THE HISTORY OF HORROR MOVIE MUSIC

What more of an excuse do you need other than it's the fall season to veg in front of the screen and watch monster movies until you turn into a pile of mush that could be mistaken for The Blob? Whether you like slasher flicks, Kaiju, or just plain vintage Universal monster movies, you will usually find an interesting soundtrack to go with it.

From the re-purposed film scores of the classic era to the synth-scapes of the 80s and beyond, horror movie soundtracks have often become as popular as the movie themselves.

Watch the video below to see how the horror music craft has evolved over the past century of movie-making, and click HERE to add some classic horror music to your record collection.



THOM YORKE'S SUSPIRIA SOUNDTRACK

Just in time for Halloween, Italian American director Luca Guadagnino is following one of the most acclaimed films of 2017, Call Me By Your Name, with a remake of the cult ‘70s supernatural thriller Suspiria. Alongside a strong cast led by Dakota Johnson and Tilda Swinton, one of the most eye-catching details about the film is that the score is by Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke.

Suspiria is Yorke’s first full-length score, but it is of course by no means the first time he and his bandmates have lent their talents to film. More than two decades ago, Yorke wrote the haunting “Exit Music” for Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet. A few years later, multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood began a parallel and increasingly prominent career as a soundtrack composer, starting with his score to Simon Pummell’s Bodysong and blossoming through repeated collaborations with Paul Thomas Anderson on films including There Will Be Blood, Inherent Vice, and Phantom Thread.

Yorke has described the process of creating the music for Suspiria as “a form of making spells,” and fittingly, where Greenwood’s soundtrack work often tends toward formal orchestration, Yorke’s is a more esoteric affair. Alongside the things you might expect—creepy one-note piano, piercing strings—are flourishes of Wicker Man–like folk (the gorgeous “Suspirium”), choral incantations (“The Conjuring of Anke”), and time-stretched atmospherics that recall Angelo Badalamenti’s work for David Lynch (“The Inevitable Pull”). Fittingly, given that the film is set in divided Berlin in the late ‘70s, there are also moments of trippy, kosmische groove that hint at Can or Cluster (“Has Ended”).

There are inevitably suggestions, too, of the soundtrack to the original Suspiria, itself one of several collaborations between director Dario Argento and Italian prog group Goblin. At a panel discussion following the new film’s world premiere in Venice in September, Yorke admitted that it took him several months to agree to score the new film, such was his apprehension at trying to follow Goblin, whose Suspiria is acknowledged to be one of the greatest horror soundtracks of all time.

In the end, he decided the best approach would be to not reference the original soundtrack at all, except in its use of “repetition of motifs, again and again and again. Part of your mind was saying, ‘Please, I don’t want to hear this anymore.’”

Listen to an example of Yorke's score below.




Click HERE for more horror movie soundtracks by rockers.

[SOURCE: Reverb.com.]

GOTH COUTURE

The parade of Goth lovelies continues this week. Offered is another sampling of the very popular fashion motif.

WEIRD, WEIRD WORLD

CREATURE FOUND MUMMIFIED INSIDE A TREE TRUNK!
The "creature" was found to actually be a dog that got stuck.
By Gemma Mullin
6th February 2018, 11:41 pm  

A MUMMIFIED dog was found inside a tree trunk 20 years after it got wedged in while “chasing a raccoon”.

The hunting dog, aptly named Stuckie, was discovered in a hollow stretch 28ft up by loggers chopping up the chestnut oak in Georgia, US, in 1980.

Experts estimated he had probably been casing some small game before getting himself lodged in the gap approximately 20 years earlier.

Instead of sending the tree off to the sawmill, the workers from Kraft Corporation donated it to Forest World – a tree museum in Waycross Georgia.

Staff at the museum reckon the dog’s body mummified because an upward draft through the hollow tree created a chimney effect – carrying away the scent of the dead animal, which would usually attract insects and other organisms.

The tree also provided relatively dry conditions, whilst the oak’s tannic acid – a natural substance that absorbs moisture and dries out its surroundings – helped to harden the animal skin.

The low-moisture environment stopped the microbial activity, which meant no decay and Stuckie’s body was preserved in a remarkably good condition.

Brandy Stevenson, Forest World’s manager, told Roadside America: “People always ask me, ‘How did he get in there?’ And I always say, ‘Well, he was a hound dog. Maybe he was after a raccoon.’

“And then they’ll say, ‘Poor old thing. I feel so sorry for him.'”

Stuckie, who got his name after a 2002 naming contest, is available to see at the  Southern Forest World Museum and Environmental Center in Waycross, Georgia.
[SOURCE: The UK Sun.]

