Forbidden Planet... Sweet?

They are commonly called "Forbidden Planet Suite, Parts I and II". they are the bookends to the teaser/trailer that was released in theaters for the Sci-fi Classic, "Forbidden Planet".

What are they?

They aren't on the film's groundbreaking electronic score, by Louis & Bebe Barron. In fact, they don't appear in the movie!

What are they?

They certainly sound kinda 'spacey', kinda like a classic space-opera musical score. If you listen closely to the trailer, you can hear bits & pieces of the the Barron score mixed in.

"That's all very interesting, Harvey, but what are they?"

Well, I'll tell you! They are songs composed by Andre Previn, for other MGM films. 'Part I' is actually the main title music for 'Scene of the Crime', and Part II is the closing credits from 'Bad Day at Black Rock'

And GUESS WHAT? Both of these scores are available on ONE cd, which is available for sale at Amazon.

BUT... as I said above, if you listen closely, you can hear that a creative sound-man at MGM has mixed-in elements from the Barrons' score, along with Previn's tunes, for the trailer. I don't think these songs have ever been released in that form... as a noir-space 'mashup'.

Mashup? Did somebody say mashup? I feel needed again!

Submitted for your approval... my personal recreations, at 192 kbps:

Forbidden Planet Suite, Part I
Forbidden Planet Suite, Part II

Disclaimer: These songs are presented in a form which is unavailable for sale, and provided at a rather low bitrate. It is my intention & belief that offering these as "samples", with the included information & links, will encourage album sales, as I am not offering the full albums, nor the full quality of the songs, nor even a form in which the songs actually appear on the albums. If you like these two samples, please consider buying both scores from Amazon, or your local cd shop, please!

Now What?

I'll try to post a few more things here & there... but I am by & large out of any meaty, quality Halloween stuff I can share.

Sorry....

I kinda hopped into the countdown on a whim... Even so, I do think some of my posts will help enhance folks' Halloween experience this year.


This one, in particular.

I grew up in the 1970's.. so my ears are geared to the sound effects that ended up in movies, specials on tv, on the radio, and on loads of old Halloween records. There are certain sounds I immediately recognize & love, that put me immediately into a fun-lovin', retro Halloween mood.

Here are a bunch of them:

1. The "Barking Wolf" howl
2. "Castle Thunder"
3. Deep Ghost Moan
4. The 'Dinner With Drac' stalking monster intro
5. The 'Dragging Chain Limp' -a la Monster Mash or 'Sounds to Make You Shiver'
6. Ghostly Wailing Theremin(?)
7. Witch's Laugh -from the Winchell's Donut Halloween record
8. Monster Growls - a la Sounds To Make You Shiver
9. The 'Lady Wilhelm'
-- This is a female voice screaming that I hear all the time in ads...almost as often as the 'Wilhelm' scream-- thus, I believe they are inextricably linked: 'Husband & wife', if you will.
10. The 'Triple Threat' scream-- yet another scream that seems to be used a lot on that old Halloween Vinyl!
11. "Watch Out For Ghosts" - Winchell's scary donuts again...
12. "Whistling Wind"
13. The Wilhelm Scream.. one of the most famous, most used sound effects in modern movie history

Seriously... the Wilhelm Scream is used in loads of films. But I Digress....

Anyway, I love all these sound effects, and I hope they exist forever:

Click here for Essential Halloween Sound Effects.

Shiver, Shiver, Shiver....

"Sooooo.... You want to visit a haunted house, hmmmmmm?"

The Wonderful Wonderblog has posted Sounds To Make You Shiver, one of the best & most famous Halloween Records of all time, as today's entry in the Countdown. So, I thought I'd remind everyone of my old posts about this wonderful record:

Bloodcurdling Stereo
Time to Make You Shiver Some More

Just checked, and it looks like my old share of the Shiver Extras, a 'bonus' cd of sorts with some additional sound effects and variations on the tracks from the album, is still active on rapidshare...

Click To Download 'The Shiver Extras'


By the way, the font at the top of the album is sometimes known as Dracula, and it is available here at 'da font. com'

More Shock!!!!

Here's a little treat, to go hand-in-hand with yesterday's entry. Remember yesterday?

I do.. vaguely... Creed Tayor's "Shock"; is a kool album of swingin' cocktail jazz, mixed with spooky, suspenseful sound effects....
...But I know what yer thinkin'.. "Harvey, what if I'm not in the mood for a Halloween cocktail, and I prefer my spooky, suspenseful sound effects straight, no chaser?"

Can do!

