Halloween Music for Classic Horror Fans

Plenty of songs have been inspired by classic horror films. In fact, you can easily make a whole playlist of them to get you in the mood for the upcoming chills and thrills of the spectral season. Here are a few of my favorite songs that trace their origins back to classic horror movies.

"The Monster Mash" by Bobby "Boris" Pickett - Of course, it's the obvious choice for Halloween, with references to all of the old Universal monsters and creatures. Like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” you just can’t have a Halloween playlist without it.

"Bela Lugosi's Dead" by Bauhaus - Almost 10 minutes long, this Goth classic pays homage to horror star Bela Lugosi, best known as the iconic vampire in Dracula (1931).

"Pinhead" by The Ramones - Inspired by Tod Browning's Freaks (1932), this punk rock classic quotes some of the film's most famous lines, "We accept you...One of us." Also check out their song, "Pet Sematary," which is one of my personal favorites for this time of year. It’s spooky and mournful with just enough rocker edge.

"Batman, Wolfman, Frankenstein or Dracula" by The Diamonds - Like "The Monster Mash," this song from the 1950s refers to lots of well known monsters and creatures, but its humorous twist is more disturbing because the speaker in the song finds out that his girlfriend only feels romantic when they're watching horror movies!

"Boris Karloff" by The Barbarellatones - If Bauhaus can pay tribute to Bela, then Boris also needs some love. The band gets added points for having a name inspired by the cult classic, Barbarella (1968), starring Jane Fonda. Karloff made many great classic horror movies, among them Frankenstein (1931) and The Mummy (1932).

"I Was a Teenage Werewolf" by The Cramps - These punk rockers really loved old horror movies, including the 1957 film of the same name starring a very young Michael Landon. Plenty of later songs take their cue from either this film or The Cramps song about it, including several about Remus Lupin from the Harry Potter novels.

"Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon - This popular song was inspired by The Werewolf of London (1935), which set the tone for many werewolf movies to come.

"I Walked with a Zombie" by Roky Erickson and The Aliens - Horror maestro Val Lewton is best remembered today for the original Cat People (1942), but Roky Erickson and The Aliens give up some love for Lewton's take on Jane Eyre - with zombies! - in this song that shares the name of the 1943 film.

"Eyes Without a Face" by Billy Idol - 80s punk star Idol makes direct reference to the 1960 horror masterpiece by director Georges Franju; the backup singers during the chorus are actually saying the name of the film in its original French, Les Yeux Sans Visage.

"Nosferatu" by Blue Oyster Cult - Nobody can be surprised that the band best known for "Don't Fear the Reaper" liked classic horror films. Here, they take their inspiration from the 1922 silent film from F.W. Murnau. The song actually retells the story of the movie.

"Return of the Fly" by The Misfits - The Misfits loved classic horror a lot, and they recorded quite a few songs inspired by their favorite movies, including this one, which refers to the 1959 Vincent Price film. Try "Die, Die My Darling," inspired by Tallulah Bankhead's last film, or "Abominable Dr. Phibes," also a Vincent Price picture, for more of their horror tributes.

"The Creature from the Black Lagoon" by Dave Edmunds - Old school rocker Edmunds sings this tribute to the aquatic member of the classic monster gang; the title comes from the 1954 film.

"Peter Lorre" by Satan's Pilgrims - Don't let the band's name fool you. This is a surf rock tribute to the classic horror star and great character actor. The very idea of a surf rock song being named after Peter Lorre is wonderful. Catch Lorre himself in M (1931), Mad Love (1935), and Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), as well as in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Casablanca (1942).

"Ballad of Dwight Fry" by Alice Cooper - Even though Cooper leaves the last letter off of Dwight Frye's name, this song still merits attention for its celebration of the great horror actor, most remembered for his portrayal of Renfield in the 1931 version of Dracula. Frye also appeared in Frankenstein (1931) and The Vampire Bat (1933). Cooper's song adopts the perspective of a Renfield sort of character, and it’s a must-have for fans of either the actor or the Goth rock star.

Need more? Try Florence + The Machine’s “Howl,” which quotes The Wolf Man (1941), Ookla the Mok’s “Bride of Wolfman,” and vampire-inspired hits like Sting’s “Moon Over Bourbon Street” and Concrete Blonde’s “Bloodletting.” Also, let me know in the comments section about your favorite songs inspired by classic horror films!

