Tricks & Treats 09: Goofy Teaches Us All About Halloween

Here's a super cool educational short from Disney in which Goofy and others teach us the origin of Halloween. Very cool! Here's Disney's Haunted Halloween! Enjoy!

Tricks & Treats 09: Judy Garland Dishes It Out at The Drive In (repost)

Today's post is an episode of the great radio show, "Suspense" and it stars the great Judy Garland. This is actually the first side of a Judy bootleg that I bought in St Louis that features interviews on the flip side. The radio show was originally broadcast on November 21, 1946. It's a really good episode but as it comes from a Judy Garlnad bootleg record, any trace of the station IDs and even the name "Suspense" is gone. Interesting. Here it is for your listening entertainment. Enjoy!

Judy Garland in The Drive In (OTR)

Tricks & Treats 09: A Halloween Story

If you don't know who Jean Shepherd is, you should probably look up "A Christmas Story" on Wikipedia and find out. Yes, the Christmas classic that gets run for 24 hours every year on TBS. In case you didn't know, he wrote it! Actually, he wrote the book that it is based on. Don't go looking for it at your book store because it won't be there. What will be there is a book called "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash." The book is a collection of stories Jean wrote based on his real life childhood growing up in Hammond, Indiana. Long before he was an author, however, he was a disc jockey. But it wasn't the platters that he spun that garnered him his reputation. It was his stories. Jean was like a modern day Mark Twain, telling humorous antecdotes about his childhood filled with BB Guns, bullies, the Bumpass family and his foul mouthed, furnace fighting father. Playboy offered him a sweet check in exchange for his stories being published in the popular magazine. After a while, there were enough stories to merit the publication of a full novel and "In God We Trust . . ." was born. This was followed by "Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories: and Other Disasters", "The Ferrari in the Bedroom" and "A Fistful of Fig Newtons". Today we feature one of Jean's shows from his broadcasting days at New York's WOR in 1976, just one year before he would leave radio to work in other media forms. It's a spooky tale that's perfect for the Halloween season. Here's Jean Shepherd with "Gruesome-O-Mania"! Enjoy!

Jean Shepherd - Gruesome-O-Mania

Tricks & Treats 09: "A Witch's Tangled Hair"

Tricks & Treats 09: "Grave Robbers From Outer Space" (repost)

If you have never heard of Ed Wood, then you need to! He was the king of bad movies! In the 1950s, Wood made a run of independently produced, extremely low-budget horror, science fiction and cowboy films, now celebrated for their technical errors, unsophisticated special effects, idiosyncratic dialogue, eccentric casts and outlandish plot elements, although his flair for showmanship gave his productions at least a modicum of commercial success. Wood's one big claim was that he was able to use Bela Lugosi in his films! At the time, Lugosi was considered a has been by the film industry and on top of that, he was a junkie. But to Ed Wood, he was a big star. However, soon after their partnership began, Lugosi passed away. That didn't stop Wood from salvaging a saleable feature from Lugosi's last moments on film. The result is what is considered to be the worst movie ever made! Originally titled "Grave Robbers From Outer Space", the title was eventually changed to "Plan 9 From Outer Space". The plot of the film is focused on a race of extraterrestrial beings who are seeking to stop humans from creating a doomsday weapon that would destroy the universe. In the course of doing so, the aliens implement "Plan 9", a scheme to resurrect earth's dead as zombies to get the planet's attention, causing chaos.
Today I offer you what I call my Plan 9 super-post! You get two for the price of one! You get the film's soundtrack album as well as an album that features the entire film in audio form! It's my Halloween gift to you! Enjoy!

Plan Nine From Outer Space OST

Plan Nine From Outer Space Story Album

Artwork

Tricks & Treats 09: Super 8 Theater Presents: DRACULA

Here is the Castle Films 8 millimeter digest version of the original Dracula starring the one and only Bela Lugosi! Enjoy!

Tricks & Treats 09: A Strange and Fascinating Journey

The Rocky Horror Picture Show has quite the history. We all know the story of how it bombed and then became a midnight hit at theaters all over the world. But do you know the story of the soundtrack? When the film was originally released, the film itself boasted a mono soundtrack. The accompanying album was released in stereo and contained different mixes and vocals from the film version. This is not that uncommon a practice in the world of film soundtracks. There are many albums that feature different takes than the ones used in the film. However, when the film finally saw a release on the home video market in 1990, Fox commisioned a stereo version of the film soundtrack. This was done by Chace Productions who created the "new mix" by using the soundtrack album and the original mono audio from the film. This frustrated many fans and also created some weird "out-of-synch" moments in the musical numbers. When the film came to DVD in 2000, Chace Productions was given the original 24-track music master and the original mono audio mix to create a 5.1 surround sound mix. At the same time, were also able to put the original mono track back into the film to give viewers a choice of which version they would like to "hear". Personally, I like pretty much every mix that I can get my hands on as I love this film and the music that goes with it. But there are definite variations in the mixes. For example: in the mono mix of "Science Fiction / Double Feature", Richard O'Brian's voice is predominant over the music and the saxophone plays throughout the song as opposed to the stereo mix where it comes in at the end. In "Over at the Frankenstein Place" the backing chorus are completely different takes in the different versions. In the mono version of "The Time Warp", you can hear Magenta hiss and moan throughout the song. See if you can notice these and other differences when you take a listen to The Mono Rocky Horror Picture Show Soundtrack! Here it is for you now. Enjoy!

The Rocky Horror Picture Show OST MONO

Tricks & Treats 09: Ron Howard Visits The Haunted Mansion

It's October 1st and that means the countdown to Halloween has begun!!!! We start this year's "Tricks and Treats" with a great record from the Disney vaults. One of the greatest rides ever in the Disneyworld/Disneyland spectrum is The Haunted Mansion. No matter how many new and improved rides come along, the Mansion is still the king and I could ride it a hundred times in a row if I could. Back in the day, Disney used to release records that coincided with their various rides and the Haunted Mansion was no exception. In fact, the Mansion boasts three records to its name: one is "The Story and Song from the Haunted Mansion," an LP featuring a pre-Happy-Days Ronny Howard; then there is a shorter children's record titled "Walt Disney Presents the Haunted Mansion," one of Disney's many "See, Hear, Read" records narrated by Robie Lester, a popular narrator for many of Disney's childrens albums. The third Haunted Mansion story album is the B-side of "Trick or Treat," a Disneyland Record starring Donald Duck, his nephews, and Witch Hazel, with the original "Story and Song" recording edited down to fit completely on the B-side of this 12" LP. Today we are giving you the original "Story and Song from the Haunted Mansion" complete with the vocal talents of Ron Howard. Recorded in 1969 (a year after he stopped playing Andy Griffith's son Opie), "The Story and Song from the Haunted Mansion" featured the young "Ronny" Howard as "Mike," a young teen out on a date with "Karen". The story is narrated by the one-and-only Thurl Ravenscroft, who is one of Disney's best-known vocal talents (and is also known for being the original voice of Tony the Tiger, and the singer of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch," from Chuck Jones' classic cartoon How the Grinch Stole Christmas). The ride's main scenes are faithfully represented, often with the original sound effects, making this an album worth buying a turntable for. If you don't have the original album (or a turntable for that matter), fear not faithful readers! We here at The World of Wonder offer it to you in digital form as our first "Treat" of 2009! Enjoy!

The Story and Song from The Haunted Mansion

BONUS: Here's s cool link to a super cool web site called "Doombuggies". It gives you everything you would ever want to know about the Haunted Mansion and then some! Stop on by and tell them Dartman sent you!