet the Creeper," "Never Gonna Stop (The Red, Red Kroovy)," "Feel So Numb" (samples Coffin Joe in the intro), "Scum of the Earth," "Hands of Death (Burn, Baby, Burn)," "Two Lane Blacktop," and the list goes on.

Mike Patton's solo album Adult Themes for Voice has "Porno Holocaust" and "Guinea Pig 1" through 4, as well as some homages to Italian movies: "I Killed Him Like a Dog...and He Still Laughed," "A Woman with the Skin of the Moon," and "Inconsolable Widows in Search of Distraction." And his band Fantomas has covered lots of movie themes.

Where for art thou DAMNED?

Their name is homage to CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED and Visconti’s THE DAMNED. There titles include…

BORN TO KILL

TWISTED NERVE

DR. JECKYLL AND MR. HYDE

HISTORY OF THE WORLD PART I

THERE AIN’T NO SANITY CLAUS (a reference to the Marx Bros.)

GUN FURY

PLAN 9, CHANNEL 7 (a reference to Ed Wood)

FRIDAY THE 13TH ep title

BAD TIME FOR BONZO (a reference to BEDTIME FOR BONZO)

THE DAMNED BUSTERS (a compilation title and reference to THE DAM BUSTERS)

NOT OF THIS EARTH (that odd album that no one knows what to do with)

And last but not least……

PSYCHOMANIA

Belle & Sebastian - "Like Dylan in the Movies"

Album:
Prefab Sprout - "Steve McQueen"

Oooh! I know what to do with it!
(Yeah, I'm straying off-topic for a second.)
Pretend that it's not a Damned album at all, but an early 1970s effort from the band Naz Nomad and the Nightmares. It actually kind of works that way.

Naz Nomad and the Nightmares, of course, composed the soundtrack to the legendary 1960s film GIVE DADDY THE KNIFE, CINDY.

(Well, they did in someone's fantasy, anyway.)

Ministry's "You Know What You Are" is built around samples of Eli Wallach's classic Tuco performance in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY. (There was also a Big Country song whose name I've forgotten that performed a similar homage, and the tracks that sample Franco De Gemini's wailing harmonica from ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST are legion, e.g. The Orb's "Little Fluffy Clouds".)

Cabaret Voltaire have used a lot of movie/TV samples in their work, including THE OUTER LIMITS episode "Demon With a Glass Hand" on several tracks from their album "Plasticity".

New Order (already namechecked) seeded their instrumental track "Murder" with several samples of film dialogue/music, including HAL 9000 from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and Malcolm McDowell's ranting CALIGULA (with guest appearance from "Paul Clemente"/Bruno Nicolai's score). New Order frontman Bernard Sumner, a big Morricone fan, included a little homage to the Maestro on the song "Ruined in a Day" which opens with the famous drumbeat from THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY.

Stan Ridgway- "The Big Heat"
Stranglers- "The Sweet Smell of Success"

Lou Reed also scores big in this department. "New Age" namechecks Robert Mitchum and the conglomerated movie titles PATHS OF PAIN and JEWELS OF GLORY. One of the unreleased tracks on the PEEL SLOWLY AND SEE box is called COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG; another rarity is FERRYBOAT BILL (after STEAMBOAT BILL, JR.); and I've always figured WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT owes half its name to the old Jimmy Cagney. There are others, I'm sure, but they elude me right now.

Don't forget:

Penelope Houston HARRY DEAN [Stanton]
Monochrome Set ESPRESSO BONGO
Dave Edmunds CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON
Ultravox! HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR [and John Foxx(!) EUROPE AFTER THE RAIN]

Faye Wong used a dialogue sample from LOGAN'S RUN to close her "historical mix" of "Di-Dar".

No mention of Gene Pitney's THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE?
Speaking of Kate Bush, I may be wrong, but I thought I'd heard that SUSPENDED IN GAFFA was based on British comedy about a recently married couple trying to have a child in order to claim an inheritance.

David Bowie wrote "Space Oddity" after watching 2001.

UK band Primal Scream's fifth album is titled "Vanishing Point" as well. The album is pretty much an embodiment of the film. It even features a song named "Kowalski" which showcases samples from the film VANISHING POINT.

Here is the VANISHING POINT-esque music video for "Kowalski" with Kate Moss as the driver (!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRKz02IctlY

Big Audio Dynamite covered much of Roeg's career in the wonderful E=MC2.

