Michael Jackson - "Thriller"

This week, I was in charge of putting a Halloween playlist together for my son's Kindergarten Halloween party. And what was the obvious first choice? Thriller, of course!

It really has become the official song of Halloween. And honestly, I'm okay with that. It's a perfect melding of really catchy pop song, creepy fun and horror royalty. And honestly, every time I hear that breakdown before Vincent Price's epic monologue, I smile. It's so, so good.
I also went back and revisited the iconic 1983 video that was made for the song. Directed by John Landis, incredible special effects by none other than Rick Baker, and co-staring a former Playboy model in Ola Ray, Thriller took the music video and turned it on its ear. It was one of the first videos to turn the standard song-length video format into a full 15 minute feature. And the quality is still amazing by today's standards!

When this video was originally released in 1983, my aunt had an early VHS deck and she recorded the "The Making of Michael Jackson's Thriller" documentary. I can't tell you how many times we watched it! It was woven into the fabric of Halloween memories growing up and trick-or-treating as a kid.

My son, who is now 5, got his first taste of Thriller this week. He absolutely loves the song. I may wait another year before the creepy zombie video is shown, but the song has now been passed on to the the next generation of Halloween memories. And I couldn't be happier!!

Darkness falls across the land

The midnight hour is close at hand

Creatures crawl in search of blood

To terrorize y’all’s neighborhood

And whosoever shall be found

Without the soul for getting down

Must stand and face the hounds of hell

And rot inside a corpse’s shell

The foulest stench is in the air

The funk of forty thousand years

And grizzly ghouls from every tomb

Are closing in to seal your doom

And though you fight to stay alive

Your body starts to shiver

For no mere mortal can resist

The evil of the thriller...

"Chamber of Horrors" Cassette (1988 Version)

"Haaaaaapy Halloweeeeeeen!" Just stop. Stop it. Quit it! How many times are you going to say that!?!?

Time for another Freebie Friday, and this one is actually another absolute winner. But before we begin, let's take a step back in time...

When I first started doing a small, crude yard haunt in the early, early 2000s, I used a classic novelty cassette for my haunt soundtrack. It was just something that I had laying around. A throwback cassette that reminded me of my youth and the classic old Halloween soundtracks from when I used to go out trick-or-treating (late 70s through the late 80s, for anyone keeping score). It was a cassette that I had picked up somewhere during the early to mid-1990s. And that cassette was Chamber of Horrors.

Classic screams, moans, howls, thunder and synthesizer notes made for a perfectly spooky soundtrack to my little display. Fast forward ten years when, by chance, I rediscovered that cassette in an old tape deck, half buried in my garage. I was so excited when I had found it again! I immediately took it inside, ensured that it still played, and recorded it to mp3 format (little did I know that this cassette and the nostalgic feelings that it evoked would be the start of my Freebie Fridays segments!).

Upon researching my cassette, I quickly noticed something strange. Lots of photos and YouTube clips of a Chamber of Horrors cassette that looked and sounded NOTHING like mine. This fascination triggered my complete freefall down the rabbit hole of vintage novelty Halloween records and cassettes... 

Fast forward to 2017 and it looks like I have now gone full circle. I finally picked up a copy of that OTHER Chamber of Horrors cassette. The one that I had seen and heard everywhere all those years ago.

THIS Chamber of Horrors cassette is actually the original version, released in 1988 by Tony U.S.A. And while it's still available everywhere, I still wanted to add it to my ever-growing collection, and give it a quick review. 

This cassette is so odd. It seems like there were two separate tracks slapped together - a "Halloween sounds" track smashed over a random music track. I actually had to double-check that songs weren't playing from somewhere else on my system while I was recording it. The two really didn't fit together at all. And to top it all off, the segments just kept repeating and repeating and repeating. This is the only way the cassette made it to 23 minutes in length.

It starts off with the now-infamous, "Haaaaaaaapy Halloweeeeeeeen!" vocal clip immediately followed by a cheap instrumental version of Thriller. I'm guessing Michael Jackson had no knowledge of this?

But things get even stranger from there. Thunder claps, the standard generic witch cackle, a police siren and a few other overused "Halloween" sounds are interspersed with another six or seven "Haaaaaaaapy Halloweeeeeeen" clips. And then the music changes. It goes into some weird beatnik flute-and-trumpet jazz segment. It actually sounds like something lifted from the Manos: The Hands of Fate film soundtrack. Completely out of place in its surroundings.

And then the whole segment repeats. And then repeats again. And then again. And then again.

In fact, this cassette would probably be best served as background noise at a late night Halloween party. Definitely not usable in any sort of haunt setting.

But even with all that, I have to admit that I LOVE this cassette. That chilled out flute and trumpet audio is so cool, especially juxtaposed with monster roars, deep gurgling and howling clips placed over it. This is another classic example of a quickly and cheaply executed cassette release that flooded retail stores in the 80s and 90s and has now gone on to achieve cult-like status with collectors and enthusiasts like myself.

Like the second version of this cassette released some 2 or 3 years later, this Chamber of Horrors is a fun slice of novelty Halloween history that everyone needs to hear. And enjoy.

"Haaaaaaaaaapy Halloweeeeeeeeeeeen!"


DOWNLOAD "CHAMBER OF HORRORS (1988)" HERE!

   

Thriller. Sort Of.