Music to Make Horror Movies By – Keely Smith

Published April 8, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

Has there ever been a voice as elegantly smooth as the one that poured out of the divine Keely Smith? I think not.

In fact, Smith’s was the one instrument that broke up my continued playback of Nine Inch Nails, The Crow soundtrack, Nirvana and Liz Phair one summer. The months encapsulated by those early ’90s heat waves were dominated by those indie rock forces and the Capitol Records Spotlight On compilation of Smith’s greatest work. Indeed, I found her take on Fools Rush In to be simply grand. Even more so, her commanding performance of Sweet and Lovely was almost indescribably beautiful to me.

Nicely, in recent years, even the horror and creature community has discovered this irreplaceable songstress. Her tunes have been used in the reimagining of Stephen King’s The Stand and Marvel’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage.

All I can say is…better late than never…and let’s hear some more!

Fun Facts:

Smith co-starred with Robert Mitchum in Thunder Road, one of the first films to embrace an outlaw, rock ‘n roll spirit. Also after years of playing the professional straight man to Las Vegas dynamo Louis Prima, Smith defiantly took control of her career, determinedly performing her music in the style and vein that she appreciated and preferred for the remaining decades of her career.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Music to Make Horror Movies By: Kasey Chambers

Published February 16, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

Q: Name a song that was used in definitive synchronicity with a character in a modern horror movie.

A: Kasey Chambers’ Pretty Enough in The Loved Ones. It perfectly fit the demented mindscape of its female lead, Lola/Princess (Robin McLeavy)

Arriving on the scene towards the tail end of the Torture Porn era, Australia’s The Loved Ones (2009) is a visceral high school horror with one spectacular difference. The prolonged scenes of often animalistic violence were performed by, or done at the exquisite behest of, a teenage girl. Indeed, while some might cry hard earned tears or emotionally self-flagellate when their preferred beau rejects them, here Lola and her devoted father take a different tact – they kidnap the boys, gruesomely flaying away at them until they emerge into mindless monsters.

Nicely, director-writer Sean Byrne and McLeavy also give this femme-demon a sonic heart. Despite her majestic barbarism, Lola is also relatable – a person with true hurt in her heart and a vivid bouquet of beating insecurities. These sympathetic qualities are expressed best when she listens to her favorite song, Chambers’ Pretty Enough. Nicely, while a huge hit in Australia, Chamber’s masterful tune is merely familiar to American audiences – giving it an added reverence and soft poeticism here. It helps make the film a true experience for any viewer lucky enough to be sucked into its shimmeringly odd vortex.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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In Remembrance: Bill Hayes

Published February 11, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

Bill Hayes’ joy in performing was infectious. In fact, this legendary nonagenarian truly seemed happy with whatever bits and pieces that the powers-that-be at Days of our Lives, his creative home for over 5 decades, would give him to perform over the past 15 years. But Hayes, who died at the age of 98 this January, virtually (and literally) glowed with enthusiasm throughout the late fall of 2021. That was when his kind, long standing character Doug was possessed by the devil. Current head writer Ron Carlivati had long wanted to revisit long term heroine Marlena’s late ’90s encounter with the red horn trickster. Thus, when he was finally given the go ahead, he inventively involved one of Salem’s sweetest legacy characters. Hayes was obviously having a blast portraying Doug as he locked his wife Julie in a meat cooler and strategically flirted with townswomen half his age.

Nicely, he was prepped for this sinister undertaking due to his participation in another one of the show’s macabre plotlines – 2003’s Salem Stalker outing. There, Doug, along with other series’ notables like Maggie & Caroline, was “killed” off – supposedly by a brainwashed Marlena. In a grand twist, though, all were revealed to be alive and living in Melaswen (IE: New Salem).

Renowned for his musical proclivities as well as acting, Hayes was recognizable to the general public for his appearances on variety television (Your Show of Shows) and Broadway (Me and Juliet), while his recording of The Ballad of Davy Crockett spent 5 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1955. Most importantly, his decades long partnership with Susan Seaforth Hayes, his loving spouse and frequent co-star, will go down in history as one of the most endearing celebrity romances.

His was a life definitely well led.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Hopelessly Devoted to: Lynn Anderson

Published January 8, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

Ten years before Crystal Gayle was nearly killed by Another World‘s Sin Stalker, another country music legend perfected her own version of the final girl dance on an 1977 episode of celebrated detective show Starsky and Hutch. That offering’s terrified canary was multi hit making Lynn Anderson, in her one major acting role. But lest one discount the macabre charms of this vibrant blonde entertainer, Anderson’s connections to the genre are multi-fold. Her songs have been utilized in such fin-tastic genre projects as Jaws, 47 Meters Down: Uncaged and (the less amphibian) Zodiac. (If those aren’t scary enough for you, Anderson’s other major television credit that year was an appearance on the notoriously belittled The Brady Bunch Variety Show.)

