Episode 21 - The Halloween Special

It's been a while since the last episode posting. This should be the 21st while in reality we just did the 33rd last Friday. I guess I'll have to step up in March posting at least two eps at once. Don't worry, though: everything will be archived here sooner or later :)

The thing with the 21st episode, however, is that we never recorded it, and there's a good reason for it: it was a five-hour Halloween bonanza with tons of music and little to no talking on air. As a replacement, here we're offering the Danse Macabre Halloween compilation of the best received tracks of the night, all filled to the brim with screams of horror you can actually dance to, he-he... Enjoy!

>>> Click here, oh dear visitor, to download this pesky little compilation

Episode 20 - Dead, Wrapped in Plastic

We're going back to David Lynch's Twin Peaks, boys and girls, so let's rock!

Originally aired on October 23, 2009, ep. 20 is in many ways the most interesting show we've had so far, which is, of course, due to the richness of our subject matter. Just how do you go from the shot of a dead girl with bluish lips wrapped in plastic to an FBI agent stuck in a netherworld marked by heavy red curtains and highly bizarre forms of communication - while discussing donuts, coffee and Tibetan philosophy - is beyond me. The Twin Peaks project is by no means perfect but at its best it is so much more than entertainment or art: when it gets going, Twin Peaks becomes a living entity of its own.

The question of who killed Laura Palmer is, of course, secondary to all the characters that inhabit Twin Peaks with their outworldly quirkiness and surrealism. By the beginning of the second season of the show it becomes clear that the whole affair is more than a simple murder case, and whatever a Gordon Cole's "blue rose" case is supposed to be, it is this aspect of the mystery that we are drawn to. After all, how many shows can introduce a ghostly giant that delivers cryptic clues - while the main character of the show is bleeding profusely - and maintain their air of coolness?

Another important trait of Twin Peaks is that it is heavily layered. In addition to playing with the genre of a mystery show as well as most of the existing TV tropes at its time, not excluding a meta soap opera show, the series incorporates a long list of symbols from different literary, philosophical or religious backgrounds, and fits them in one brilliant puzzle. My favorite is the white horse that appears in the Palmers' living room not long before another murder takes place.

It is a common complaint that Twin Peaks doesn't have a real ending. In the last minute of the show we see the hero, FBI agent Dale Cooper, become possessed by the villanous spirit known as BOB, which means that a lot of evil is about to be unleashed upon the town of Twin Peaks (and beyond). The film never resolves this open ending of the show either, which is why it was hated so much upon its release in 1992, and was even booed at Cannes! The interesting thing is that the film does provide an ending or at least an explanation of the show and the fates of the key characters; it is just that it is not straightforward enough to shoot down all guessing but at the end of the day, do you think that David Lynch would want it any other way?

These and other discussions take a large chunk of our episode but it doesn't mean we've forgotten about the music. Angelo Badalamenti hijacks this episode either through his original score for the series and the film or through the music for Julee Cruise's haunting songs. We also have to mention Bohren & Der Club of Gore which have been carrying the Badalamenti legacy for the last 15 years, never missing a single tone.

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Episode 19 - Alfred Hitchcock Presents

If it looks like I've been delaying the upload of this episode for ages, it's because I have. I was nervous during the entire episode for fear of saying something wrong in the presence of my two prominent guests, Gjorgji Janevski and Baze Petrushev, and it shows. After all, it is difficult to say something new about Alfred Hitchcock, the man has been analyzed to death and back - Slavoj Zizek's ideas are particularly interesting here - but that doesn't mean one shouldn't try. In the end, my fears may have been for nothing: between the three of us in the studio we dug up enough interesting facts, trivia and ideas to fully justify the episode. We even added some brilliant Hitchcock monologues for good measure!

The first film we talked about is Psycho (1960), by far the most important - if not the best - of Hitchock's films. Piling up information on top of Bernard Hermann's stabbing score, we went through camera angles, alternate takes, questions of identities, Marion Crane's untimely death at the middle of the film, and of course, the Gus Van Sant remake from 1998, which is analyzed in depth in this essay here.

