TRACK #269:

Indian Woman by Billy Vera

Haunted is one of those weird, toothless horror flicks that didn’t seem to get the memo about what the hell was going down with the rest of the genre in the late 70’s.

Mostly, it just feels like an overlong episode of some 70’s TV show you never liked that somehow managed to escaped to the big screen, doubled-billed with something people might have actually wanted to see.

Consensus seems to be that it’s a Horror film. I guess you could call it that, as there is the ghost of an Indian woman talking out of some weird payphone we see installed at the edge of a cemetery for no particular reason. Oh, and a guy attempts murder at one point.

Though only a refreshing 80 minutes in length, it takes about 50 for anything even close to horrific to take place. And then, it takes another 25 for something else resembling horror to come to pass. And even then, you’ll likely be pretty unimpressed.

It isn’t a complete loss however, depending on how much you enjoy strange overdubbed dialogue, nudity for nudity’s sake, weird cigar-store Indians that look like regular-ass dudes and Aldo Ray drunkenly shouting all his lines in that awesome raspy voice of his. Those things go some distance for guy like me. It’s enough to make it mildly watchable in the moment, but not much beyond that. I doubt I’ll be firing up Haunted anytime soon to get a fix of anything. Well, except maybe Aldo Ray. He is pretty great here.

What does set Haunted apart however, as you might have already guessed, is a pretty fantastic opening credit song called Indian Woman.

Sung by Billy Vera, who’s hit single, At This Moment, initially fell on deaf ears when it was released in 1981. But then, it found its way onto an episode of Family Ties in 1985, where a little bit of that Michael J. magic rubbed off and sent the track to #1.

Michael and fellow Family Ties actress, Tracy Pollan, shared their first kiss to that tune while shooting the scene. Shortly after sharing the screen again in Bright Lights, Big City, the two got married. Michael J. later said the couple couldn’t get on a dance floor anywhere in the world for almost 10 years without hearing At This Moment come flying out of the speakers.

If you’re not one of those big Family Ties enthusiasts, or particularly up on your 80’s ballads, you may still be familiar withVera , albeit through another avenue.

As a struggling musician, Billy started taking acting gigs to make ends meet. He then landed himself a role as Pinky Carruthers in a little Peter Weller movie called The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. That’s weird.

Check him out here with his green fedora and John Parker.  Yep. This guy, from this other weird-ass movie, sings this weird-ass song from this weirder-ass movie.

Hey, maybe you’re a 90210 fan! Maybe you even remember him as Brandon Walsh’s bookie, Duke Weatherhill?

Maybe not. I know I don’t. I just read that 5 minutes ago while researching Billy Vera. But, hey, maybe you do.

Either way, it seems Billy isn’t too proud of his work here on Haunted, as neither his Wikipedia entry nor his own website (containing his entire discography) makes any mention of Indian Woman. Can’t imagine why.

Perhaps it’s not the same Billy Vera? I dunno. Were there 2 different Billy Veras that were famous singers around this time? I guess it’s possible. I was wrong about Paul Williams. And there is that whole Cat’s Eye/Ray Stephens spelled Ray Stevens business. So conflating 2 different Billy Vera’s here is a distinct possibility.

All I know for sure is that if I was the guy responsible for this bizarro 70’s horror crooning, you better believe I’d be pullin’ up a table at the HorrorHound straight bumpin’ this shit, signin’ 8×10 glossies of Pinky Carruthers and Haunted one-sheets. Given, of course, I was in fact that same guy who did both.

Since I can’t actually do most of that, I’ll just do the one thing I can and bump this shit.

Here’s the sleeper hit of 2020. The probably retroactively offensive, and thus perhaps under-celebrated winner, Indian Woman.

Why do you keep playing that song!?