Here's a zipful of isolated sound effects, carefully taken from the Shock tracks, for your various Halloween purposes... I love the old-fashioned sounds best.. these have all the great retro feel of an old-timey sound-effects record. Word of warning: I didn't really go out of my way to "clean up" a lot of the noise these inherited from the source-- so they are as they are, a bit noisy but no less lovable. Hope you likee!

Click for the Shock Isolated SFX

Shock!

The classic album 'Shock' by the Creed Taylor Orchestra- ohh, how I love this album! Only a true genius would ever come up with the idea of merging some swingin' 'space-age cocktail' music with eerie sound effects. There are actually several albums in this series, 'Panic: The Son Of Shock', and 'Nightmare' being the other two .... but 'Shock' is my favorite of them.

A bit of trivia.. I believe I once heard the track 'Haunted House' being used as intro music for a comedic segment starring the cult favorite hororr-host 'Zacherley'. In fact, here it is on Youtube. :




But as for the entry of the day...

I got this originally from a totally cool blog called 'Scar Stuff' -- which appears to be on sabbatical these days. The tracks are a 'rip' from an old vinyl record- so just sit back & enjoy the crisp ambience of the hiss & click, baby! But the version I've got is really quiet, for some reason. So I made a few edits, bumped up the volume a little, and I'm offering it today. Once again, I'm only in favor of sharity if the album in question is NOT available for sale... Shock is not currently in print. Darn shame, too... it's a lot of fun. It's one I'd happily buy as a new c.d., to hear it in high quality. That's what sharity should be about, really... not stealing established albums, but getting attention & popularity for old, forgotten stuff like this album... with the hope that maybe by sharity, we'll give these old guys some attention & make them popular enough to be offered for sale again. But I digress...

Click to Download Creed Taylor's 'Shock'

Spooky Sounds

Wow, after those 4 types of Halloween CD's... I got one here that seems to break the code!

Spooky Sounds

I bought this cd a year before I bought Cd Creepies... blister-packed, no cd jewel-case. It's about 11 years old. Also out of print, far as I can tell. Sadly, most of the sounds on this one are the same sounds as my entry for yesterday. However-- Spooky Sounds has one advantage over Cd Creepies, which makes it unique & different.

Track # 1 "Music To Scare You By" -- most of this music also appears on the CD Creepies cd.. BUT, in this case a clever producer has mixed the music together, along with sound effects, to give you a full 23 minutes of dramatic, cinematic effects!! And it's a pretty good edit, too! This track is just a little more unique than the typical 'tour thru the haunted house' ambience track.


This cd and yesterday's are like two sides of the same spooky coin.

Click here to download Spooky Sounds! @ 192 kbps

CD Creepies

Welcome to day 1 of the countdown, October first... my second entry. Whhoops... Is this day 2? It's October First! I'm so confused!

Whatever.

CD CREEPIES
There are actually 4 types of Halloween CD's:

1. Sound Effects
This type of cd could have 50 or more tracks, each track a single isolated sound-effect.

2. Spooky Music
These vary in quality... Most of the ones you see these days, are bad-quality re-recorded cover versions on a cheap synthesizer, of songs that were done much better on some other cd.

3. Halloween Atmosphere
These are the type that are usually one long track, or two, or else 6 or 7 tracks that are several minutes long-- a long sequence of sound effects that are linked together to create a specific mood. I.e there might be one track that is all swamp sounds, or outdoor sounds & digging to create a graveyard sequence. They tend to vary in quality-- the worst of them have about 10 minutes of a sequence, repeated 6 times in the same track.

4. Stories.
These fall into the heading of 'spoken word'; actual ghost stories, spoken aloud.. sometimes with music, other times not.

When you find a really, really good one at a bargain price, that's pretty cool... But hey, you gotta kiss a lot of frogs.


Here's one of my faves... just for utilitarian reasons, it's a useful one. 192 kbps.


Click to download: CD Creepies

This cd appears to be out of print-- it's at least 10 years old, too. It's a mixed-type cd: the first few tracks are instrumental 'creepy' music selections ('Sinister Street' is the best of them), then there are some pretty solid sound effects-- then it ends with a 'monster story'. Personally, I could do without the 'monster story'.

Time To 'Make You Shiver' Some More!

Yes-- to this day.. 'Sounds To Make You Shiver' is still my favorite Halloween record of all time.There are places online (thanks, Scarstuff :)) that you can grab the original album in all its glory-- Heck, on a prior post, I even provided a link to what may be a cd version for sale on Amazon. (I suspect it's a bootleg, though...)

