TRACK #373:

Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors by Roy Castle

If you’ve been hangin around here for any amount of time, then you know we talk a lot about Title Tracks. This is especially true what with Shindig Radio’s Title Tracks Pt. 6 dropping. Oh wait, that hasn’t happened yet. Shit. My predictive drafting has failed me yet again.

Well, in that episode, I kinda break down all the different types of Title Tracks, everything from Parenthetical jammers to Title Track After the Facts.

But there’s another sort of Title Track that I didn’t mention on the show, and that’s because they’re technically not really Title Tracks at all. But these are Tie-In Title Tracks.

These are songs that, for all intents and purposes, are true blue Title Tracks, meeting the same criteria and serving the same or (in some cases) an even more overtly, promotional purpose.

There’s just one problem; they’re not actually in the goddamn movie. Nope. They just exist, outside of the film, in a purely musical space operating as a full fledged audio commercials for the films they’re named after.

Now, we already have one of these on the playlist at #319 in The Devil Rides Out, but I’ve dug up a few more.

I wonder if they weren’t sort of a precursor to full-on Title Tracks, from a time when producers were starting to realize the potential effect a popular song could have in generating interest, but didn’t want to sully their film with something as coarse as a rock and roll song tonally incongruous to the film being marketed.

It’s possible. The oldest Title Track featured on the playlist is still  The Blob from 1958. Not for nothing either, but it’s one of the oldest Title Track period. 1955’s Love is a Many-Splendored Thing has it beat by 3 years, but I’m not really seeing much else earlier than that, but I am always on the lookout.

However, The Blob was released the year before 3 out of the 4 Promotional Title Tracks I’ve found, so a True Title Track certainly wasn’t unprecedented. But The Blob, at present, appears to be a bit of an outlier, as Title Tracks didn’t seem to gain real prominence until the mid 1960’s. James Bond films, long known specifically for their Title Tracks, didn’t start that ritual  until 1963’s From Russia with Love.

The next closest thing is Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte from 6 years later in 1964. That one’s interesting as it wasn’t technically a Title Track originally, because the movie was shooting under the name What Ever Happened to Cousin Charlotte. Bette Davis reportedly disliked the name as it made the film sound far too much like a sequel to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane. This song had already been written and recorded though and Bette recommended changing the films title to match. Wild! The movie naming itself after the original song to instantly turn that song into a Title Track is baller as fuck. That’s a powerful ass Title Track.

But I digress. Back to Dr. Terror, cause it’s interesting in its own right.

See, this track is sung by Dr. Terror actor Roy Castle, star of the Voodoo segment. Roy was an accomplished singer and trumpet player in his own right, which probably led to him being tapped for the task. Though Roy plays trumpet player Bailey in the film, the trumpet parts were apparently recorded by legendary Jazz player Tubby Hayes and not Roy himself. He does do a bang on job miming those parts though, as one might expect.

Another curious aspect of the song is that, despite it being sung by someone from the film itself, it completely misrepresents the nature of Dr. Terror’s house of horrors. Its treats it as though it were an actual brick and mortar location filled with horrifying surprises. If you’ve ever seen the film, you’ll know that the house or horrors is simply a metaphor Dr. Terror (or, more appropriately, Dr. Schrek) uses to describe his tarot deck. The fact that Roy enters a spooky old house and keeps meeting strange characters is so wildly out of sync with the film it seems almost laughable, particularly considering this is suppose to be the audio equivalent of a trailer or print ad. You’re selling the wrong film here fellas.

Either way, it’s a fun song with silly interludes that reminds me quite a bit of Carry On Screaming! also British and from the following year, 1966. I wonder if Ray Pilgrim and the crew were taking a bit of a piss on Amicus and Roy here. I certainly wouldn’t put it past them.

At any rate here’s the first of 2 Tie-In Title Tracks we got on tap for you this season. It’s Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors!