TRACK #334:

Midnight Monster Hop by Jack and Jim

We said we’re diggin’ deep and clearing out the bullpen in 2023, so here’s a Halloween compilation staple that’s been kicking around for longer than I can remember.

I’m glad I waited though, since last year’s Halloween Ends turned this Referential Monster dinger into a full blown Inclusive jam.

And much like Pete Antell’s It’s Halloween, Jack and Jim’s classic Midnight Monsters Hop is the best thing going for Halloween Ends and it’s literally the first minute and a half of the film.

Seriously, you can stop watching after this song ends. In fact, you could just listen to this, which features the opening dialogue with the entire tune, and probably have a more satisfying time than wading through that fan-fic grade afterthought jerk-off session they tried to pass off as the ultimate bookend to a legendary 40-year-old Horror saga. Hell, H20 is a more satisfying conclusion to the whole affair than that turd.

But I digress, cause we got this song. A bonafide Halloween jammer from 1959. Yep, you read that right. 3 years before Boris Pickett unveiled his own swinging Monster Party, Jack and Jim were laying the groundwork for monster get-togethers everywhere.

However, Bert Convy still has ‘em all beat, and no doubt provided inspiration to both, with his 1958 cut simply titled The Monsters Hop.

Credit where it’s due though, cause I think Jack and Jim here are serving up probably the swingingest tune of the bunch. It’s used to great effect in Halloween Ends too, actually tricking you into thinking you’re about to watch something cool. No such luck.

We’ve led it in, of course, with hometown hero Willy the Kid on WURG The Urge… Haddonfield’s home for rock!

You gotta love it when a horror movie gives you some solid DJ action, and Willy gets it good to The Cramp’s I Was a Teenage Werewolf. At least, I guess he gets it good. As good as that turkey is giving anyway. Unfortunately, he’s a little underutilized in the story and his death scene feels like it’s ripped from some other movie. Some movie you might rather be watching.

At least compared to the one you’ve been watching. I’m not sure the movie on display at WURG is worth watching either, but at least Michael’s not getting slapped around in a cave by some dildo who been getting bullied by a bunch of high school band dorks. A shame really, what they did to Michael.

And not just in Halloween Ends either (though perhaps the most undignified) but the whole damn lot of it, all the way down the line. From making him Laurie’s brother, to bringing him back from complete incineration, to positing him as some sort of Druid-curse vessel, to making his mask CG, to letting Busta Rhymes karate kick him out a window on a reality show, to making him some generic bullying victim with a white trash stripper mom.

It’s unfortunate that Michael couldn’t have been left to just wander off into the Halloween night, never to be seen again. Now there’s a reconned remakequel I could get behind.

Oh well, at least we got the 1st minute or so of Halloween Ends, featuring this classic monster tune from a duo who, like I so wish I could say for Michael Myers, we never heard from again.