Took a trip in Powis Square
Pop star dyed his hair
(PERFORMANCE)

Met a dwarf that was no good
Dressed like little Red Riding Hood
(DON'T LOOK NOW)

Space guy fell from the sky
Scratched my head and wondered why
(MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH)

etc etc.

This song also features the best "ow ow" in rock n roll history. Fact.

The Japanese girl group, Max, had a hit with a song called "Tora, Tora, Tora," linked here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrnSEeN7yCs

But some sixth sense tells me it's not exactly based on the 1970 film about Pearl Harbor. :P

Along Came Jones (The Coasters pay tribute to Gary Cooper)
Some Like it Hot (Robert Palmer)
The Big Sky (The Kinks)

Band names, maybe already mentioned:

Fine Young Cannibals
(The) Big Country

quotes and references:

"That'll Be the Day" (Buddy Holly via John Wayne in SEARCHERS, I think)

Dylan's line "To live outside the law you must be honest" was cribbed from Don Siegel's THE LINEUP (allegedly): “When you live outside the law, you have to eliminate dishonesty.”

I've long thought Bobby Fuller's "I Fought the Law (and the Law Won)" was inspired by some old chain gang movie with a bloody but unbowed rebel...like COOL HAND LUKE, but earlier (of course)

Cornershop - Brimful of Asha [a tribute to playback singer, Asha Bosle]
The Postal Service - Clark Gable
Blue Oyster Cult - Joan Crawford
April March - Stay Away from Robert Mitchum
Harvey Danger - Carlotta Valdez [about the character in VERTIGO]
Celluloid Heroes - The Kinks
Toy Dolls - James Bond Lives Down Our Street
The Eagles - James Dean
King Missile - Martin Scorsese

All of the above come from a compilation made by a guy on my movie discussion list.

Lou Reed also has a song on THE BELLS called "City Lights."

On the ELEPHANT PARTS video, Michael Nesmith does a cover of his old hit "Joanne" with new lyrics: "His name was Rodan / And he lived in the ocean off Japa-a-AHHHhhhhhh-an..."

Also... the Beach Boys recorded a hilarious song called "Johnny Carson":

When guests are boring, he picks up the slack
The network makes him break his back
Ed McMahon comes on and says "Here's Johnny"
Every night at eleven-thirty he's so funny
Don't you think he's such a natural guy
The way he's kept it up could make you cry...

I understand they once performed the song on THE TONIGHT SHOW, which is something I'd love to see.

:D I had forgotten about that one. "He makes the best f**king films!" was a mantra heard often in college. My favorite song about a director/producer might be Killdozer's "Man Vs Nature," about Irwin Allen. The narrator mistakenly credits Allen with EARTHQUAKE, but it's still a hilarious song:

"On the screen, the city crumbled
So realistic, but yet another film
By the Master of Realism: Mr. Irwin Allen
No less a man than Lorne Greene! - and Mr. George Kennedy
Risked their lives to save the lives of strangers
Their selflessness was moving!
Chuck Heston was in the movie, too
But he was just a ham."

Bauhaus - Bela Lugosi's Dead

Pizzicato Five - Twiggy Twiggy/Twiggy vs. James Bond
Pizzicato Five - Audrey Hepburn Complex

Dimitri From Paris - Une Very Stylish Fille (lines & sample from BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S)

Wu-Tang Clan (Hong Kong movie reference/sampling mayhem)

The Specials-- "Sock It To 'Em JB" (Bond titles)
Bill Nelson-- "Tender is the Night"
Human League-- "Circus of Death" (song is about "Hawaii Five-0")
Revolting Cocks-- "Attack Ships On Fire" (BLADERUNNER line)
Adam and the Ants-- "Picasso Visita el Planeta de Los Simios" (you can figure it out, champ)

Joel mentioned: The Specials-- "Sock It To 'Em JB" (Bond titles)

The Ska-component of Specials is in evidence here. Think of the many, many records cut in the sixties and early seventies by group like the Upsetters that toasted all the latest Spy and Spaghetti Western titles, characters, and situations. Here's the run-down of one recent anthology covering some of the Western territory:

In case anyone's wondering, the album James is referencing is 'The Big Gundown: Reggae Inspired by Spaghetti Westerns' (2004).

Here's an allmusic guide write up:

The Big Gundown: Reggae Inspired by Spaghetti Westerns