Ambrose Bierce
Beyond the Wall
A Holy Terror
The Spook House

Fredric Brown
- Come and Go Mad
- Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (<-- requires masterful score)
- It Didn't Happen

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Dr. Heidegger's Experiment

H.P. Lovecraft
The Music of Erich Zann (<-- requires masterful score)
The Rats in the Walls

Just my 2 cents. One question though... I seem to remember there being a recent direct-to-video horror movie called "The Talisman." Is it based on what you are talking about?

James
NP - Warriors of Virtue (*****)

Now, about "Rats in the Walls"... it is tough to assign someone to capture Lovecraft's imagination. I think the director best suited would be Dan O'Bannon. He wrote "Alien" and John Carpenter's "Dark Star," but I'm basing this off of a low-budget movie he did called The Resurrected which was an adaptation of Lovecraft's "The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward." Despite his miniscule budget, I think O'Bannon did the best screen version of any Lovecraft story I've seen. He would be the best to do "Rats in the Walls." As for composer, I'd give it to Richard Band. He worked with O'Bannon on The Resurrected, and the result was pretty eerie. Band can do great things with a full symphony orchestra... like I said before, Richard Band is the master of the horror score.

There are at least TWO scores to one of the earliest Paul Naschy werewolf pictures -- possibly it was even the first. One of them was available in a slightly better print; the other had the better score. I think the better print was in German, but the one with the better score, well I don't know from whence that derived. But it has this wonderfully nasty, grinding Morricone-like chant theme whenever Naschy transforms.

Title is variously VAMPIRE OF DR. DRACULA or MARK OF THE WOLFMAN. I haven't seen it in many years, but it's one of my favorite werewolf pictures. Only a tiny handful (pawful?) of them ever made properly, I think. Strange that one can point to any number of good-to-great vampire pictures, but there are WAY fewer in the werewolf category.

But the creepiest part is where he sleeps with his own daughter and it isn't incest!!! Extemely creepy!!

Also: Jaws (I consider it a horror film, anyway), Scream, and I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Oh, and Stan Winston's Pumpkinhead, music by Richard Stone. Varese was supposed to release the CD, but cnacelled it at the last minute. (Probably would've been 30 minutes long anyway! ARGH!)

I really had begun to wonder if I was the only person who even remembered - much less enjoyed - this fine little horror flick. I have a soft spot in my heart for low-budgeted films that actually deliver the goods. A strong score, good writing, and an effective sense of atmosphere (terrific cinematography!) make this a fave for me. I do hope that there is a DVD release - damn you, Rocco! Deleted scenes?! - and that it includes some "extras".

Anyone out there remember BAD DREAMS?

Went to the IMDb to see who ran the camera for PUMPKINHEAD -- I remember being amazed at the way it looked -- and hey presto, no one's LISTED! I'm not sure, but ... wasn't it Janusz Kaminski, who's become Spielberg's favorite from SCHINDLER'S LIST on? (If not him, I'm PRETTY sure it was one of the brief but voluminous influx of Eastern Europeans -- Jerzy Zielinski, Alexander Gruszynski, one of those inskis.)

I'll roll by the video store and look at the box. (Maybe rent it again, what the hell. No, not today, I'll be gone all night.)

By the way: has anyone seen the two sequels? I've seen Pumpkinhead 2: Blood Wing - which looked like a really REALLY bad student film - but I can't find any info on the third film.

And has anyone ever read the poem Pumkinhead is based on? Is it called Vengeance: The Demon (the film's original title), or something else?

NP: Pumpkinhead - "Main Titles" (I'm letting the main titles play while I type. Hey - the farmer in the opening flashback scene, who's being chased by Pumpkinhead, is Dick Warlock, the stuntman who played Michael Myers in Halloween 2. See? You learn something new everday. Hard to believe Stone would go on to compose such comedic music for Animaniacs and such after listening to this, hu?)

Richard Stone going from PUMPKINHEAD to ANIMANIACS ... I think any composer with an ounce of talent has more range than we imagine, just as it is with actors. If anything, they're often DYING to break whatever mold they're in. Shirley Walker, for example, found herself in the odd (for a female composer) position of being considered a composer only of bombast; she was thrilled at the chance to work on ESCAPE FROM L.A., to show that she could do a whole other kind of thing (and did she ever, I love that album). As well, Christopher Young spent YEARS trapped in the horror ghetto, and was desperate to prove he could score action (HARD RAIN), drama (HAUNTED SUMMER), and comedy (his spectacular MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE).

In the same vein, John Williams took HOME ALONE mainly because he felt like doing a comedy (anyone else remember that Bruce Broughton's name was on the first posters, and that Jonathan Sheffer nearly replaced HIM before Williams came aboard? Neither composer wrote a note of score, to my knowledge -- it just turned out to be Williams. As Sheffer put it, "I learned I lost it to John Williams ... you can't exactly cry over that." Sheffer DID later score ENCINO MAN, but was replaced by J. Peter Robinson, then hot off WAYNE'S WORLD. Nowadays it seems that Sheffer mostly conducts, or stumps for Bill Clinton on Long Island. Elfman and Goldenthal often retain Sheffer as a conductor, and he's a good one.)