A couple of posts ago, I made a vow that I wasn’t going to let Halloween pass me by. Well, it’s crunch time folks, cause we’re in the home stretch. We’re less than a week away from the big day.

It’s funny how every year, the season creeps up very slowly, bit by bit, and then suddenly, it exponentially crashes in on you in the span of a few days. I intend to make the most out of those few days.

Here’s a quickie to get this week started. MY 2014 PUMPKIN!

I carve one every year, and every year is the same. Well, the pumpkin’s not the same. I change up the look of it every year, but this year I went with “scary grin and mismatched eyes”.

One tradition that hasn’t changed however is the act of carving itself. Every year, I get together with my cousin Larry, we go buy them, take them back to his house, and slice them up there. Since creating the proper mood is essential, we’ve developed two traditions regarding background noise over the years to go along with the deed itself, and they depend on where specifically we’re doing the carving.

If we do it out in the garage (as we did this year), we put on the same spooky sound effects CD that we’ve used for years. It’s one of those generic ones that you can buy in any decent store around this time of year, full of the sounds of evil scientist labs, howling wolves, bats, witches cackling, and screams. Lots and lots of screams. Seriously, this thing is like 85% screams. Shut up, already.

But the other tradition is the one I really want to talk about today. If we decide to do it in indoors, we have the same movie playing in the background every year – The Midnight Hour.

This thing is a LOT of fun and absolutely full on wackadoo. Both of us remember it coming on TV in 1985 and have been huge fans of it since. Larry actually taped it off TV at the time, and nearly every year, we pop that exact same VHS tape into the VCR and watch it.

Folks, if you haven’t seen this thing, seriously try to check it out before the season is up. It’s the type of thing that was common in the ’80’s, but just isn’t done anymore. By that, I mean, it’s an all-star collection of names that were big at the time thrown together for an hour and a half of sheer crazy.

Here’s your premise: A group of high school students, one of which is the direct descendent of the town’s most famous, dead witch, decide to enact a ritual to bring back said witch on Halloween night. Of course it’s all just fun and games and they’re not taking any of it seriously until shit actually does go down.

Surprising no one who has ever seen a motion picture before, the spell they recite actually does work and Lucinda the witch comes back and brings a horde of zombies, and one random werewolf for some reason (not that I’m complaining), with her.

For those of you who don’t remember 1985, one of the things I loved about that era is that people would just throw in anything they wanted to into a film and it didn’t really need to make too much sense at all. Apparently, prime-time made for TV movies during Samhain were excuses to just throw shit to a wall and see what stuck. Random werewolf while the dead rise from the grave? Sure, why not? And of course, being zombies, they’re all in one stage or another of decomposition, except for one — Sandy the cheerleader, who comes back as a…ghost…or something? I don’t know. Just go with it. I mean, she’s got a physical body and falls in love with one of the other characters, but although she died in the 1950’s, she seems to not be aware that she ever did. Yeah, it’s one of those deals.

I don’t know how well I’m selling this, but if you’re still waffling on it, there is only one thing you need to know. During the course of events, the witch Lucinda (who’s also sort of a…vampire…or something? just…whatever) essentially possesses Melissa, turning her evil and kind of horny. Some of the other teen friends also turn evil, and during a Halloween party, which has been crashed by the newly reanimated dead, THEY BREAK OUT INTO A MUSICAL NUMBER.

Guys, there is a musical number, with zombies, for no f*cking reason whatsoever, and it features LeVar Damn Burton. I’m going to post the vid with the entire movie down at the bottom, because after seeing THIS, there is no way that you will not want to watch the rest of this thing. Seriously, it’s full on batshit.

But, if you’re not all in just yet and you want a taste, check out this FANTASTIC ABC Movie Special Intro!

And because, well, you HAVE to see the rest of it now, here you go. I love it and you will too. Seriously though, guys. Stop jokingly reading spells on Halloween night. That has never, ever worked out well for anybody.

As long as we’re trying desperately to catch up and not completely fail at Halloween this year, I’m giving you another quickie on top of the post I just put up.

I’m not going to spend too much time on this site peddling all the little things I’m in involved in (who am I kidding, I’m so going to do that), but today is an exception.

On my radio show, Dark Entries: Goth Radio, I try to be as prolific as I can and cover all the different facets of goth, darkwave, industrial, and just generally spooky music and horror. But, last night’s show was a little different. This week is WUSC’s Fundraiser Week and the theme we’re going for is “dressing up”. By that, I mean, we’ve decided to “dress up” our shows and play things we normally wouldn’t, all in the name of Samhain. Occasionally on the show, I’ll delve into just creating a little bit of a creepy, instrumental soundscape as a slight break from my usual lineup of early Batcave, punk-influenced stuff, but it’s something I just kind of touch on and don’t spend too much time doing.

