My Top Ten Horror Actor Songs

It's Halloween - the night we all dread because the scariest creatures on earth roam the streets spreading terror and mayhem. No, not ghosts, vampires and zombies - children! Give me a werewolf any day over a belligerent teenager in joke shop fangs with a table cover of his head and a couple of sachets of ketchup. Like most sane people, we turned off the lights and hid behind the sofa till it was safe to come out.

While there, I realised that every year at this time I usually post a horror-related Top Ten... and I'd completely forgotten to compile on this year. So here - in conjunction with my Songs About Actors series - are ten songs which feature famous scary movie stars in one way or another...


10. Bauhaus - Bela Lugosi's Dead

You've got to either start or finish with this one, haven't you? I never quite got the appeal, but it's OK once a year. Chvrches do an interesting cover though. As do Nouvelle Vague.

9. Redd Kross - Linda Blair

 A suitably freaky tribute to the girl they couldn't exorcise.

8. Lou Reed & Metallica - Brandenburg Gate

Boris Karloff, Klaus Kinski and Peter Lorre all get a namecheck in this... interesting... collaboration. Not as heavy as you might expect.

7. The Huntingtons - Let's Go To Haddonfield

Stumbled across this song about one of my favourite horror movies - John Carpenter's Halloween - and its star, the original scream queen, Jamie Lee Curtis. The Ramones have a lot to answer for.

6. Garland Jeffries - Lon Chaney

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is one of the saddest films I've ever seen.

Oh Lon Chaney,
What's to hold you back?
The Wolfman's dead
And the old black cat is gone,
Like a memory faded from your past.
You look so sad,
With a face of stone,
Just skin and bone.
You're all alone,
With a hunchback's eye you live.

5. Jack Lukeman - Ode To Ed Wood

Cult genius or worst actor / director ever? I always had a fondness for Ed Wood, largely driven by the Tim Burton / Johnny Depp film which led me to seek out some of his work. Jack Lukeman does an excellent spooky tribute.

4. ZZ Top - Vincent Price Blues

This is both hairy AND scary. Honest: give it a spin... if you dare!

3. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Zombie Zoo

You look like Boris Karloff - and you don't even care!

2. John Grant - Sigourney Weaver

Those scary aliens gave Sigourney no trouble at all.

And I feel just like Sigourney Weaver
When she had to kill those aliens.
And one guy tried to get them back to the Earth.
And she couldn't believe her ears.

And there's a shout out to Winona Ryder in the second verse too: the scariest thing in Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula was her English accent...

I feel just like Winona Ryder
In that movie about vampires.
And she couldn't get that accent right;
Neither could that other guy.

1. Warren Zevon - Werewolves Of London

Lon Chaney AND Lon Chaney Jr. - in the same song! And they're both walking with the queen...



Your suggestions always welcome. Just don't knock on my door with them tonight.