Gothic Angels: The Dead, Good Girl in Robert Browning’s “Porphyria’s Lover” and Alice Cooper’s “Cold Ethyl”

With so many representations of the femme fatale in art, music and literature, a man might consider himself duly warned against the seductive charms of the destructive woman, but being forewarned is no assurance that a man will entirely escape the shame and suffering of betrayal from the one he loves. How does a man make sure that his girl will stay true? Sometimes the sweetest face can disguise a devil’s lying tongue, and the girl who seems loyal might actually be treacherous when the man is not around. In “Porphyria’s Lover” and “Cold Ethyl,” Robert Browning and Alice Cooper offer one solution to this problem that, although grotesque, is remarkably effective. Both the poem and the song feature men who can rest assured that their lovers will always be good girls because they are dead. While macabre in their approach to the problem of women’s fidelity, Browning’s poem and Cooper’s song demonstrate the lengths to which men are willing to go in order to avoid betrayal by a potential femme fatale and ensure the permanent loyalty and “love” of a gothic version of the domestic angel.

In “Porphyria’s Lover,” the lover of the title is frustrated by his relationship because of his inability to control the girl he loves. Porphyria is unwilling to commit, and she prefers to remain beyond the lover’s control and inside her own world of wealth and society. While not exactly a femme fatale on the same level as Keats’ belle dame sans merci, the lover sees Porphyria as a woman who is veering dangerously close to being more whore than virgin because her materialism and vanity take precedence over her emotional attachment to him. The lover summarizes this problem with Porphyria very succinctly; he describes her as

Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour, 

To set its struggling passion free    

From pride, and vainer ties dissever,    

And give herself to me for ever. (22-25)

Angels should care more for love than money, but Porphyria either cannot or will not fit the mold into which her lover wishes to cast her. The lover’s solution to this problem is to render Porphyria completely passive by strangling her with her own hair. Now she can no longer resist the angel role or the lover’s complete control over her; she will remain “perfectly pure and good” forever (37). The fact that she is dead does not cloud the lover’s joy at her newfound perfection; he insists that she is happier this way and that their macabre union has the de facto blessing of God since He “has not said a word” in condemnation of the lover’s actions (60). The lover ends the poem locked in a morbid embrace with his perfect, blonde, angel corpse; the reader, who can imagine the inevitable decay of Porphyria’s remains, recoils in horror, but the lover is satisfied because his conflict was with Porphyria’s will, and that troublesome part of her has been utterly erased by her death.

In the song, “Cold Ethyl,” Alice Cooper provides a logical continuation of Browning’s theme by depicting a man whose perfect girlfriend is also a corpse, although Cooper’s song takes the macabre situation to the next level by highlighting the sexual nature of the speaker’s relationship with the dead body. The speaker blatantly talks about having sex with the deceased woman:

One thing,
No lie,
Ethyl's frigid as an Eskimo pie.
She's cool in bed,
Well, she oughta be 'cuz Ethyl's dead! (Cooper)

The humorous undercurrent that characterizes Cooper’s most lurid songs is obvious in the pun about Ethyl being “frigid,” a term that describes both anything refrigerated or cold and a woman with no sexual passion. The speaker never tells us where he got this corpse, and we do not know if he, like Porphyria’s lover, is a murderer as well as a necrophiliac, but Cooper’s speaker is far more practical about his dead angel because he preserves her by keeping her in a refrigerator. Porphyria’s delusional lover never thinks much about the natural decay of corpses, but Cooper’s speaker clearly understands that his permanently perfect lover will only stay desirable if he keeps her on ice. Like Porphyria’s lover, however, Ethyl’s necrophiliac boyfriend sees a corpse woman as the perfect mate because she is completely passive and permanently available to him. The speaker brags that “everything is my way / Ethyl don’t have much to say.” Like Porphyria’s lover, he has total control in the relationship. The speaker ends the song with the following declaration:

If I live 'til ninety-seven
You'll still be waiting in refrigerator heaven
'cuz you're cool,
You're on ice,
Cold Ethyl,
You're my paradise.

The dead Ethyl makes an ideal lover because she is never going to leave the speaker or betray him by having wishes contrary to his own; her passivity and reliability make her the speaker’s “paradise,” a perfect angel woman who will never break the speaker’s heart. Like Porphyria’s lover, Cooper’s speaker has taken the idea of the angel woman to an extreme that seems horrific, if also grimly comical, to the audience, but he himself seems very well satisfied with the situation.

Both “Porphyria’s Lover” and “Cold Ethyl” rely upon a certain amount of shock value in their appeals to their audiences; necrophilia is a topic bound to give people the willies, either pleasurable or otherwise. Still, both the poem and the song explore the territory of the virgin/whore dichotomy in an interesting way because they show the extreme end of masculine desire to avoid the dominating power of the femme fatale and ensure the sexual and emotional fidelity of the adored angel. The men in both texts want so much control and power over the women in their lives that they find only corpses are passive enough to be satisfactory. Ironically, their frozen gothic angels are the only women who can live up to the expectations of these grotesque and greedy lovers.

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