Snapshots #367: A Top Twenty Songs Named After Horror Movies

Darkness falls across the land

The midnight hour is close at hand

Creatures crawl in search of blood

To terrorize y’all’s neighborhood

And whosoever shall be found

Without the soul for getting down

Must stand and face the Hounds of Hell

And rot inside a corpse’s shell

The foulest stench is in the air

The funk of forty thousand years

And grizzly ghouls from every tomb

Are closing in to seal your doom

And though you fight to stay alive

Your body starts to shiver

For no mere mortal can resist

The evil of the SNAPSHOTS!

AH HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAA

Thank you, Vincent. This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.

It's Halloween this week, and when I started looking for songs that share their names with horror movies, I hit a bumper bundle. But did you guess them all?

20. Bad jingles get me in such a tizzy. 

"Bad jingles" was an anagram...

J. Geils Band - Fright Night

19. Lost inside Outwood Golf Course.

In case you're wondering, Outwood is just down the road from where I work in Leeds. Fortunately, I've never spotted u-two while driving through there...

U2 - The Fly

18. Ttttttttttttthhhhhhhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiissssssssssss iiiiiiiiiiiisssssssssssss ttttttttttttttttthhhhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeee ccccccccccccccllllllllllllluuuuuuuuuuuuueeeeeeeeeee.

Slow Readers Club - Lost Boys

17. The Haiti dollar hides a silly secret. 

The Haiti dollar, Silly Billy.

Billy Idol - Eyes Without A Face

16. Boopadoop.

Named after Chic Young's Blondie comic strip: her surname was Boopadoop.

Blondie - Island Of Lost Souls

15. Noughties boy band, aphrodisiac, Ian Astbury.

Noughties boy band = Blue.

Aphrodisiac = Oyster.

Ian Astbury = The Cult.

Blue Öyster Cult - Nosferatu

14. Frippette?

She's married to Robert Fripp...

Toyah - Alien

13. They're ghosting you.

The Phantom Band - The Howling

12. Can you hear them?

The Sonics - Psycho

11. ...is a V. smarmy DJ mix.

..."is a V. smarmy DJ" was an anagram...

Sammy Davis Jr. - The Candyman

10. A wing and a guitar.

A Fender is what we Brits would call the wing on a car... and it's also a type of guitar.

Sam Fender - Poltergeist(s)

9. Just desserts.

The Sweet - Hellraiser

8. Read one section of your home. 

Chapterhouse - Don't Look Now

7. This guy, and another four droplets.

A tough one this, and probably not one you could guess from the clue alone... but once you worked out the theme... maybe?

Anyway, the photo above is Bernie Nee, the singer on the track below. The rest of the Blobs were session musicians, so no photo exists of the "band" itself...

The Five Blobs - The Blob

6. Bitten by a green bird that wishes it could fly.

Orville might have wished he could fly, but he could at least peck.

Orville Peck - Dead Of Night

5. Used to make soup for Alice and the Queen.

Then the Queen said to Alice, "Have you seen the Mock Turtle yet?"

"No," said Alice. "I don't even know what a Mock Turtle is."

"It's the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from", said the Queen.

(From Alice In Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll.)

The Mock Turtles - Wicker Man

4. A carpenter and a great hangman. 

The Great Hangman is a cliff. Richard was a Carpenter.

Cliff Richard - Carrie

3. Chest, pea, dough.

Chestnut, peanut, doughnut...

Nut - Scream

2. What do Jennifer Anniston, Julie Andrews and Jane Austen cook their eggs in?

In the J.A.pan, of course!

Japan - Halloween

1. Lad-ra-doodle.

It's not often you see Damon Gough without his hat on...

Badly Drawn Boy - The Shining

Not Number One because it's my favourite song... but it is my favourite horror film.

Such a bounty of horror-film-related songs did I find, that there will be more to share later in the week... and a much less scary Snapshots will be back next Saturday. 

2020: The Year That Keeps On Taking

 

No sooner had I scheduled my tribute to James Broad of Silver Sun than the news hit me of two more musical deaths in the year to end all bad years.

I don't know much by Billy Joe Shaver, but what I have heard, I like. 

I've spent a lifetime making up my mind to be

More than the measure of what I thought others could see

Good luck and fast bucks are too far and too few between

For Cadillac buyers and old five and dimers like me

Billy Joe Shaver - Old Five & Dimers Like Me

Billy Joe passed like week, aged 81. 

A few days earlier, another name from the same era of country music, Jerry Jeff Walker, died of throat cancer.

The eulogies came thick and fast for Jerry Jeff, mostly concentrating on his most famous tune... one that's been covered by everyone from Harry Belafonte to Edwyn Collins, Neil Diamond to Whitney Houston, Bob Dylan to Robbie Williams... and, of course, Sammy Davis Jr.