So, I decided to make that the theme of last night’s show. I’m mentioning it here because we’re counting down to THE BIG DAY, and this particular episode turned out SUPER SPOOKY, you guys. I’m not one to brag on myself, but I gotta say, I pulled out some serious shit with this one. It may literally be one of the best shows I’ve done in 14 years of being on the air. It’s 2 hours of spooky, atmospheric crossfade featuring dashes of spoken word and samples and I’m 13 kinds of proud of it.

Oh, and next week is THE 2014 DARK ENTRIES: GOTH RADIO HALLOWEEN SHOW! Much more on that later. Until then, enjoy…

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE!

Dark Entries: Goth Radio airs Saturday nights 8-10 PM (eastern) on WUSC 90.5 FM in Columbia, SC with yours truly, DJ D.

I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by. I won’t let Halloween pass me by…

Seriously, the threat is real. It’s October the damn 20th as I write this, over ONE MONTH since the last time I made a post here. A lot’s happened since then, most notably, half of October coming and going already. Since the last post though, something MAJORLY COOL went down. I got to spend a weekend with a few of the coolest bloggers ever.

In the last post, Bill from Veggie Macabre hosted me for a weekend and we made a little promo for this site (actually, we shot a lot more than that and hopefully the rest of it will see the light of day down the line), but THIS time, we had a whole gang of misfits.

Review the World is a seriously solid site and Brian is a top notch dude. I’ve known him in an internet way (did that sound weird?) for a while now, and it was loads of fun to finally meet him in person. No one does food reviews better. Seriously, check his site out.

Joining us was also Ben from The Juggernaut’s Cave. A stand up, seriously funny guy and it was a blast to hang out with him.

So, here it is. The first of hopefully several things that resulted from that weekend. You can credit Review the World for this one. It’s also my return from blogging exile and will hopefully kickoff what will be a decent Halloween Countdown for this year. You know, for the 11 days we have left. Good lord, I’m terrible.

Hang in till the end for some outtakes that have ruined any chance I ever had to run for public office.

CHECK THESE GUYS OUT!

REVIEW THE WORLD

VEGGIE MACABRE

THE JUGGERNAUTS CAVE on TWITTER — @Juggernauts Cave

Even though this is a relatively new site, this ain’t my first rodeo when it comes to blogging. I have an old blog I don’t write anymore and maybe one day, for the few of you who are reading this and have never seen it, I’ll link to it. Today’s not that day.

But today is the day when I’d like to celebrate a fellow blogger, buddy, and major inspiration. A while back, I had the pleasure of hanging out with my buddy Bill of Veggie Macabre. I can say without any exaggeration at all that if I hadn’t discovered him and his site, I wouldn’t be doing this right now. The dude’s sound as a pound.

I can’t express how fun his site is. It’s got beer reviews, food reviews, horror reviews, trips to spooky locations, and if you’re lucky, the occasional bee outfit. He just kicked off his Halloween Spook Show Countdown and I am lucky to be part of it.

We got up to a lot of beer swilling,  video making,  horror movie watching, and spooky stuff shopping. He took me out to his favorite oddity shop, Chester’s Collectibles, where I picked up this great Michael Meyers bobble head. Bill gave me the Freddy one to add to the set. Now I can sit them on my desk and watch Freddy taunt Michael, while Michael just nods silently and dreams of the day he can shove dynamite down Freddy’s pants.

Just ONCE, I’d like to take a picture that doesn’t come out that blurry.

Bill was also kind enough to give Retro Ghouls and Shocks some SERIOUSLY cool promotion by way of this video. More of this to follow soon…but for now, watch me mumble through a video and yell like a goober.

The season is upon us, kids. The other day, while cutting grass in the searing, humid, Southeastern heat, I saw the beginnings of turned leaves. It’s getting darker earlier now and while we haven’t started getting the cooler weather here yet, all I need to know is that the stores are stocking a lot more orange and black than they did a couple of weeks ago.

So, it’s the perfect time to ease our way into hardcore Halloween countdown material. What better way than to start off with nearly everyone’s favorite gateway horror film, Ghostbusters. This year rings in its 30th anniversary and to celebrate, I SAW IT IN THE THEATERS LAST FRIDAY NIGHT. Yes, that’s right. It got re-released this weekend and it was more fun than Janine’s giant glasses.

While the film is known as one of the greatest comedies of the ’80’s (and one I can quote nearly every line of), a few things jumped out at me the other night as I was in the theater.

