The Founder/Guitarist from iconic Horror Soundtrack Prog group Goblin passed away at 70. Goblin has many amazing tracks and albums, this may be the greatest.
Also, along with guitars, Morante played the bouzouki. How about that? If you're like me, you might find yourself suddenly wondering if that's the instrumental layers in some of their music you could never quite place before.
Watch:
I know there's not a lot of Goblin's music in the intro scene to Dario Argento's Suspiria, however, it feels like there's more than there is, right? I believe that's because Goblin crafted such a fantastic score - and I'm under the (possibly mistaken) assumption that they wrote the music without having viewed the final cut of the film - in such a way that it mixes perfectly with the nightmare logic of Argento's cinematic aspirations.
I love the way the music hard stops when they cut from what Susie sees to the medium close-up of her walking. The direction, editing and score suggest she's not seeing what is actually there, which, if you think about it, fits the film perfectly from start to finish. Or rather, she's seeing what is there but what no one else can see. She's entering a Nightmare. Massimo Morante ladies and gentlemen. Rest in Peace, sir.
Playlist:
Orville Peck - Pony
Roy Orbison - Mystery Girl
Gordon Lightfoot - Greatest Hits
The Soft Moon - Him (pre-release single)
Hank Williams III - Straight to Hell
The Essential Dolly Parton
Johnny Cash - At Folsom Prison
Alabama Shakes - Sound & Color
Card:
Open to new influence, awareness and new life. Not sure any of that really does me any good at the moment. Both K and I are having MASSIVE doubts about our plans for TN. There are a ton of reasons, but a lot of it boils down to it may not be exactly what we thought, we're priced out of the area we wanted and our second choice isn't nearly the same, and even though we've seen some houses we love and almost jumped on, there's the idea that, find the perfect home, move in, and if you have nothing around it to make you happy, in six months it's a prison and that will make you resent it and maybe your partner. And fine, so don't move, but the thing is, I really don't know where the hell we're going to live if we don't move here. Stay in LaLaLand paying insane rent? There's really nowhere else we've thought of, so we would have to take some serious time. In my head, there's also the idea that, if this shit with my lungs goes south, I want to be able to get her into a house that's hers before I check out. That's probably paranoia, but that doesn't mean it isn't clouding the situation.
Just realized I never posted the latest Drinking with Comics video last week when it dropped. The goal from here out is to shoot these and get them up on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, and the DwC website as audio-only podcasts, then get the video up the following week. The video always takes a lot longer, and the show has more patrons as a pure podcast anyway, so I figured this was the optimum way to do it.
Hoping to do a 28 Days/28 Weeks Later double feature this weekend. I actually work both Friday and Saturday, so that limits what I can watch, and I'm still working through Sabrina (on Episode 5), which I need to get through for a forthcoming episode of The Horror Vision. Also, regarding THV, we're scheduled to do our Suspiria 2018 episode this Saturday, so hopefully I'll have it up later that day or Sunday. A little late to the game, but it's been hard to align schedules; as it is only three of the four of us have seen the film, so we're already down a man for this particular one. But there's A LOT to talk about with this film, on its own and juxtaposed with the original.
Playlist from 11/20:
Tom Waits - Rain Dogs
Iggy Pop - The Idiot
Ghost Cop - One Weird Trick
Tom Waits - Swordfish Trombone
Massive Attack - Mezzanine
Boy Harsher - Face the Fire (single pre-release)
Boy Harsher - Country Girl
The Fixx - Shuttered Room
Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper
Whoah. I had ear-marked this Perturbator collaboration with LA-based Health sometime a week or so ago and then promptly forgot about it. Listening to it last night while writing, it made a strong impression. Which led to me checking out Health's 2015 album Death Magic (great title). Fantastic stuff. Reminiscent of Crystal Castles at times, very melodic and killer electronics.
31 Days of Horror rounded the final lap last night with attempts to watch two other movies as well. The first was Beetlejuice, which I rented from Amazon and which dropped out and sent me back to the start twice before I gave up. The second was Tod Browning's 1931 Dracula with Bela Lugosi, but by then it was pass out time, so I only made it 2/3 of the way through. Ugh.
31 Days of Horror
10/01) Summer of 84
10/02) Rope
10/03) Dreams in the Witch House
10/04) Crash
10/05) The Fly
10/06) Re-animator
10/07) Night of the Demons
10/08) Species
10/09) The Roost
10/10) The Convent
10/11) Killer Klowns from Outer Space
10/12) George A. Romero's Day of the Dead
10/13) George A. Romero's Land of the Dead
10/14) The Apostle
10/15) Phantom of the Paradise
10/16) Candyman
10/17) Ghoulies
10/18) John Carpenter's Halloween
10/24) Halloween III: Season of the Witch
10/25) Ghost Stories
10/26) John Carpenter's The Fog
10/27) Suspiria (2018)
10/28) Suspiria (1977)
Playlist from 10/28:
Various Artists - Halloween playlist
Skeletal Family - Singles Plus One
Health/Perturbator - Body/Prison
Health - Death Magic
Ennio Morricone - Black Belly of the Tarantula
A little Siouxsie and the Banshees in honor of Susie Bannion and the fact that we have now entered the final stretch toward Halloween. I still have quite a few movies I want to watch, so I'm going to start working some into the daylight, in the background. This is something I purposely never do, as a way to maintain the sacred reverence I try to hold for movies. That said, I'll look at it as a recreation of discovering horror on television as a kid. I have the original Suspiria on while I'm writing this, just as a counter point to Luca Guadagnino's version we saw last night. How was the new Suspiria?