Then, there's The Birds (1963), Hitchock's only pure horror film for which Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek has quite a lot to say in the following clip.

Finally, we talked about Vertigo (1958), which in my humble opinion is the master's richest film by far, overflowing with Saul Bass's grand visuals (including the nightmare sequence captured below), Hitch's multilayered storytelling and the spirit of San Francisco. There is a very good reason why Terry Gilliam cited the film in his SF masterpiece 12 Monkeys (1995) along with Chris Marker's 28-minute photo story La Jetée (1962), building up from the connecting theme of identity loss and re-creation of time. Should you have an open evening before you, I suggest you watch all three films in chronological order for maximum impact.

Musically speaking, the episode features a heavy dose of Bernard Hermann's iconic soundtrack scores, a string of tracks by his follower, the shifty Barry Adamson, as well as a couple of rarities in Landscape's "Norman Bates" and the theme song to the bizarre Psychos in Love.

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Oh, and by the way, I still don't get it entirely: despite the fact he's made only two films that could be labeled as horror - the splatter-sub-genre-defining Psycho and the somewhat subversive The Birds - just why do people still insist on calling him "director of the macabre"? Are two films enough to seal one's status?

Episode 18 - The Dark Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents… some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age.”

H.P. Lovecraft in “The Call of Cthulhu”

Everyone knows Stephen King, everyone knows Edgar Allan Poe, but ask your friends and I bet you'll get the same answer from 9 out of 10: "No, I don't know H.P. Lovecraft. Should I?" Well, there is a strong enough reason why Danse Macabre kicks off its journey through the long list of literary and cinematic horror authors with the candle-carrying fellow pictured above and below. It just wouldn't be possible to continue with the show at this point without introducing the most influential horror writer of the 20th century - Mr. Howard Phillips Lovecraft out of Providence, Rhode Island, United States, born in 1890 and passed on in 1937.

If you're asking yourself whether you've seen any film based on his works, please don't. Although there are numerous films that carry the Lovecraft name, few of them can even begin to compare with the written word. Of course, there's the cult horror comedy known as Re-Animator (1985) based on the short story "Herbert West: Re-Animator" but it's the exception rather than the rule. Besides, the film never deals with the philosophy that festers at the roots of Lovecraft's work and makes this skinny fellow influential to this very day.

OK, so let's try to sum Lovecraft in a couple of paragraphs. As you'll notice, it takes bits and pieces from another author we have discussed i.e. Mary Shelley, and more importantly, every current author of the macabre worth his salt is indebted to some extent to Lovecraft (King and Barker, especially). Well, here it goes...

As deep as the human imagination might seem to us, humanity cannot really grasp concepts that go beyond its existence, beyond that which makes itself apparent. Science does give us new answers each day but it has its limitations. We are as small in the grand scheme of the World as a microbe is small in comparison to us, so how could we ever aspire to understand what lies on the other side of our current knowledge? How could we aspire to control it? To surpass it?

Lovecraft's heroes, stranded before alien civilizations and strange cults, are aware of the power hidden behind these great truths, yet they continue to challenge them in their search for a semblance of real knowledge. When faced with the truths of the Universe, though, these same characters go on to become clinically insane, as true knowledge becomes so horrifying to them that they feel it would be best to shun it. Ignorance would be bliss in face of the horrors they come to know, but still, they try to grasp them and never give up until it's too late.

Lovecraft’s cynicism towards science and human knowledge is pervasive, thus molding dark, brooding worlds where no light can be shed about its ancient, occult secrets, and where mankind faces indescribable horrors, powerless to defend itself against them. Just check out the Cthulhu mythos in all its glory.

This and more is the subject of the 18th episode of the show, originally aired on 2 October (we know we're late with the episodes but we promise, we'll get in step soon!). Musically speaking, it's time for some prog rock via King Crimson and Caravan as well as the perfectly suitable Isis and Nick Gisburne's reading of Lovecraft's early story "The Beast in the Cave".