Here, the Rose Garden singer is Sue Ann Grainger, an on-the-rise Honky-Tonk chanteuse. Luckily for Sue Ann, series regular Hutch (David Soul) is a big fan. As the creepy calls she’s been receiving for months turn deadly, the sun tossed officer and his partner Starsky immediately get in line to help save the day. In between confidently performing songs from Wrap Your Love All Around Your Man, her current LP, Anderson does an admirable job of acting out her character’s path from casually confident to completely frightened. With that latter emotion in full display, the best sequence occurs when Sue Ann’s tormentor (a raspy, shifty eyed Joshua Bryant) traps her in a recording studio, taunting her maniacally from the booth. Veteran television director George McCowan, who also helmed Frogs (with Ray Milland & Joan Van Ark) and the television terror Murder on Flight 502, does a skilled job with this scenario, using reflective surfaces and layered angles to cinematically capture his heroine’s traumatized actions.

Ultimately, like many a Laurie Strode wannabe, Sue Ann decides to take her fate into her own hands, confronting her attacker in an abandoned warehouse. Thankfully, with the help of the series’ titular duo, she lives to produce another backwoods love ballad or two. Anderson herself continued with her musical career throughout the decades, even earning a Grammy nomination in 2005 for a Bluegrass effort, before her untimely death of a heart attack in 2015. (Girl Group sound enthusiasts, meanwhile, are encouraged to check out her late ’60s recordings on Chart Records – an era that many vinyl connoisseurs determine to be her best.)

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

Music to Make Horror Movies By: Debora Iyall

Published November 27, 2023 by biggayhorrorfan

Creating an oft copied, iconic style of vocalizing, the singular Debora Iyall is the epitome of a New Wave queen. I remember Romeo Void’s Never, Say Never, one of the songs most famous for featuring her synonymous delivery, being played at a freshman orientation dance-off. It was my first week at college in a big city and somehow that oft heard tune made me feel both at home and like I was on the path to brand new adventures.

Of course, RV, the band that brought her into the public’s consciousness, is frequently featured on film soundtracks such as Dodgeball and The Wolf of Wall Street. But what many may not know is that Iyall, as a solo artist, has a cinematic pedigree of her very own. Her fun and perky number, Dizzy Tonite, is featured, pink bedroom style, in the low budget ’80s horror romp The Video Dead. That song is reminiscent of many of the songs on Strange Language, her debut solo album. The title song is one of my favorite tracks there.

Now living, happily, in New Mexico, this unforgettable artist is, thankfully, still creating music and conquering the world in her individualistic way. Hopefully, as she does so, she carries all the heartfelt blessings sent to her by the many quirky teens, much like my long ago self, whose lives she, unknowingly, changed for the better.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Jennifer Miro: An Appreciation

Published November 20, 2023 by biggayhorrorfan

On a daily basis, I can fall down endless media based rabbit holes. One article or show can send me on an all consuming spiral, but thankfully, the landing is usually sweet. Sometimes, it can even make me quite contemplative.

A cursory examination of The Video Dead, an ’80s horror cheese fest, this past Sunday led me to reappreciate the stunning Jennifer Miro, a pioneer artist in the LA punk scene, who appears, briefly yet magnificently, in that film. The porcelain skinned Miro was the frontwoman for the many incarnations of The Nuns, a goth-punk outfit with notable achievements and a large fan base, who never quite crossed over into the mainstream.

But Miro, who also doubled as a successful fetish model, probably never would have accepted the stereotypical molds that the major labels would have wanted her to exploit. She truly seemed at home in the world of indie exploitation, also appearing in projects like Nightmare in Blood, Dr. Caligari and Jungle Assault, and her live performances, particularly in her band’s final form, were reportedly highly sexualized affairs.

Even in her death, she navigated a different course. Battling liver and breast cancer for years, she kept her diagnosis a private thing and rejected traditional therapy methods. Relying on the assistance of a kind next door neighbor, Miro faded away, at the age of 54, in December 2011. According to her obituary notices, it would be a month or so before her former colleagues and friends were even aware that she was gone. Thus, those final years seemed to be an exercise in independence – a closing performance for an audience of one.