THERE IS SOME SERIOUSLY SCARY SHIT IN THIS THING, YOU GUYS.

I mean, a few little things, and I don’t meant the over abundance of Coke product placement. So, we’re going kick off the season of Samhain with my…

Let’s go ahead and get the big Twinkie out of the way. Everyone’s favorite: The Library Ghost! Ivan Reitman knew what he was doing putting her scene early on. Between Peter Venkman pulling a hot blond using $5.00 electric shocks and Ray Stanz’s sponge migrations, the kooky tone is set up very early on. This is not going to be a serious movie. And then, all hell breaks loose. We all remember it. I don’t have to describe it, but in case you’re one of the last people on Earth who for some reason, has never seen it, here’s the scene.

Listen, I’m 30 something years old and that shit gets me every single time.

It actually turns out the ghost has a really cool back story. I’m going to warn you though. Be careful clicking that link. The Ghostbusters Wiki will seriously suck you in. I was supposed to hit “Publish” on this thing last night, but after getting distracted there for an hour or so, I was ready for bed and that was that.

I’m putting this appropriately after the Library Ghost because it also ranks up there as being as unexpected as it was scary. Reitman did a a great job up to this point of sort of giving you a sense of dread when “Dickless” had the containment unit shut down, thus causing every ghost The Ghostbusters had caught so far to explode through the roof of the building. There was a real sense that stuff was going down.

However, people were oddly going about their day despite the fact that just up the street, a fire station’s roof exploded, resulting in smoke and screaming souls to shoot out. But, you know, New York.

It’s at about this point that Random Man on the Street decides to hail a cab…of the undead. Then, the camera pans over to reveal some shit that will turn you white!

You just don’t see that level of creepy makeup work in comedies. I was terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.

This is one you’re not likely to find on most lists. At this point, the guys have pissed off Gozer, having shot some futile photon beams at her, causing her to flip around and disappear. So, the building starts shaking and falling apart a little bit. Thanks to some seriously bitching design by Ivo Shandor, Dana Barrett’s apartment building has some really great and spooky detail. Dude straight up carved some giant dogs at the top presumably for the purpose of one day causing Sigourney Weaver to get all slutty. So, when Gozer starts to have her little temper tantrum, THIS thing fell from the top of the building.

I cant explain it, but as a kid, that right there really creeped me out. Shandor knew what he was doing.

This one actually has me more excited than anything else I’ve discussed so far. I’m a sucker for a scary voice. It’s something that just isn’t done that well in film anymore. Correction: It’s barely done at all. Of course, the most notable one is Mercedes McCambridge’s voice for Regan McNeil in The Exorcist. Another notable (and personal favorite of mine) is Doug Bradley’s Pinhead in Hellraiser, not to mention The Female Cenobite’s rasp. If you’re a Hellraiser or Clive Barker fan at all, you’ve got to check out The Hellbound Heart audiobook narrated by Barker himself. His take on what he imagines them to sound like is particularly interesting and is a bit of a departure from what you’re used to.

Back to business. Ghostbusters is one of the most quotable films of the ’80’s and whenever Gozer comes up in conversation, everyone likes to throw around the “Are you a god?” line. No, fuck that. As fun as that entire scene is, if you want to hear one of the creepiest examples of solid voice work, you’ve got to go to the “Choose the form of the destructor” scene.

Gozer herself was played by Yugoslavian actress Slavitza Jovan. But the VOICE…THAT VOICE was done by Paddi Edwards. I’d love to see some behind the scenes stuff to see what in the world was done to create that perfect blend of androgyny and Hell. As a kid, I used to stay at home watching this alone and walking around practicing my best, “The traveler has come!”

I uh…spent a lot of time alone as a child.

Hey, kids. Just wanted to do a quick check-in to let you guys know I am in fact hard at work on a few articles here. Apologies for things being a little quiet lately. The first one (the one that’s held me up a little) is a little arts and crafts project that, over the last week or so, has resulted in a great deal of curses and temper tantrums on my part. Do you remember the opening title sequence to the old Incredible Hulk television series? Remember when David Banner is trying to change his tire in the rain, fumbles the tire iron and hulks out for the first time? That’s about where I’ve been with this thing. You’ll know all about it in the next day or so once that post goes up.

I have a few others almost in the can as well, and those will be coming rapidly after that one. Just gotta get over that hurdle first. I hope you’re all having a good beginning to your weekend. Mine will be spent finishing up these things and doing another long awaited episode of…

Dark Entries: Goth Radio! I’ve been off for the summer, but I’m sort of returning for a 3 hour episode tomorrow night. Then, taking next weekend off while I’m on vacation out of town, then returning in full force on 8/23 for the beginning of the fall semester. Here’s all you need to know:

Saturday night 9PM-12AM — Listen streaming live at: WUSC 90.5 FM
Dark Entries on Facebook
Twitter: @DarkEntriesDJD
The New Dark Entries Podcast!

