BOO BOOOOO Hallowe’en is coming, and almost at the same time as the US election, creepy eh? Who will win? the forces of evil? the forces of not-so-evil? Is dumb evil? Is the Religious Right right? Ah, we won’t declare our allegiances althought you can imagine them, suffice to say i’ve read the whole of Hunter S. Thompson’s correspondence. Enough! Anyway, as part of the countdown for scary night, el Dia de los Muertos etc. we have decided to post scary songs, each of them a Monster, a supernatural, preternatural or natural being that instills panic and dread in the hearts of men and women and little animals and of course babies.

Warning: if you are looking for cuteness, go somewhere else, this week isn’t going to be for the faint-hearted, prepare to feel *THE FEARRRR* BOOOOO BOOOOOO

The door opens making that cliched….creeeeeeek

Greek Mythology and the Hebrew bible both tell a tale of one of man’s primeval fears, The Golem. A human like creature without a soul, or in some cases conscience. This is most well known in Mary Shelley Frankenstein, where man aping God created a creature in his own image, Dr.Frankenstein’s Monster(most famously portrayed by dear Boris Karloff), which the good Doctor is obviously unable to control, as with God’s Adam and Eve (would you believe, give me the fuckin apple now).

Alan Turing spent a lot of his time being rejected by society for his odd ways and homosexuality at a time when it was frowned upon. His friend was a MADAM the Manchester Automatic Digital Machine. Alan spent far too much of his time hanging out with MADAM, and thus he evolved the idea or an “Artificial Intelligence”.

Isaac Asimov constructed the rules for a “Robot” which would obey it’s masters, or protect them, even when not obeying, which is also quite scary, like when your parents tell you not to do stuff but not why. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

I don’t know about you but an artificial intelligence that’s brighter than me still gives me the willys (see HAL).

It’s pre-programmed, maybe with the idea of self preservation above all else, like us humans.

Now we have the fucking Matrix or Terminator to show a nightmare vision of the future where humans create an A.I. machine which out evolves us, and figures out we are destroying everything, including our own world.

Dean Koont’s novel Demon Seed showed such a monster (in reference to both Greek and Hebrew mythology called Proteus) which in the film tries to make babies with Julie Christie in order to create the ultimate being.

Proteus is my first Halowe’en monster, this is my song for it.

Adult.- Me and My Rhythm Box

Adult. cover this song from the film Liquid Sky about an alien intelligence which feeds on a funny chemical. The alien comes to earth and finds the chemical is released in the human brain when people have sex, or take heroin, and as a result naturally hangs around a bunch of asexual new romantic heroin addicts in New York in the early 80s, as you would.

It’s an electronic love song to her drummer, who turns out to be a machine. Drummers would turn out to be machines much more often after this film was made, which is scary.

Fantomas- Rosemary Baby’s Theme

There is something awesome about the idea of a little human being growing inside another human being, and therefore descriptions of alien (not necessarily from outer space) entities initiating or tampering with that process are one of the devices that have been used by horror writers and cinema-makers throughout history, think Demon Seed, mentioned above, Alien (the ultimate tampering, you are raped and impregnated by that weird mollusc thing, eichhhh), The Omen, and of course Rosemary’s Baby (I guess the exception to this is the conception of Jesus in the Bible, where divine intervention is portrayed as something positive and good).

In any case, as many of you will know, in Rosemary’s Baby, Roman Polanski, one of the all-time masters of cinematic creepiness tells us the story of a pregnant woman who starts suspecting that the father of her unborn child is the devil himself…I won’t say anything else about this masterpiece, except that you should see it if you haven’t already.

One of the highlights of this movie is its main theme, by Polish composer Cristopher Komeda, an eerie lullaby where innocence and the unknown intertwine in a dream-like fashion with fascinating results, a sonic equivalent of the end of the movie (warning, spoiler ahead!), when Rosemary sees her newborn baby in the cot, little horns and claws and all. After the initial shock she surrenders to maternal instinct and starts cuddling it…wow!

Well, in the song above Fantomas (who are a super-band formed by Mike Patton off Faith no More, King Buzzo from the Melvins, Mr. Bungle’s bassist Trevor Dunn and the drummer from Slayer, Dave Lombardo) filter the original version through a heavy metal black machine, creating inadvertently the imaginary soundtrack for an alternative end of the movie, one where the little devil isn’t delivered peacefully, but instead slashes its way out of Rosemary’s womb with razor sharp claws, you can even hear it crying at the end of the song…SCARY EH?

(This song is included in Fantomas’ amazing “The Director’s Cut” released by Ipecac Recordings in 2001, in which, amongst others, the band cover themes off the Godfather, the Night of the Hunter, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, the Omen, Vendetta and Twin Peaks, its great!)

Epilogue -
This post is tagged with adam and eve alan turing boris karloff creature dia de los muertos dr frankenstein el dia de los muertos faint hearted hearts of men hebrew bible isaac asimov madam mary shelley frankenstein preternatural primeval prog robot scary night scary songs suffice to say