It's nearly Hallowe'en...

I always get too excited about Hallowe'en. I'll share some of my excitement around now.

Here is an animated version of Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Tell-Tale Heart narrated by James Mason. I first saw this on the dvd of Hellboy, where it was in a section titled "Hellboy Recommends" along with some Gerald McBoing-Boing shorts.



Here is a clip of Ken Nordine, of Word Jazz fame, reading Poe's poem "The Conqueror Worm", taken from the great cd Closed on Account of Rabies. Nordine has the best voice imaginable for this poem.



My buddy David Schmidt wrote & directed the fascinating short film The Lovecraft Syndrome, inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Warning: this one is quite disturbing. It's available to view here on Spike.

Arch Oboler wrote & produced a classic episode of the old-time radio show Lights Out called "The Chicken Heart", rather absurdly about a chicken heart that eats the world. Years later, Bill Cosby did a terrific comedy routine about the effect it had on him as a small child.

Here is the only version of "The Chicken Heart" I could find, much shorter and taken from Oboler's album Drop Dead: An Exercise in Fear.



Here is Cosby's routine, for some reason split into two parts:





Finally, here is one of the scariest things ever: "The Thing on the Fourble Board" from the old-time radio show Quiet, Please. Download the mp3 and then, late at night, on your own, turn out all the lights and settle down to listen to this one. It's old, it's dated.... but it's still scary.

Happy Hallowe'en, everyone!

Vincent Price

In my opinion, the most fun horror star of all time was Vincent Price. In real life he was a charming bon vivant with a deep knowledge of cuisine and fine art; in the movies he had the face of a villain, a great fruity voice and a flair for being both sinister and funny. Only one of his roles - the lead in Witchfinder General - is still genuinely frightening, but if you want a fun time you can do a lot worse than just picking a random Vincent Price vehicle from the 1960s. Especially if you happen across any of the Edgar Allan Poe adaptations he starred in for director Roger Corman.

In a comment attached to an earlier post, my friend Sonia (who I wish would update her blog a little more often) referred to Price as "man-candy". Here is the image that prompted this outburst.



When Price guest-starred on The Muppet Show, he delivered a memorable performance of the song "You've Got A Friend". Unfortunately this was cut from the DVD release because Disney cheaped out on music rights.

Fortuately, we have YouTube.



Price's distinctive voice was a natural for radio, and he made many appearances on many different shows. Perhaps his most memorable was "Three Skeleton Key" on Suspense, which he starred in on several occasions. Here is an mp3 of what is supposed to be the best version of this, from March 17 1950, three years before Price's horror movie career took off with House of Wax.

A very cool late Vincent Price appearance was Tim Burton's wonderful stop-motion short film Vincent, which he narrated. This is available on the DVD of The Nightmare Before Christmas, but again it's on YouTube. Price went on to appear as the father/inventor of the title character of Burton's movie Edward Scissorhands, which proved to be a fitting end to his long career.



Many horror movies today seem to me to be too concerned with torture, gore and cruelty. I don't mind any of those things and have enjoyed some of these movies, but I think it's a shame that the naive and innocent fun of the old-style horror villains are all but forgotten. Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Peter Cushing were better actors, but for me there are very few movie stars of any kind who are as much fun to watch as Vincent Price.

Here is a sample of his distinctively spooky laugh, from the end of Michael Jackson's Thriller. Use it wisely.

The Hitch-Hiker by Lucille Fletcher

Here we have one of the most enduring ghosts of the 20th century: the vanishing hitch-hiker. This particular ghost has turned up in a good number of stories and urban legends. Usually it involves a hitch-hiker being picked up and then mysteriously disappearing from the moving vehicle.

This variation is a hitch-hiker who is never picked up, but who recurs outside of the car. The story was written by Lucille Fletcher as a radio play; it was performed at least three times in three different series, each time with Orson Welles in the lead.

The play features a ghost that is either warning or threatening the narrator, which is a standard trope for ghost stories. It also features another common trope - but you should listen to the play to hear what this is, rather than having me spoil the end for you.

Here is the second version, from the classic series Suspense. It's not quite as good as the Mercury Summer Theatre version from 1946, which was also directed by Welles. I could not find that version online, but I have it somewhere.

Welles and Fletcher were both absolute masters of the radio medium in their day. Welles was infamous for his 1938 War of the Worlds adaptation, which convinced some people that an alien invasion was actually in progress. Fletcher's best known work, Sorry Wrong Number, was one of the best radio suspense plays ever written. The Hitch-Hiker is an old-fashioned radio play, but it's still good fun.

It was later adapted as an episode of The Twilight Zone, but I have not seen that episode.