Can’t wait to share more with you guys this weekend. Keep it spooky.

If you had come to me in the summer of 1994 and asked me to rattle off a list of my favorite things in life, somewhere in the top of that list would be Tim Burton. My opinion of him has…ahem, fluxed in the years since, but back in the late 80’s-mid 90’s, he was my jam. While I’m tempted to turn this into a Batman gush-fest, I won’t. Trust me, there will plenty of posts in this blog that will go down that road. For now, I’d like to discuss this this thing:

The premier issue of EVERYONE NEEDS A HOBBY: THE TIM BURTON FANZINE WITH A SENSE OF HUMOR.

I’m going to be honest with you. I have three issues of this and I don’t have the first clue where I got any of them. Much of the ’90’s for me is a blur of high school angst, flannel, and Friends reruns. But somewhere in there, I found this fanzine. Believe me, the irony that I’m writing about a proper fanzine in a medium that pretty much killed the fanzine is not lost on me, but here we are.

Where I was when this thing came out was in high school in a small town, with a bedroom full of Cure CD’s, a Batman obsession, and hard-on for Lydia Deetz.

Let’s turn some pages. I’m not going to go into all of it, but I think we’ll hit some fun highlights. First off is a picture of the guy himself and a brief introduction.

Despite the long, stringy mess of blonde hair I had in high school, you guys have no idea how hard I tried to rock this look. It didn’t work out. I was a lot more Kurt Cobain than Robert Smith.

Further in, we’ve got the “News and Sightings” section, where we find out the latest in Burton news. It goes for 4 pages and has some interesting tidbits. There is one particular paragraph that goes into the fact that Batman Forever is now filming! And MICHAEL KEATON WON’T BE BATMAN. Whaaaaaaat?

But my favorite part was this:

Tim Burton adapting The Fall of the House of Usher? Now we’re talking. And by that, I mean ’90’s Burton, back when he was in his Ed Wood days. But now? Well, the idea of him adapting Dark Shadows sounded like a good idea too. Make no mistake, Batman is and always will be my favorite film of all time, but Old Boy has slipped into unforgivable territory in recent years (*coughaliceinwonderlandcough*). The sad thing is, I think he still has it in him. I just wish he’d get off the idea of adapting other artists’ work and create something new. That’s where he’s always been his strongest, Batman not withstanding. I do have high hopes for Big Eyes. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. As for the prospect of a Catwoman film…hey, we got this…

That was something, right?…. No. That was not something. What that was, was one of only two times in which I nearly got up and walked out of a theater before the movie was over. The second one, by the way, was Batman and Robin.

Which brings us to my favorite part of this issue. The Vincent Price Filmography!

This was an incredible resource for Teenage Horror Nerd Me back in the days when the internet was taking its first baby steps. You kids have no idea how easy you have it.

Lastly, I’m going to leave you with the title of a poem near the back of the zine:

“Body Piercings, Hairdye, Scars, and Speed”

Not kidding. That’s what it’s called. Oh come on. Like the Tim Burton zine that was published in the mid-90’s, geared toward mopey teenage goths, wasn’t going to have a damn poetry section.

UPDATE!

It seems a few folks were dying to read the literary tour de force that is “Body Piercings, Hairdye, Scars, and Speed”. Well, never let it be said that I don’t deliver.

Hey, folks. Just wanted to pop in and let you know that I shot some great content this weekend for the site and the first proper post will be coming very soon. It’s going to be a collaborative effort with another stellar site that some of you already know and love. I’m incredibly jazzed about what I have planned for all of us. I also wanted to give a big thanks to my buddy Ipsy for contributing the new banner up top as a “house warming” present.

Here’s a teaser image of topics to come (click to get a bigger look). Stay tuned…

Well, here we go. Your obligatory introduction post. Welcome to my new venture in horror love and discussion. I won’t stick to strictly the spooky stuff, but nearly everything covered here will have a dark bent of some kind or another.

If you’ve managed to find this, I’m not going to bore you with too many details…yet. My name is David (aka DJ D) and I host Dark Entries: Goth Radio on WUSC 90.5 FM. I love cold weather, Batman, and Hellraiser. I really love Hellraiser.

(Please excuse the bare-bones look of the place. This was a rush job, but I promise things will look a little fancier around here soon.)

See you on the dark side.