Hence, my mindful state. As a single gay man in my fifties, dying while walking a solitary path is one of my biggest fears. But, perhaps, Miro found a grace in distancing herself and dealing with her illness without the emotional distractions of others. There might even be a sort of purity in that…a grace there that I can latch onto as I navigate my remaining years, presumably alone.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Music to Make Horror Movies By: The Smiths

Published November 3, 2023 by biggayhorrorfan

Despite his reputation as the ultimate vegan curmudgeon, Morrissey must have developed a sense of fun somewhere along the line. This thought is most clearly laid out by the inclusion of Panic, a kinetic track from the dour troubadour’s classic The Smiths days, in the ecstatically rambunctious horror romp Demons 2.

Simon Boswell, the film’s composer and music coordinator, has recounted in interviews how his request to the illusive singer was framed around the film’s mild condemnation of media and consumerism. Still, as the project’s title so steadfastly reveals its true nature, one can certainly hope that this very British gentlemen is just as turned on by humor-stained gore as the rest of us.

Indeed, Boswell’s more gothic instincts gives the soundtrack, as a whole, a dark wave of jubilance. But none of the other cuts – including fun tracks by everyone from The Cult to Peter Murphy – quite give Sally’s birthday party, where the music here takes zombie-blooded root, the shot of adrenaline that is contained within this early take on social blandness from the one and only Master of Mope.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Music to Make Horror Movies By: Lola Albright

Published August 24, 2023 by biggayhorrorfan

“Now, remember. I don’t want you to touch anything that you don’t recognize.” – Lola Albright, Ms. Barrett, The Monolith Monsters

Thankfully for the male persuasion, the smooth, eternally cool Lola Albright definitely didn’t need to heed her own warning. The first cut from her debut album, Lola Wants You, certainly confirmed that she was worldly wise and definitely familiar with the opposite sex:

Often singing a sultry tune on the jazzy private eye show Peter Gunn, Albright also played into the lives of monster-kids everywhere. Her sympathetic school teacher in Universal’s (above mentioned) Atomic Age horror The Monolith Monsters made her a highlight for Scary Monsters readers everywhere. Nicely, Albright, who died at the age of 92 in 2017, also indulged in some mature suspense movement on several episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and a long lost 1975 television film called The Nurse Killer.

Gay Magic: Colorfully, Lola began her career as a featured actress at MGM. Her credits include smaller roles in two Judy Garland films – The Pirate and Easter Parade.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Music to Make Horror Movies By: Mary Martin

Published July 19, 2023 by biggayhorrorfan

Often coming off as the epitome of refinement, regal Broadway enchantress Mary Martin actually erred toward the darkly mischievous as a creative type on occasion. For instance, she was the first to give voice to the saucy, sexually adventurous My Heart Belongs to Daddy in Cole Porter’s 1938 musical Leave it to Me! Her take on To Keep My Love Alive, Morgan le Fay’s smart confession of romantic murder making from Rodgers & Hart’s A Connecticut Yankee, is also loads of devilish, eye winking fun.

On a lavender note, the witty lyrics comprising le Fay’s arch confessions are written by the truly unforgettable Lorenz Hart. Tortured by what he thought was his unfailing unattractiveness, the homosexual Hart drank himself to death by the early age of 48. Thankfully, loads of his insanely creative songs live on to this day.

Martin, meanwhile, had her own sewing circle stories. She was long rumored to have carried on a decades-long affair with Academy Award winning actress Janet Gaynor. Reports from contemporaries, emerging after her death in 1990 at the age of 76, confirm this secret – allowing for a portrait of a performer who truly knew her way around complex dualities. Thus, we believe both her María, The Sound of Music’s heroic novice, and her much darker, horror movie ready le Fay.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Music to Make Horror Movies By: Vivien Leigh

Published June 11, 2023 by biggayhorrorfan

Her brilliant, deluded Blanche Dubois set the gothic precursor for scores of questionably sane ladies in horror. Indeed, the strains of Vivien Leigh’s expert creation can be felt in everything from quieter projects like Let’s Scare Jessica to Death to the more bombastic strains of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Of course, as an extreme go-getter and all around connoisseur of women on the fringe, Leigh returned to this grim psychological territory with (the latter day) Tennessee Williams’ piece The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone. Here, her essaying of the title character concluded with the enacting of a love starved death wish, an even more extreme journey than the one the playwright eventually sent DuBois on.

Unsurprisingly, as a woman of many talents, Leigh performed some of her most acclaimed work on the theatrical stages – even winning a Tony for her work in the 1963 musical Tovarich.

With footwork as skilled as her sense of dramatics, it’s no wonder the world mourned her tragic death at the age of 53 from tuberculosis.

Until the next time, SWEET love & pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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