THAS: The Art of the Exquisite Shot-Reverse Shot - Case #1

THAS PRESENTS...

The Exquisite Shot-Reverse Shot

Case #1: Spontaneous Combustion (1990)

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Thunder crashes, lightning sounds. Lisa catches to the looming presence of the nuclear power plant.

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"Now back to a simpler time..." The Ink Spots' song "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" plays on the radio:

I don't want to set the world on fire. /

I just want to start /

A flame in your heart.

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Hooper's currency in nebulous emotion: an unease, staring out into technological uncertainty.

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Listen carefully behind the song at one moment:

In my heart I have but one desire, /

And that one is you...

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/ ... No other will do.

Faintly, you can hear the high-pitched siren sound of the happy bomb's plummet to earth being used as a lilting musical counterpoint to the song's melody.

The sing-song menace of this aural detail - a menace also strongly inhabited in the insinuative lyrics of the Inks Spots song - resonates within the film. Tobe Hooper's Spontaneous Combustion attempts a look at Nuclear Age history's boisterous, almost whimsical, certainly vicarious fascination with the dread power and dread death capable of atomic energy.

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I've lost all ambition for worldly acclaim, /
I just want to be the one you love. /
And with your admission that you feel the same, /
I'll have reached the goal I'm dreaming of.

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