The Moonlight Spotlight: Winifred Sanderson

Hello and welcome back to the Moonlight Spotlight, where we put little known fiends of fright-fests at center stage! Last time, we had a small appetizer, a creepy cartoon from deep inside Looney Tunes Laboratories. Today, we're hitting puberty, but we're not quite at the big leagues yet. And with puberty comes certain phases. This time, we're going through that witchy phase. There's just something that is unsettling about witches. It could be their evil cackle, obsession with the color black, or their tendency to turn harmless children into rats. Whatever the reason, they're terrifying to little kids. Especially when they're played by Bette Midler. Yes, dear fiends, we're looking at a wicked witch from the past, Winifred Sanderson of the Sanderson Sisters.

This was Bette Midler's reaction when she got the part.

Great Green Gobs Of... Oh, You Know

It may not be all that well-known in the current day and age, but when I was a kid, everybody knew the song that started with the immortal words "great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts" because it's, and I'm sure you'll agree, one of the best songs ever written. When a friend asked me the other day what the words were, I was surprised to discover that the lyrics I had grown up with were not the same that he remembered from his own childhood. Turns out, there's quite a few different versions of this thing.

The earliest recording can be traced back to 1959, from an album called The Sounds of Camp. This was added to the Smithsonian compilation A Fish That's a Song. No copyright or author credit is given on the Smithsonian release, and to this day, the song remains an anonymous piece. It does seem obvious that the work started as a kind of American folk song in summer camps, but this is speculation based on the information available. The disgusting tune was a hit anyway, and millions of kids began changing the lyrics to make it even more disgusting and entertaining.

The idea is simple enough: just combine body parts, dead animals, and other unsavory things and make it fit the beat. I first heard the song in a collection entitled Spooky Tunes! (which is the book I was trying to remember back in my very first post). Although the first line is always the same, each version adds different phrases to the chorus, and sometimes a different ending line as well. The version I'm familiar with is called "Spooky Stew" and features this first stanza:

Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts

Scabs, scratches bumps and cuts

Yuck it sounds disgusting but

Just throw them in your musty rusty crusty pot and

BOO! It's spooky stew

You can view several variations on the song's Wikipedia page. Yes, Great Green Gobs has a Wikipedia page. Gotta love the internet. It's a gross song, sure, but man does it give me fond memories of my junior high years. Next time someone asks you what you'd like for dinner, start belting this little ditty and see how they react.

Scary Flicks Scaring Kids

Little kids are always being underestimated, especially when it comes to horror. Quality movies for all ages that could legitimately be called horror films are more elusive than unicorns. Like I've said before, it's occasionally because simple-minded adults believe that children have enough fears and suffering to deal with, but in the case of movies, it's mostly because "all-ages horror" translates into "crap" 99% of the time. Are there any scary movies the whole family can enjoy? That's a rhetorical question, don't shout the answer at your screen.

Coffin Couches

Hey scary kids, no post tonight, but take a look at this:

Basically, there's a company taking coffins that cannot be used for their intended purpose and turning them into functional and fashionable furniture. They have over two dozen styles to choose from, and the couches can be customized to include unique fabrics and paint schemes. I want one of these so much it hurts, but making the order would hurt even more, as these beauties do NOT come cheap. Average sticker price is about $3500, and that doesn't include shipping. Maybe someday...

Regardless of whether you can afford a coffin couch or not, visit the site and peruse their gallery. It might give you some good decorating ideas.

Review: Hymns From the House Of Horror Volume II

By now, you should have downloaded the new Hymns From the House Of Horror, Rue Morgue's annual gift of completely free musical monstrosities. When something this awesome is priced this cheap, how can you go wrong?

In my opinion, this year's collection is stylistically and thematically different from the original in a few important ways. The first Hymns more or less honored its title with eerie pieces that echoed the vibe of a dark, cavernous haunted domicile. The album didn't have a story, but you could say that there was a setting. Listening to the songs, especially certain lyrics, made me think of a large house with a graveyard nearby. The music and artists were eclectic enough, but in terms of what images and ideas they brought with them, everything seemed pretty unified.

With the current effort, Rue Morgue clearly wanted something new to set it apart from the first compilation. There was the addition of fake (and hilarious) grindhouse trailers, obviously, but the songs selected were quite another thing as well. This time around, the producers of the disc seemed to be saying "Well, let's not try to tie it all together thematically. Let's just throw everything we've got at the listener!" Ironically, this ended up giving the second Hymns a stronger theme than the first. With the audio trailers and artists that included such heavyweights as Calabrese and GWAR, Rue Morgue succeeded in crafting the perfect audio complement to cinematic experiences like Grindhouse. A thousand clashing styles and ideas and monsters have been thrown out, drenched in blood, and packaged in 20 short tracks. For a midnight screening, it's the norm. For a music compilation stuffed to the eyeballs with excellent bands and bizarre movie trailers? It's the most fun you'll have with a CD all year.

Not every song is a winner. I personally would have left off "Birthday" by So Sick Social Club and Madchild. It doesn't fit the vibe of the rest of the album, and just isn't a very interesting or enjoyable song to me (is there really any good horror rap? I haven't heard any). Still, this is but a minor quibble. Rue Morgue and their Monster of Ceremonies Tomb Dragomir have bestowed another winner upon their followers, and I hope they continue this for many years to come.

Remember, you only have until July 31st to get it, and when it's gone, IT'S GONE!