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Episode 17: The Greatest Hits of the Marquis De Sade

This one was always going to be a tough show due to its inherent unpleasantness as well as its utter disregard for good taste. After all, while you may not agree with the derogatory term "torture porn" I am sure you can see where it comes from. What many fail to see, however, is that not only are these films simply the most recent trend in a long-lasting cultural tradition, they are also an apt comment of the times we're living in. The good horror film needs to hit a nerve i.e. a painful issue that people would rather sweep under the rug than face it in all its ugliness. Remember Abu Ghraib? Remember Joseph Fritzl? True events stemming from the heart of our so-called civilized society that for once we cannot mask - and which are the real subject of the often detested subgenre we're discussing here.

Of course, the "torture porn" flicks are pure exploitation and generally aim for our most basic fears and not our brains. There are exceptions, though: the first Saw film and Martyrs are far from mindless and the latter digs particularly deep with its game-changing finale. Let's go a bit further back: remember Misery - the book and the film? The torture there wasn't nearly as physical as it was psychological - but it was torture nonetheless, and at the time it had something to say about both our fascination with the imaginary world of the media and the facade of the peaceful God-fearing viewer behind which evil lurks.

None of the shtick about the shallowness or depth of these films matter, though, as they cut into the collective subconscious almost instinctively, recognizing the voyeur in each of us that we would never let out on the surface in different circumstances. People who are not simply passive observers but take part in the actions, on the other hand, receive public scorn based on moral (almost never ethical) principles particularly if they're caught (like that doomed libertarian Marquis De Sade). How these same moral principles allowed for the inqusition and public lynching is beyond me, but again, logic doesn't need to play into it. Torture is natural to human beings, and films about torture are just as natural - either as an aid to face the ugly truth or as a release valve - whatever you need, really.

This isn't to say you should watch these films - at the end of the day, most of them have week stories topped with bad finishing - but in case you do, don't disregard them just because you cannot stomach them. For instance, I couldn't stomach Visitor Q but I cannot deny that beneath all the filth lies an interesting commentary about the modern Japanese family unit.

Anyhoo, on with the show, which boasts many more conversation topics including readings of the classic Hansel & Gretel story and substantial info on the infamous marquis, along with some awesome music :)

>>> Download the show, good man!

>>> Stream the show, Scottie!

Episode 16: The Z Word

Ed: Are there any zombies out there?
Shaun: Don't say that!
Ed: What?
Shaun: That.
Ed: What?
Shaun: That. The 'Z' word. Don't say it.
Ed: Why not?
Shaun: Because it's ridiculous!
Ed: Alright...Are there any out there, though?
Shaun: Don't see any... Maybe it's not as bad as all that. Ohp! Nope, there they are.
— Shaun Of The Dead

The apocalypse has a face and its name is zombies. Whatever the cause, the result is always the same. The dead have risen in huge numbers to feed on the living. With each victim they claim, their numbers swell, and no force on Earth can contain them. As society collapses, it's up to the remaining humans to fight their way to safety or keep shooting until things blow over - but they rarely do.

As everyone knows, the word "zombie" has its roots in the Voudun beliefs of the Caribbean, referring to a body "revived" and enslaved by a sorcerer known as a bokor. The culture that created the zombies was born in forced labor, so the horror to these West-Africans wasn't getting eaten by a zombie, but becoming a zombie — a mindless, senseless, unfeeling slave for eternity. Even as the mass media of today focus on the repulsiveness of the living dead's feeding habits, this core concept of the zombie remains to be one of its most relevant aspects - especially in the George A. Romero films.

In fact, George Romero's Night Of The Living Dead is responsible for the wide-spread usage of the word in modern context as well as the layers upon layers of social criticism presently attached to it. As the 1968 cult film was accidentally entered into the public domain due to an error in the end credits, it quickly became the object of imitation and emulation by many other directors. Most zombie invasion stories nowadays follow the same conventions, even as some specific zombie tropes are inspired by the later works of John Russo, Night's co-writer.


