Welcome to day 2 of our October celebration, and welcome to the first Freebie Friday, where I rummage through and share my ever-expanding collection of novelty Halloween records, tapes and CDs!
This segment has become my absolute favorite. There's just something so fun and nostalgic about listening to the old gems (and the stinkers!) that populated store shelves each Halloween. So let's dive in!!
"Why didn't you wear a mask? Oh, excuse me. I guess you did..."
Hallmark Greeting Cards released a series of "spooky sounds" cassettes in the late 80s, including "Howl-o-ween Sounds" in 1987 (their third of four cassette releases). I had seen their other releases, but happened upon this one at just the right price - cheap!
The cool linocut wolf howling at the witch on the cover just drew me in! Very dark and ominous for a happy greeting card company.
The cassette contains a standard, somewhat random collection of "spooky" sounds, but nothing too frightening. Organ, chains, wolf howls, cats, creaks, laughs, heartbeats, bubbling lab, thunderstorms and wind, a few shrieks and echoed screams. Nothing out of the ordinary.
The one big thing of note on this one is the inclusion of silly vocal cuts (including the three quotes above). They are way too prominent here, and distract from the overall fun of this release. Each voice actor seems to try way too hard to deliver their lines.
And that leads to my other issue, repetition. The content is repeated on both sides, but everything also repeats 2 or 3 times on each side. So instead of "45 minutes" like it says on the cover, you only really get about 10 to 15 minutes of unique sounds.
But even with those issues, this one is still fun to listen to at least once. It has enough cheesy nostalgia to it to add to your collection. Enjoy!!
DOWNLOAD "HALLMARK HOWL-O-WEEN SOUNDS" HERE.
3 comments:
I think I remember these. GREAT image by the way.
These tapes were everywhere in the late 80s and throughout the 90s. I had a few that had Halloween noises on one side and then a couple scary stories told on the other. Those were my favorites.
Miss stores putting out stuff like this every year!
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