POLTERGEIST HAUNTS A POT SHOP!
Workers at a marijuana dispensary in Oregon suspect that they may be sharing their space with a spirit after security cameras captured some eerie activity at the pot shop. The weirdness reportedly first began this summer when 'Five Zero Trees' employee Andy Gomez noticed that a tip jar seemingly slid across a perfectly flat counter on its own while he was 'budtending' a few feet away. "As it happened," he recalled, "I kind of felt like someone was standing next to me."

Another piece of security footage shows objects in a pen holder being rattled by an unseen force. Lest one suspect that the incidents captured on video are simply shenanigans on the part of the pot shop in order to generate some publicity around Halloween, that seems fairly unlikely as the general manager of the site says that, since they are a cannabis shop, such trickery with the security footage would actually be illegal. As such, GM Samantha Davidson stressed, "those are state-certified videos."

If the pot shop truly is haunted, Davidson offered a theory as to who the spirit may be. She noted that, in the early 1900's, the building which houses the dispensary served as a pharmacy. As such, she mused that "I feel like it's the pharmacist, because he likes to organize things" and expressed hope that, if that is the case, that the ghost is "happy we're here."
[SOURCE: Coast 2 Coast AM.]



JESUS SURVIVES CHURCH FIRE!
Workers cleaning up debris from an enormous fire which destroyed a 150-year-old church in Massachusetts were amazed to find a painting of Jesus that had survived the blaze unscathed. The artwork had reportedly hung in the foyer of the First Baptist Church in the city of Wakefield. Following a lightning strike that hit the church's towering steeple on Tuesday evening, the building quickly went up in flames and was reduced to rubble by the time the seven-alarm fire had finally been extinguished.

Yet out of the tragedy came a sign of hope for parishioners by way of the Jesus painting which somehow managed to make it through the fire without any damage. One church member told a local TV station that the painting's miraculous survival is "a reminder that Jesus is with us" and that "even though our church building is gone, our church is here." The painting will reportedly be given to a former pastor at the church, although one hopes that it will someday hang in the rebuilt building someday.

Remarkably, this is not the first time that such a potential 'sign from above' was found following a fire. Earlier this year, a trio of religious icons survived an inferno which destroyed a church in Serbia. And, back in December of 2016, a charred but intact statue of Jesus was discovered among the wreckage of a home after a wildfire devastated a town in Tennessee.
[SOURCE: Coast 2 Coast AM.]



BIGFOOT CAUGHT ON TRAIL CAM!
An eerie trail cam photograph circulating online seems to show some kind of figure lurking in a forest and some suspect that it could be a Bigfoot. The origins of the image are uncertain at this time as it first appeared a few days ago on a Facebook group devoted to celebrating the outdoors and was attributed to an unnamed third party. Presumably the photo was submitted to the group by the individual in the image as he included a bit of information about the scene.

Claiming to be a hunter, the purported source of the photo says that "the person on the left is me walking to my ladder stand and it looks to me like there's a person on the right, but I walked down myself and didn't hear anything." As can be seen in the image, to the right of the individual appears to be a set of glowing eyes which look like they belong to a rather sizeable bipedal creature as the vague outline of a body suggests.

Theories from online observers regarding the nature of the oddity have largely settled into three camps. One group of viewers believe that the creature is a Bigfoot, while a smaller contingent of people have put forward the possibility that it is, in fact, a ghost. And a third set of more skeptical-minded individuals have argued that the 'Bigfoot' is actually just a person.

While that prosaic answer would no doubt be disappointing, one can be forgiven for wearily wondering if the image is, indeed, a less-than-elaborate prank, considering the curious manner in which the photo appeared online without any tangible details about its origin.



UFO SPOTTED BY LIVE NEWSCASTERS IN ARGENTINA!
A newscast on Argentine television came to a screeching halt last week when the anchors spotted an unidentified flying object soaring over the city of Buenos Aires. The strange sighting reportedly occurred on the program 'Mananas Argentinas' last Wednesday morning. As anchor Mariela Fernandez was standing in front of a giant screen which showed the city skyline and marveling at the unsettling amount of smog in the air, she suddenly caught sight of the UFO.

Clearly amazed by what she is seeing, Fernandez quickly points out the anomaly to her co-host Diego Angeli. The odd object appears to be a silver sphere that quickly moves across the sky and eventually vanishes from sight when it flies off screen. While we are unable to discern exactly what the anchors are saying, it seems clear that Fernandez was stunned by the oddity's rapid speed. That said, one local account of the incident indicates that the duo may not have taken the sighting all that seriously as the segment was described as "hilarious."

As to what the object may have been, aside from an alien craft, one prosaic possibility is that it was some kind of balloon. Be that as it may, the appearance of a UFO during a newscast is something we've seen quite a bit of lately as TV stations in Oregon, Milwaukee, and Buffalo have all had brushes with the unexplained this year.
[SOURCE: Coast 2 Coast AM.]