The classic "Romero Rules" for zombies include:

• The effect is pandemic; anyone who dies arises moments later as a zombie, whatever the cause of death, unless they suffer damage to the brain.
  
• The bite of a zombie is infectious, and is always a fatal injury, even if it seems a trivial scratch. This results in the victim returning as a zombie, much to the horror of the zombie infectee.
  
• Zombies are slow-moving, lumbering, and stupid. Give them a door knob and they will be forever confused.
  
• It is generally the case that a single zombie is not a tremendous threat. The threat of zombies generally stems from the fact that they tend to turn up in mobs. This trope is largely symbolic in nature.
  
• Zombies can be killed only by destroying their brains, though rendering them immobile is usually taken to be just as good.
• Zombies are compelled to eat the flesh of the living.

The "Russo Rules" are similar, but include several specific differences:

• Zombiism is a virus. Zombiism results only from being bitten by another zombie, though event zero created the first zombie that starts off the chain reaction.
  
• A zombie bite results in zombification, though the transition is slow, with the victim becoming progressively more zombie-like. Zombies generally become stupider and less human over time.
  
• Zombies are stronger than humans, which is a bit strange given that there bodies are decomposing.
  
• Zombies are specifically compelled to eat the brains of living humans. Zombies still possessing the power of speech may begin talking rather obsessively about smelling brains, before their minds deteriorate and leave them saying only, "Brains..." They say "brains" because Russo zombies find being dead very painful, and eating brains is the only thing that eases that perpetual agony. Once they've sated themselves, they can apparently talk and think normally in the interval before the hunger returns.

Of course, zombie flicks have progressed since 1968 so nowadays they are both more dangerous and less attached to the basic zombie concepts and rules. 28 Days Later, for instance, replaces the living dead with abnormally aggressive humans. Regardless of the changes, the basic points of all zombie films are essentially the same: it is never about the zombies as much as it is about the humans trying to deal with the zombie apocalypse. Speaking of which, if you would like to get prepared for the eventual apocalyptic event, check out this zombie survival wiki.

Zombie apocalypse stories usually fall into one of two categories of political allegory. Some zombie films are really a political statement against capitalism and consumerism, with zombies representing the bulk of humanity as unthinking sheep (example: Romero's Dawn of the Dead). On the other hand, zombie horror advocates hardcore individualism and libertarianism, with added emphasis on the heroic "well-prepared" survivalist, and death to anyone who dares show compassion for others or cares about anything other than their own personal survival. Zombies also seem to fit the aliens-as-communists archetype, while the military is never anything but an obstacle at best, and often is directly responsible for the ensuing mayhem.


On to the show that aired on 18 September, and was largely about the music with fair amounts of Goblin and Zombi against firsts such as The Flaming Lips. Before you check out the playlist, remember to visit Television Tropes & Idioms, a grand website that inspired most of what's written here.

>>> Download playlist, Barb!

Episode 15: Faust vs. Pinhead

“. . . If he were beautiful
As he is hideous now, and yet did dare
To scowl upon his Maker, well from him
May all our misery flow. Ph, what a sight!”
Dante, Inferno

According to The Rolling Stones, we live in a period of history where the Devil is so inconspicuous he needs to introduce himself. After all, would you really notice if the Evil One was your neighbor or your math teacher or your beloved Prime Minister / President? I know I wouldn’t: they all look equally suspicious to me.

Bad jokes and religious beliefs aside, the concept of a being that embodies all human corruption and whose main goal is to destroy all goodness in the world is so deeply ingrained in our collective subconscious that we tend to take it for granted and ignore the subtleties and complex moral dilemmas it really stands for.


The belief in demons is as old as mankind. The Judeo-Christian Satan or Devil – the “popular” horned, tailed, winged fallen angel who rules over Hell – has his roots in antecedents such as Tryphon, Set, and other sinister deities of the ancient Egyptians, as well as the evil spirit Ahriman from the Persian dualistic system.

