Audio

Episode 8: Title Tracks Pt. 1: The Bad and The Ugly

It’s time for some Title Tracks!

The most celebrated Sub-Category on Halloween Shindig gets the Shindig Radio treatment, as the gang teams up on the the worst Title Tracks horror has to offer.

In Part 1 of this 2 part retrospective, prepare to pay your dues with unfortunate tunes from the likes of Hauntedween, Ghost Fever and Scream Dream, before basking in the gleaming light of Part 2’s certified gold.

Join Graham C. Schofield and Mikey Rotella for a night of crud, duds and CHUDS, as we trudge through the dregs of this great Category.

 

 

Audio

Hauntedween

TRACK #150:

Hauntedween by Ernest Raymer

What better place to bring our Haunted House Rockin’ block to an end than here, at the Berber House with Hauntedween, a Haunted House Halloween Title Track?

While not a real haunted house, The Berber House is just a festive Haunted House, or rather a Haunt, which has hitherto been unrepresented in our block.

A staple of the season since well before I was brought to this plane of existence, The Haunted House is as much a part of Halloween as Trick-or-Treating, Jack O’Lanterns and slutty costumes.

High school kids in rubber masks weave through a thick mist of dangling limbs and fake fog, looking for their next mark.

Disorienting lights strobe to the beat of pneumatic pistons firing foam jump scares.

A chainsaw is perpetually chugging somewhere, sometimes roaring to life, but from where, you couldn’t say.

Grown adults tip-toe around dark corners, weary of things they know aren’t really out to get them.

The nervous shriek, the tough guys almost instinctively punch and the weirdos laugh uneasily.

Some are good and some are terrible, but they all have that same smell, that same vibe, the same excitement, and you should always treat yourself to at least one visit a season.

If you live around Southern California, I highly recommend Reign of Terror in Thousand Oaks. Skip Universal, Knotts and The Griffith Park Hayride, and check that place out.

Hauntedween is a low budget affair filled with that same sort of passionate home-town charm and love for the holiday you find in local Haunted Houses, and it features a killer lying in wait at just such a local Haunt. You can read The Shindig’s write-up here!

This Title Track (which it is gracious enough to give us) plays over a montage of the Sigma Phi frat boys rebuilding the old local Haunt in preparation for a holiday fundraiser to save their fraternity!

It may be awkward to say, and it may not make one bit of sense, but here it is all the same…it’s Hauntedween!

Someone’s dying to start the show.

 

Oct. 22nd: Hauntedween (1991)

Here’s another low-rent Halloween fiasco, this time entitled HauntedWeen.

Reguaws Kentucky has it’s own Family haunt – The Burber House. Unfortunately, young Eddie Burber’s too young work there yet. So, he sneaks in with his shitty mask and tries his hand at scaring a little girl.

Which he does, effectively. So effectively in fact that she runs into a carelessly placed spike, skewering herself. So, Eddie just whips out a machete and finishes the job.

Ma Burber doesn’t chastised Eddie, she simply decides they need to leave. So they abandon the haunt to take off to a cabin in the woods.

There they live happily, until another Halloween where Ma Burber dies, leaving Eddie free to pursue his murderous inclinations.

Fast forward and Hauntedween is now following the Sigma Pi fraternity, perhaps the lamest frat this side of the Tri-Lambs. Seems these jokers haven’t paid their national fraternity dues lately and are facing shut-down. No worries, just throw a haunted house Halloween party, charge admission and problem solved.

But where? Well, when a mysterious stranger offers you the keys to the haunted Burber House, I don’t think there’s any cause to second guess that at all. Party on, after a quick Mistress of the Dark style remodeling montage set to an awesome Title Track. Bonus.

So, the house opens again, but of course, Eddie’s there too, with his old shitty mask, sneaking around the haunt creating real murders for all the unwitting spectators.

It’s actually a pretty neat idea, and it’s pulled off with a lot of low-budget, hometown labor-of-love charm. The haunted house finale is so spot on with local haunted attractions, it’s hard not to grin widely, particularly when Eddie makes the leap from dreams to reality.

It was even shot on 16mm, which is a commendable in an era where this could have easily been shot-on-video. It’s a lot of fun to watch, and it’s works.

Though a rare and sought after VHS gem, it is also available now on DVD from the filmmakers themselves @hauntedween.com.