All Hallows Month: Cue the Soundtrack

Posted on by The Mustache

When you are a hardcore horror fan, you are constantly inundated with horror offerings via various mediated sources. Cinema, books, comics, TV, and even music become the delivery systems to take you to your next emotional plateau. Even though the Mustache and the Beard have not been assisting our subscribers in reaching that plateau for a while, we continued to seek those for ourselves.

A few days ago, we renewed our license with WordPress in order to continue to provide those opportunities for the next two years. I have missed you, so instead of doing our customary Geektoberfest, I wanted to do only horror this month and the Beard agreed with me. He is still having trouble with his laptop, so for the most part you will get mostly me, until he can rectify his situation. We have some videos completed for you, so you will see him in those.

In the next 31 days, you will get 15 posts where I will write about what we usually write about: books, movies, TV shows, artists of various media including music, and comics. To wet your taste buds I wanted to remind you of some that iconic music.

The Halloween soundtrack is the first actual vinyl album I ever bought. My brother and I had spent a Saturday in the city (New York City) somewhere in the summer of 1982. We were two high schoolers spending money buying comics at Forbidden Planet, and books at Strand bookstore. We found this movie soundtrack store somewhere along Prince Street. We were there for quite a while hogging the headphones along the wall to listen before you buy. Awesome experience!

Also, it’s widely communicated that Carpenter had Halloween previewed without the music and it was panned as dumb and silly by those first audiences. So, he actually decided to use his synthesizer to add chords to make the scenes appear more intense. The rest is history.

My brother and I saw Jaws on TV, sanitized without swear words. We modeled the movie experience by darkening the room. The TV provided the only light source. We lived in the basement so our windows were blacked out anyway. We had made some Jiffy popcorn on our stove. We huddled under a quilt and watched the magic. The movie was so scary, I still don’t get in the water at the beach. (I live in Puerto Rico, five minutes walking distance from the beach.)

The weekend that The Lost Boys released, we watched that movie three times. My brother, Marc, my sister, Dee, and I watched it on Friday night. We watched it on Saturday night with the Beard, his brother, Jose, and his girlfriend then, now wife, Iraida. Then, on Sunday, with some buddies from the Bronx, boys and girls. I guess you could say we wanted to share that movie with our circle of friends. Jami Gertz was smoking hot, and Kiefer Sutherland was awesomely bad and the two Coreys were innocent and silly.

I think that The Exorcist was watched via a VHS rental. Again, we darkened the basement in order to duplicate the movie theatre experience. Then, we saw this riveting movie.

When you are a person of faith, I think you might receive the movie differently through the sub textual connotations of belief, soul possession, and the possibility of eternal damnation. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that at 16, I understood with any degree of clarity the depths of true faith or spiritual warfare, but I had a semblance of what was at stake here, and it scared the $#!+ out of me.

This is the one that started it all for me. I was 14. Mom was feeling generous. She handed me 20 bucks (our tickets were $3 each back, then). My little brother was 13 and I told him to be cool. Our ticket taker barely blinked. She didn’t care. However, this movie. OMG! The ending! It still creeps me out.

All of these horror movies were constructed with some really incredible scores that absolutely upped the level of the scares. Sure, they were, and horror movies continue to be a little top heavy with jump scares, but this genre continues to call to people like a pied piper, because we will never tire of this catharsis that arrives with terror.

Thanks for reading the post. Remember to like and if you are not a subscriber, please subscribe. This is Louie Matos, I am the Mustache. See you later! Take it easy! Peace!

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Published by The Mustache

My name is Louie Matos and I’m a geek. I’m such a geek that the week my best friend moved to Puerto Rico, I asked him to co-write a blog. Of course he said, “Yes!” because I’m SOOO flipping interesting, and because since we’ve known each other, we collaborate even when we don’t know we’re doing it. For the purposes of this blog, I’m the mustache. I’ve had a mustache since I was 12 years old, and I’ve never shaved it off. (We Puerto Ricans love our facial hair.) I was born into my geekdom. My Mom was a collector, and my Dad was a huge reader. So early on Dad would read to me and when he was done with the book, I would keep it until I learned to read for myself. And then I read everything, inhaling books from our school library 5 or 6 per week. When we moved to a new, safe neighborhood, I began to walk to the library, weekly. That’s when I became obsessed with books in general, and horror in particular. In Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, my brother, Marc, and I moved into the basement together. We had our own TV and because we were in the basement, Mom and Dad pretty much left us to our own devices if we let our little sister, Dee, tagalong. There in that basement we would watch creature features, chiller theatre, and horror marathons. We collected comic books, toys, and books. When we could afford our own VCR, we collected movies. So if I were to communicate my geekdom, I would say I’m a horror guy, former collector of Fangoria magazine. I still read 3 or 4 books per week (mostly horror and sci fi but practically anything.) I still read comics when I can get my hands on them (no small feat here in Puerto Rico). Dungeons and Dragons is still a must at family gatherings and we never fight about which is better (Star Wars or Star Trek). We can enjoy both. This blog will have all of that and a whole lot more. Stay tuned.