The concept of the Devil has also gone through several evolutionary phases by the way of Christian literature, including various writings and readings of the Bible. It took learned Christians quite a while to determine that it was the same Satan or Lucifer, Son of Morning, that lured Adam and Eve and tempted Christ. It took them longer – about 12 centuries, in fact – to agree that Satan was emperor of Hell and ruled an appropriate court hierarchy. Other parts of the myth would continue to be added even further down the road, mostly through poetry and visual arts – the pitchfork, for example, is a product of 19th century poster art.


Of course, my favorite visual depiction of the Devil and his Hell comes from Dante’s Inferno. What is more striking than a winged giant frozen waist-deep in a lake of ice, trapped at the Earth’s core, forever grinding the worst of human traitors such as Brutus, Cassius and Judas Iscariot? The French artist Gustave Dore made a brilliant rendering of this image in the 19th century, and I can bet that even as we speak there is an aspiring metal band that is trying to express it through music in some forlorn garage.

What makes the Devil so appealing and scary as an idea, however, is not so much his grotesqueness as much as his power to corrupt, which is why the story of Faust and all other versions thereof have always fascinated me.


The basic story of Faust goes something like this: Faustus, a scholar of Wittenberg desires more knowledge and power so he makes a pact with the Devil, whereby all his wishes are to be granted for 24 years in exchange for his soul. Faustus does gain knowledge and power but he spends most of his time frivolously, playing jokes on the Holy Roman Emperor and on the pope, and resurrecting Helen of Troy. In the end, he meets a hideous doom within earshot of other scholars, who, when they break into the room, find only bloody traces. Goethe greatly expands the plot, particularly by giving Faust the chance to redeem himself, but the basic idea of corruption remains at the heart of the story.

Interestingly, Johannes Faust was a real person. He performed tricks, gained a reputation for prophecy, and claimed that his powers came from the Devil, the best proof of which seems to be that he somehow escaped the stake. His claims of demonism were taken at face value, and, as soon as he was dead, fanciful publications called Faustbuchs began to appear relating to stories of his adventures, told in such a way as to incorporate stories formerly told about Roger Bacon and Pope Sylvester II.


Basically, all stories about the Devil worth their salt are variations on the Faust theme. Films such as Rosemary’s Baby and Angel Heart first come to mind for the obvious reasons but the theme could be stretched all the way to William Golding’s literary masterpiece Lord of the Flies where the pact and the subsequent corruption are implicit. The most intriguing Devil concept, however, is presented in Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: the idea that devils and angels, hell and heaven, are one and the same rings true on so many levels, it positively reeks of humanity.


On the other hand, stories where the Devil is merely an evil entity that openly confronts the main characters aren’t devil stories at all – I’d much rather view these as monster movies where the monster takes the shape of the Evil One. The Omen is an example of this: Damien could easily be some sort of super-vampire as he poses little to none moral questions on his way to destroy the world, or differently put, the film asks the viewer to be afraid of being killed, not of being tricked into becoming a monster. I’m still undecided on what The Exorcist is, but if you press me hard, I’d say it’s a vampire film, as well, since it’s just a thinly veiled allegory of sexual awakening.


Finally, let’s get back to The Rolling Stones and the Devil’s introduction. Ever since the renaissance, the Devil has been presented chiefly as a perfect human being, which, of course, makes it much easier for him to create pacts and buy out souls. You’d run from a red-skinned triple-horned monster but not from naked Angelina Jollie / Brad Pitt, would you? This is what, at the end of the day, makes the concept of the Devil so scary: corruption is not a threat that one can kill or banish like other monsters but rather a constant threat one has to learn to live with and fight off on regular basis, which is extremely hard once you take into account all those deeply corrupted people around you that flash their ill-gained money and power along with, you know, their golden crucifixes.

