Unmixable: Ghastly Stories From Beyond the Grave
It’s Halloween and DJ Kursse brings forth an awesome mixtape. Scream along!
Be sure to check out our previous Halloween mix tapes: All Hallow’s Evil (and the new video version), Music of the Night and Reel Terror at the Grindhouse.
———
“The Fog Prologue” – John Carpenter
“Halloween” – Alkaline Trio
“Demon” – Daemonia
“Tommyknockers” – Blind Guardian
“Last House On The Left” – Tall Boys
“I Was A Teenage Werewolf” – The Cramps
“Phantasm Theme” – Fred Myrow and Malcolm Seagrave
“Bloody Mary” – Doctordarkandscary
“Elizabeth” – Ghost B.C.
“Evil Spirit” – The Laze
“Bodies” – Danzig
“Buried Alive” – Wade Denning & Frank Daniels
“Happy Halloween” – John Zacherle
“Vampira” – Bobby Bare
“The Mummy” – Little Tibia and the Fibulas
“Texas Chain Saw Massacre Opening” – Wayne Bell & Tobe Hopper
“Dr. Death” – Salem’s Pot
“The Headless Horseman” – Wade Denning
“Don’t Fear the Reaper” – Clint Ruin & Lydia Lunch
“Halloween” – Alice Doughnut
“Hammer Horror” – Kate Bush
“Night Falls” – Gershon Kingsley & Peter Waldron
“I Walked With a Zombie” – Roky Erickson & the Aliens
“Pogo the Clown” – Dog Fashion Disco
“Dream Warriors” – Dokken
“Introduction To Horror” – Arch Oboler
“Theme to Are You Afraid of the Dark?” – Jeff Fisher
“Werewolves of London” – Warren Zevon
“Jack the Ripper” – Screaming Lord Sutch
“Halloween Song” – Tim Curry
“The Ballad of Dwight Fry” – Alice Cooper
“Nature Trail to Hell in 3D” – Weird Al Yankovic
“Plan 9 Channel 7” – The Damned
“Horror Movies” – Skyhooks
“Halloween II” – Tenebre
———
The Cramps – “I Was A Teenage Werewolf”
Influenced by the 1957 Michael Landon horror movie, I was A Teenage Werewolf depicts the struggles of teenage lycanthropy more so than a certain 1980s movie about a teen that plays basketball and surfs on top of delivery vehicles.
Much like The Misfits, The Cramps have songs littered with sci-fi and horror references that are intertwined with their brand of garage punk and psychobilly. Lux Interior sounds like a patent leather clad, high heeled Elvis howling at a full moon. Larry Talbot would be proud.
– Ken Lucas
Bobby Bare – “Vampira”
Oh man, that guitar is so silky smooth even as its getting sliced and diced by the distant, plinking piano. I’ve listened to this song literally hundreds of times since I came across it earlier this year – it’s one of those old tunes that, running under three minutes, never wears out its welcome. You want to hear those hooks just one more time…
Originally released in 1958, it’s a lovely bit of horror camp. Like other songs of the time, it is spooky more for the Universal monsters it name checks than any real frights. Well, not entirely. Listen to that fellow scream and see if you don’t think he means it.
– Stu Horvath
Kate Bush – “Hammer Horror”
Don’t let the sweet, almost lilting vocals at the beginning fool you. Kate Bush is about to take you on a dark journey ripped straight from Poe: the understudy kills the lead actor and assumes his role in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but is wracked with guilt for doing so.
The first single from Bush’s second album Lionheart did poorly on the British charts compared to “Wuthering Heights” and “The Man With The Child In His Eyes.” Clearly it’s because the UK couldn’t handle it. I wonder what guilt lurked there in 1979…
– Don Becker
Dog Fashion Disco – “Pogo the Clown”
Swing jazz builds. A tale about the serial killer dressed as a clown, John Wayne Gacy, is sung over light piano and saxophone. A declaration is made, and metal erupts.
“Pogo the Clown” is a song that you’ll question your inevitable addiction to, humming along with Pogo as he kidnaps and kills multiple victims to an unholy marriage of disparate music genres.
“Spoke to the devil the other day and John is doing fine”
– Shawn Alexander Allen
Dokken – “Dream Warriors”
I recently watched Never Sleep Again, the almost 3-hour all encompassing Nightmare on Elm Street documentary, and was reminded of the awesomeness of this song and its Golden Age of MTV video. The perfect blend of hair metal and 80’s Horror, Dokken and crew serve up a pleather-clad spine tingler of a good time.
Though tongue and cheek, and very dated, if it’s enough to give the Krueger himself some nightmares, then it’s good enough for me.
– Erik Weinbrecht
Jeff Fisher – “Theme to Are You Afraid Of The Dark?”
Certain shows have huge gulfs of quality between their intros and the show proper. “Are You Afraid of the Dark” is one of these shows, but that’s no slight to the classic 90’s Nickelodeon series. The intro is just that good, from the opening shot of an abandoned boat to the match ominously extinguished just off screen that caps the whole thing off. Watching this before my parents got home on a late November evening, with the sun already vanished and mist drifting across my backyard, was the first time I can remember feeling that unique subset of fear and anticipation — a thrill.
– Joe DeMartino
Alice Cooper – “The Ballad of Dwight Fry”
One of the most OG guys in the game, Alice Cooper set the standard for weird in the early 1970’s with his outrageous stage show and persona. In between strangling nurses and chopping off heads, he could be seen on the links with the likes of George Burns or out to lunch in Hollywood with Groucho Marx. With a career spanning over 4 decades, I think the song, “The Ballad of Dwight Fry” combines his love of the macabre and his admiration to horror films and Hollywood.
– Chuck Moran
The Damned – “Plan 9 Channel 7”
An ode to both the worst movie ever made and TV horror host originator Vampira, “Plan 9 Channel 7” is one of the best songs by British punk legends The Damned. The lyrics go on and on about obsessive yet unobtainable love that is “too close but two worlds away”.
We’ve all had that night or those numerous nights alone with the TV, when something comes on and all of a sudden you’re smitten by the unique beauty that is on the screen. This can be the physical beauty of a person, the beauty of a fantastic film, or the disasterous beauty that is Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space. While there are many facets to Halloween, I always long for those moments where I stumble across something old and unique on TV, preferably in those bewitched hours after midnight where you can quite easily get sucked into the black and white world of aliens, vampire women, zombies and Bela Lugosi.
– Michael Edwards
Skyhooks – “Horror Movie”
This is probably my favorite song on this mix.
– Livingroom Johnson