Not an easy question, as there's a lot to unpack.
Guadagnino's iteration of Dario Argento's classic is not so much a horror movie, as it is a Film that happens to center around horrific events and characters; it's a horror movie in the same way Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is a horror movie, that is to say not beholden to genre tropes and mores. I know some folks who would say my evening saying that is pretentious, but here's why I disagree.
Before Jaws, Star Wars, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, Hollywood didn't manufacture blockbusters. With the European influence that came in to take the place of the drift that set in after the studio paradigm died, Directors became revered as Auteurs. Films were made with artistic intentions, and this was not considered a bad or pretentious thing. It goes to show how corporatized we are as a society now, with the number of people who roll their eyes to my oft-preached delineation between what constitutes a Movie and what constitutes a Film.
During this Auteur period, the box office was topped by films that got people talking. Think Chinatown, a movie that would most likely never be made by a major studio today. This championing of the Director as Auteur ended after Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate disaster bankrupted United Artists. From that point on, studios began to take control back from Directors, and simultaneously began looking for 'sure-things'.
Jaws, Star Wars, and Raiders provided the template for this.
I liken Guadagnino's Suspiria to the Auteur era; it's artistic yes, but not without purpose. One interesting note, without going into spoiler territory, is that Dario Argento's Suspiria takes place in 1977 Germany, and that makes the setting Divided Germany. This never factors into Argento's film, though. That's not a criticism, just an observation, and one that only ever occurred to me now because the new film hinges on this fact. As Susie Bannion's story plays out in the foreground, the background of the film is set against the climax of the Baader-Meinhoff kidnapping, and this too factors in, as does WWII, for Lutz Ebersdorf's character.
In the end? I thought Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria was an excellent film. Will it garner the fun, cult following the original has? No. Will it incite the same kind of celebratory, rewatch fervor Argento's film does? No. That doesn't mean you shouldn't see it, you definitely should. In a theatre if you can. But it does mean a lot of horror fans who hold the original Suspiria dear need to step around their expectations and keep an open mind.
31 Days of Horror
10/01) Summer of 84
10/02) Rope
10/03) Dreams in the Witch House
10/04) Crash
10/05) The Fly
10/06) Re-animator
10/07) Night of the Demons
10/08) Species
10/09) The Roost
10/10) The Convent
10/11) Killer Klowns from Outer Space
10/12) George A. Romero's Day of the Dead
10/13) George A. Romero's Land of the Dead
10/14) The Apostle
10/15) Phantom of the Paradise
10/16) Candyman
10/17) Ghoulies
10/18) John Carpenter's Halloween
10/24) Halloween III: Season of the Witch
10/25) Ghost Stories
10/26) John Carpenter's The Fog
10/27) Suspiria (2018)
After the movie, K and I drove around Hollywood a bit, windows down, marine layer in the air. Closest thing I can remember to Autumn in Los Angeles in some time. The cool, moist air added a certain electricity to the evening that was only amplified when we arrived at the Horror Writer's Assoc. party. Robert Payne Cabeen and his wonderful wife Cecile put on a hell of a shindig - the entire front of the house was lavished with decorations that fit the season, music blared from the inside, and people in costumes strolled around the grounds. It was marvelous.
Incidentally, I finally procured a copy of Robert Cabeen's Stoker-aware winning novel Cold Cuts, so I'll be starting that shortly. I had been picking at short stories for the last week or so because despite beginning Neil Gaiman's much-lauded novel The Graveyard Book, I just cannot get into it at the moment. The plan is to move to Cold Cuts next and then go back to Gaiman.
Completely forgot to post here that the newest episode of The Horror Vision went up last Wednesday. Su nioj for Anthony, Chris, Ray, and my own picks for must-watch Halloween season movies. On Apple Podcasts and The Horror Vision.comnow.
Playlist from yesterday was literally only my Halloween Playlist, which you can find on Apple Music if you follow me there. Cities of Dust is on it, as are a lot of other awesome tracks hand-picked to accentuate the Autumn mood I have to manufacture most days here in LaLaLand.
Halloween Playlist:
1) Black No. 1 - Type O Negative
2) Bela Lugosi's Dead - Bauhaus
3) Cities in Dust - Siouxsie & The Banshees
4) Park Around the Corner - Ritual Howls
5) The Monk Song - Miranda Sex Garden
6) The Days of Swine & Roses - My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult
7) Dead Man's Party - Oingo Boingo
8) Graveyard Girl - M83
9) A Dance for the Saints - The Final Cut
10) Mask - Bauhaus
11) Tear You Apart - She Wants Revenge
12) Skin of the Night - M83
13) Zemmoa - Ritual Howls
14) Everyday is Halloween - Ministry
Card of the day:
From the Grimoire, "Balance. Nine = Collected; stable. Cups = Emotion"
A great rendition of a classic David Lynch-penned tune. The organ that serves as a bridge is among my favorite sounds ever.
How did I get to this? Weeeeellllll.....
I am a HUGE Miranda Sex Garden fan, but I haven't been on a 'binge' with them in a while. Then I a little while ago I was over on the always awesome Heaven is an Incubator and listened to this incredible Lustmord track that he posted (go to that track directly on the 'Incubator here). Somewhere in there (I was drifting and not totally conscious of time - the track will do that to you) there was an organ sound very similar to the one I mention above.