A word or two about the music in this episode: including The Rolling Stones would have been way too easy, don't you think? The Laibach version of "Sympathy for the Devil" included is much more fun and it certainly meshes better with the two versions of "Ave Satani" that follow. The hit of the night, however, goes to Buck Owens and his "Satan's Got to Get Along without Me". Enjoy!

>>> Download the episode, good man!

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...and that's not all! We've added a little bonus here: the trailer to the videogame Dante's Inferno, just so you know what gamer delights you might have been missing, he-he... 'Till next episode, then!

Episode 14: Tetsuo and the New Flesh

Hold your meals, ladies and gentlemen, for now we’re coming up with something fairly revolting…

Body horror, or venereal horror as David Cronenberg calls it now and then, is any form of horror based primarily on transfiguration and mutilation, be it explicit the way all gore movies are, or implicit like Rosemary’s Baby. Body horror involves everything from alien chestbursters to weresheep transformation sequences to vagina dentata, and that’s before we get to an entirely new level with Cronenberg's Videodrome.


The 1980s are a particularly rich decade for this type of horror as cyberpunk and industrial aesthetics dug deep into the language of popular culture, riding the media-fueled fears of what the 21st century was supposed to hold for the human body. Think not only of the obvious examples like Akira and Robocop but also of "cleaner" projects like Dune and Blade Runner (remember the eye plant?). That gore became such an important thing for the slasher genre after Friday the 13th wasn't going to help things, either.


Of course, body horror has always been present in storytelling as it really represents the visual component of aging and death – it reminds us that as much as we’d like to think of ourselves as spirits, we’re 100% organic and we tend to decay over time. Myths and legends make full use of chopped-off body parts and strangely mutated human beings to drive the point home; so are the tales of the Brothers Grimm and pretty much all European folklore. Last season we covered the Thing-Without-a-Name and the Werewolf - an important thing that needs mentioning is that body horror plays a huge part in why they are so effective. On one hand, it is way easier to detest an abomination than a perfect being; on the other hand, if you leave out this visual externalization of what is essentially internal struggle within the main characters, you might as well scratch the genre and watch a psychological drama (to significantly lesser impact). Just think of Tod Browning's Freaks.


As I’ve suggested on several occasions, if there is one true master of body horror, it would have to be David Cronenberg. The guy is a true auteur, making movies so dry they could snap at any given moment, much like the main characters they make room for; yet this unsettling vibe is always used as a force to push the overall themes forward and not just to provide visual spectacle. As others have noted, over the arc of his career, Cronenberg's films have followed a definite progression, moving from the breakdown of social order in his early films (e.g. Shivers, Rabid) to personal chaos (e.g. Scanners, Videodrome) to self-changing experiments (e.g. The Fly, to certain extent Dead Ringers). For this reason, it made perfect sense to pit him against William S. Burroughs for the production of the “unfilmable” Naked Lunch. At the end of the day, Cronenberg clearly has a thing or two for the human condition, or rather for its fragility - disease and disaster, according to him, are less problems to be overcome than agents of personal transformation (and if you want to read more about it, go here and here for interesting articles on the subject; also, you might want to check out the following clip).



Musically speaking, this episode ties 100% with the body horror theme, covering as much ground as possible between Tapeworm’s version of Skinny Puppy’s “Warlock” and Clinic’s “Distortions”, including a couple of turns by the ever-present Fantômas. Enjoy!

>>> Download the episode, good man!

>>> Stream the episode, Scottie!

Episode 13: It's Alive!

The last episode of our first season aired on July 17th, completing the run of what we'd like to think of as "the basic episodes", the ones dealing with the foundations of the horror genre, its core archetypes, characters and media. The monster we kept for the big finale is probably the biggest of them all, deeper and more interesting than any vampire of the month (yes, including Eric from True Blood), the one and only Thing-Without-A-Name a.k.a. Frankenstein. Just how this literary creation became such a phenomenon over the course of the last 200 years, what bastardization was necessary to make Mary Shelley's complex story digestible for the masses, and what a deity Boris Karloff really is, makes for a truly tough puzzle, one that we were more than happy to discuss during our lucky 13th show.