Jerry Jeff Walker - Mr. Bojangles

Everyone likes to have their heart broken by a dying dog, eh?

Unlike Billy Joe, who I only knew a couple of tunes by, I was more familiar with Jerry Jeff's back catalogue, having dipped my toe into it on more than one occasion over the years. Here are a couple the music player tells me I listened to a lot.

Jerry Jeff Walker - Pissin' In The Wind

Now we worked and we suffered and struggled

Makin' our record till we got it right

Now we're waiting on the check to come sneaking down the hall

Like that old time feeling

That we never should have ever put the record out at all

If you're interested in keeping up on who passes each month from the world of music, there's no finer blog to read than Any Major Dude With Half A Heart. I've been following The Dude since my earliest days of blogging - indeed, only his blog and JC's are still around from my earliest forays into the blogosphere. Every month, the Dude posts a list of all the musical names - big and small - who have passed, with links to choice songs by each of them. But that's not the only reason I've kept reading his blog for so long - he also posts amazing themed mixtapes that in many ways were the original inspiration for the Top Tens I began compiling on Sunset Over Slawit, eventually leading to the creation of this blog.

A week or so ago, 2020 did a number on The Dude. He's already lost his job this year, and then his blog was attacked by malware hackers. (He suspects it may have been in response to an anti-Trump mixtape he posted... but I guess we'll never know. That may just be fake news.) Anyway, The Dude was thinking of packing it all in at this point, unable to afford the anti-malware software needed to rescue his blog from the brink... but in a last ditch effort, he threw an appeal out to his readers. They quickly rallied round with Paypal donations (I threw him a couple of quid myself, for all the great reading & listening over the years) and in less than 24 hours he'd raised the money he needed to keep his blog afloat. 

 

A little bit of good news goes a long way this year. 

Here's one of the many, many great tunes I first heard over at The Dude's place...

My Top Ten Movie Murderer Songs

Last week's post on Infamous (real life) Murderers was really only a warm up for this, my Halloween special for 2018. I spent far too many Friday and Saturday nights when I was growing up watching gruesome horror movies about some very unpleasant bad guys. And despite what Mary Whitehouse said, it never did me any harm...

...or did it? Mwuh-ha-ha-ha-haaaa!

Here's ten songs dedicated to the bloodthirsty "heroes" of my youth...

10. Jon English - The Shining

Be afraid. Be very afraid. I'm not sure what's scarier... Jack Nicholson in The Shining, or Jon English in this.

Looks like hell, like hell, Jack Torrance knows it well
Look at it bubblin' in the boiler at the Overlook Hotel

9. Bloodhound Gang - Take The Long Way Home

The greatest trick the devil ever played... was getting you to listen to a song by the Bloodhound Gang.

Did you ever read Voltaire's "Candide"?
He says live life at Benny Hill freak out speed
Not a quote of what he wrote but a paraphrase
Make it up as you go, Keyser Soze

8. Alice Cooper - He's Back (The Man Behind The Mask)

Credit to the producers of Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives... quite a coup getting Alice Cooper to put on the hockey mask.

7. The Ramones - Chainsaw

The Ramones were evidently fans of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and its gruesome killer Leatherface. Though he doesn't get mentioned by name here, he play a big part in the song. For an actual Leatherface namecheck, check out The Wonder Years - Suburbia.

The Ramones also had a song called Pinhead... long before this dude arrived on the scene.

6. Sammy Davis Jr. - Candyman

The movie came a long time after Sammy's song... but it's still pretty damned scary.

5. Landscape - My Name Is Norman Bates

They're weren't just about Einstein.

See also Blondie - Kidnapper... a very dark turn for Debbie.

Hey, you've got an unnerving face
And twitching eyes like Norman Bates

4. Manic Street Preachers - Patrick Bateman

Patrick Bateman wasn't all bad. He was a big fan of Huey Lewis & The News, for one thing.

By the way, if you've never seen it before, I seriously recommend watching Huey's response to that scene (along with Weird Al Yankovich). No, seriously. You owe it to yourself.

3. Sleeper - Nice Guy Eddie

One of many amoral psychos in the Reservoir Dogs community. Any excuse for a bit of Louise Wener.

2. Space & Catatonia - The Ballad of Tom Jones

No, I'm not suggesting that the Welsh Wonder is a serial killer on the side, but Cerys certainly accuses Tommy Scott of being a scary psycho...

You're worse than Hannibal Lecter,
Charlie Manson, Freddy Krueger

1. The Meteors - Michael Myers

Pure psychobilly from the early 80s, paying tribute to the daddy of all movie murderers... the one who famously wears a William Shatner mask... Michael Myers. Happy Halloween!



Now I'm just going down into the cellar. Don't worry, I'll be right back...