Here's a bunch of soundtracks from Halloween-esque films for your listening pleasure. It's kind of like a "Trick or Treat Bag" full of soundtrack creepiness! Enjoy!
First up is the Rankin Bass classic, "Mad Monster Party"! This campy film is a spoof of horror films, complete with musical numbers and inside jokes. Mad Magazine creator Harvey Kurtzman penned the script, and Mad artist Jack Davis designed many of the characters. In addition to the famous monsters seen in the film, Mad Monster Party also features several celebrity likenesses. Boris Karloff and Phyllis Diller's characters are both designed to look like the actors portraying them, while Baron Frankenstein's lackey, Yetch, is a physical and vocal caricature of Peter Lorre. Felix, on the other hand, strongly resembles Jimmy Stewart vocally but not physically. In 1972, Rankin/Bass produced a sequel of sorts, with the TV special Mad, Mad, Mad Monsters. This Halloween special featured many of the same monster characters, including an imitation of Karloff as the doctor (he died in 1969), although it presumably was not intended as a direct sequel since many of these characters perished at the end of Mad Monster Party. Personally I have never seen the sequel but would love to if anyone knows where I could find it.
Mad Monster Party OSTNext up is MECO's soundtrack to "An American Werewolf in London". 1981 was the year of the werewolf.
Along with this classic, The Howling and Wolfen also saw the light of day. The make-up effects for this film were groundbreaking and still hold up to this day and you can't beat any film that features Jenny Agutter! Elmer Bernstein wrote the music for the film but the studio never released an official soundtrack. Instead, they asked MECO to give the world his interpretation and thus we have this!
An American Werewolf in London OST
You can't talk about scary films without talking about at least one of the great Universal Monsters! These still are, at least in my opinion, essential viewing for everyone. In 1932, Universal put out "The Mummy". Inspired by the opening of King Tut's tomb and the Curse of the Pharaohs, producer Carl Laemmle Jr. commissioned story editor Richard Shayer to find a literary novel to form a basis for an Egyptian-themed horror film. Unfortunetly, there wasn't one. Instead, Shayer and writer Nina Wilox wrote their own film based on Alessandro Cagliostro, the alias for the occultist Giuseppe Balsamo, an Italian traveller. The studio gave it a go and hired John L. Balderston to write the script. Balderston contributed to Dracula and Frankenstein, and had covered the opening of Tutankhamen's tomb for New York World when he was a journalist. He moved the story to Egypt and renamed the film and its title character Imhotep, after the historical architect. They hired Boris Karloff to play the Mummy and the rest is history. One last little side note, even though he had endured the insane make-up for Frankenstein, Karloff claimed that the application of his bandages for The Mummy was the worst thing that he ever had to endure in his career! Here is the soundtrack to that great film complete with dialogue from certain scenes! This is pretty cool if I do say so myself!
The Mummy (1932) Bootleg Soundtrack
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