The Thing-Without-a-Name is the fourth archetype Stephen King analyzes in Danse Macabre, along with the werewolf, the vampire and the ghost. The Thing... is basically a story about humankind's self-destruction in the attempt to reach for knowledge or power that is beyond what it can handle, parallel in many ways to the contents of Pandora's box. The focus of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus is Victor Frankenstein, the scientist that aims to copy God (creating a human being from nothing, not from "left-over" body parts!), and the monster is the horror, the punishment that he has to bear for his actions.

In this sense, Shelley's Frankenstein has been called the first novel of the "mad scientist" sub-genre. Of course, popular culture has changed the naive, well-meaning Victor Frankenstein into a much more corrupt character just as it has changed the creature into a more sensational, dehumanized being than was originally portrayed. In the original story, the worst thing that Victor does is to neglect the creature out of fear. He does not intend to create a horror. The creature, on the other hand, begins as an innocent, loving being, and develops bitterness and hatred only after the world rejects him because of his appearance (the rejection is so extreme, the creature doesn't even have a name!). There are absolutely no "abnormal brains" involved anywhere in the process, trust me :)

Just as Victor highlights scientific knowledge as potentially evil and dangerously alluring - it is said that Mary Shelley considered the original Prometheus evil - so do all others representatives of this archetype, most notably H.P. Lovecraft (who we'll get to know better next season).

Again, almost all of this rich story about what it means to be human - not a "thing", not a god - has been lost in the book's translation to other media, be it theater, comic book or film. Some have at least attempted resemblance to the original, even as a parody, but the flood of movies that only nominally include Frankenstein is what most of us know and cherish. The best example of this, I think, is Ishiro Honda's Frankenstein Conquers the World, probably the last word in trash movies the world has ever needed!

So the first season of Danse Macabre is over, and what did we prepare for you musically to mark this occasion? Well, after several episodes of italo prog and industrial, it's time to get back to honest-to-God psychobilly! This means, lots of Dr. Frankenstein, Man or Astroman? and The Cramps dashed with quite a few references to good old Frankenstein. 'Till next season and the heap of surprises we are preparing, enjoy the show!

>>> Download the episode, good man!

>>> Stream the episode, Scottie!

Oh, and don't forget to eat your daily bowl of Frankenberry cereals!

Episode 12: Horror Software, Inc.

There's an army of zombies coming right at you, on your left you see a pack of werewolves, on your right a bunch of politicians, and you only have three bullets in the revolver. What do you do, man, what do you do?

The options:

1. You fight and die like a hero!
2. You run!
3. You take out your Republican party membership card and nobody dares to touch you!
   

On June 3rd, we had a show about scary video games with particular emphasis on the survival horror subgenre, which has made quite a splash since the appearance of the Alone in the Dark series. Most of the video games discussed (modern classics such as Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Dead Space, but also oldies like Doom and Redneck Rampage) are nightmare-inducing in ways that only the best horror films are, and one might even dare say that the games are actually better at throwing people in fits of terror because their monsters never attack famous actors - they attack YOU! Oh, the sweetness of running amok through the endless tunnels of hell, with a terrible monster right behind your back...

Well, this self-defense reflex that permeats horror games is also what is consistently lacking from the respective film adaptations. Some films make it through despite this obvious impediment - the Resident Evil film series is heaps of fun and the Silent Hill adaptation is extremely effective when it takes scenes straight from the games. Most video game adaptations, however, are outright disasters and most of the blame falls at the feet of one Uwe Boll, the man that seems to love being hated. Oh well, what can you do, life was never meant to be perfect.

The music for this episode hits hard with industrial landscapes and beats from artists such as Skinny Puppy, Nine Inch Nails, Throbbing Gristle and Rob Zombie. The ridicilous sounds of that internet meme from a few years back also pop up to remind you that All your base are belong to us! and that horror sometimes is linked purely to stupidity :)

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>>> Stream the episode!