But.. much as I love it, it does have its own weird quirks. Example: Welll... that constant loud wind through the Haunted House drives me a little nuts.

This was my plan when I created 'The Bride of Sounds To Make You Shiver' awhile back.. eliminate some of the quirkiness, give it my own style, add some of my own original music. However, that file never really lit my fire. Didn't seem to live up as a tribute, to something I've loved since childhood. I felt there was so much more potential to the nostalgia of the ol' Shiver....

So, this year I decided to punch it up a bit-- you know, fire up the ol' multitrack editor, turn on a little Les Baxter, pull out the audio from my favorite Halloween album of all time, and see what shook loose.

Submitted for your approval: The Shiver Extras -- (try to imagine them as dvd extras.)

1. Sounds (and music) to make you shiver
2. Sounds (in the stillness) to make you shiver
3. The dragging chain limp
4. Frankenstein breaks loose-- now with Frankie's 'dialogue'
5. Glass breaks
6. Additional Monster Sounds
7. Additional Screams


The attached files actually represents a lot more work than may be apparent. In order to mix in a musical soundtrack for the original 'Night In A Haunted House', I had to eliminate as much of that howling wind as I could. To do this, I had to hunt for every single solitary sound effect.. and that track is made up of LOTS more that just the effects on side 2 of the album... there are screams, monsters, chains--- heck, I think there's even a police siren mixed in there somewhere. (I didn't keep that one, sorry.) and I did my best to isolate them, and put them in the correct time-frame. (I included the isolated versions, too, in the zip. )

Of course, I didn't stick to that completely. I had to leave in a little of the wind here & about... In places such as the 'Don't turn around...' line, and the 'phantom piano' segment. BUT... also, about 9 minutes into the original track, the original creator must have just gotten tired of trying to fill up an entire side of a record-- so, he started repeating himself. Imagine my shock, when I noticed some of my favorite bits: the 'Don't turn around' line, the 'scat, you cats' line, the ghostly wail... even the Frankenstein breaking loose sequence--- all repeat themselves very quietly within the last 5 minutes.

No biggie.. I felt, if the original artist was gonna screw around a bit, why couldn't I? So I added a few things... just a few, to make this thing a little fun, give it my own spin... my usual 'Criswellian' nuttiness. Listen close for such homages. (Heh... I even hid the "Wilhelm Scream" somewhere in there, too!)

Hope you likee... The Shiver Extras

Ah, There You Are! And Just In Time, Too....

The Exotic Haunted Mansion. Just in time for 03/31/2007, the first ever Halloween In March. I have been so looking forward to completing & sharing this little kooky mashup.

But.. it's not as cool as I hoped it would be. Oh, the many, many setbacks & obstacles! I have an audio disc full of mp3's of music & effects from the Mansion... get this; My pc decided not to open it. Here I have the full narrative by Paul Frees the Ghost Host, with none of the background music, all set to be used for my mystic mashup... the Leota Seance, the Mellomen singing 'Grim Grinning ghosts' a capella... and I couldn't open it.

But I was stuck. I was so sure this would be the perfect Halloween-in-the-Spring cocktail, what with the Exotica & the Happy Haunts... I decided it was a solid enough idea, that even my own amateurish vocals couldn't kill it. So, I decided that I would take on the mantle of the 'Ghost Host' myself.

I think it turned out well. A few 'dodgy' portions, yeh.... that caretaker's dog is whining for a very different reason, when the Happy Haunts 'begin to vocalize'. Ouch...



As for copyright issues... All songs & effects are copyright their respective owners.., etc, etc... I also invoke the same defense as I used for the Pirates of the Exotic Carribean... this is technically a 'parody' of the Haunted Mansion ride, which gives me a little more breathing-room... Plus, since I did the vocals & most of the sound effects myself, there's really very little of Our Friend Walt's material actually being used. Also, I'm not using any of the the full exotica songs, either---- just low-quality, low-volume, edited versions of them that function more like 'samples' than anything else.... if you like this & want to hear more, I recommend you visit Disneyland, and purchase 'The Exotic Sounds of Martin Denny' 2-disk set, and also grab a Les Baxter reissue or two. Or three... just cuz they are cool, daddy-o.

Anyway... This was fun to make, and I hope it's as much fun to hear. Take a moment (or 10-plus minutes at 192 kbps in mp3 format) to enjoy The Exotic Haunted Mansion.


Oh, yes.... And here's the Voodoo Dreams/ Courtyard Bells mashup, too!

Listen for my quick homage to Criswell, and Ed Wood's 'Orgy Of The Dead'....