MovieChat Forums > The Shining (1980) Discussion > Steals music from The Car (1977)???

Steals music from The Car (1977)???

posted 2 months ago by e3e34ifj (1912)
2 replies | jump to latest

I was watching The Car, a cheesy exploitation horror film from the late 70’s, and I recognized the main theme IMMEDIATELY from The Shining. I get that most of The Shining’s music are royalty free classical pieces composed by Krzysztof Penderecki, but the main theme is credited to Rachel Elkind and Wendy Carlos, neither of whom worked on The Car. So is this plagiarism?

Here is a scene from The Car that uses music very similar to The Shining, starting at around 3:25 in the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrAzzGSbUqw&ab_channel=Fear%3ATheHomeOfHorror

[–] smashadams (32) 2 months ago

I'm too lazy to look it up again but I also noticed this a few years ago and I believe I found out that the piece of music has been used and re-used over and over for many many years.

EDIT - ok I looked it up and found these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLgvKwOYniY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV60qfHhKI0

[–] thingmakersback (1369) 2 months ago

I think you must mean the use of the Dies Irae. Look it up. Latin Gregorian chant. A motif that is used so often in movies, particularly horror movies, that I'd think everyone would recognize it by now.