Tag: Halloween

Spooky Tunes for a Swinging Halloween

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As of now, we’re all spooks all the time here at Cladrite Radio. We’re playing nothing but songs about murder and mayhem, ghosts and goblins, but the ghoulish fun ends soon, so listen while you can.

Speaking of Halloween on the radio, OTRCat.com, purveyors of old-time radio programs, are offering an assortment of spooky shows free of charge (they offer many more collections of shows that you can pay for, if you’re so inclined). The free shows run the gamut from adventure to mystery, horror—even comedy.

Here’s a sample program, an episode of Inner Sanctum starring none other than Boris Karloff.

Inner Sanctum: “Wailing Wall” (first aired November 6, 1945; 27 min, 7 sec.)

Make Mine Swinging—and Spooky

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As of now, we’re all spooks all the time here at Cladrite Radio. We’re playing nothing but songs about murder and mayhem, ghosts and goblins, but the ghoulish fun ends soon, so listen while you can.

Speaking of Halloween on the radio, OTRCat.com, purveyors of old-time radio programs, are offering an assortment of spooky shows free of charge (they offer many more collections of shows that you can pay for, if you’re so inclined). The free shows run the gamut from adventure to mystery, horror—even comedy.

Here’s a sample program, an episode of Inner Sanctum starring none other than Boris Karloff.

Inner Sanctum: “Wailing Wall” (first aired November 6, 1945; 27 min, 7 sec.)

The creepy ol’ days

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We’ve come across a few vintage Halloween photos over the years, and we’ve always found them compelling and not a little creepy.

But we’ve never seen a collection the likes of the one British musician Ossian Brown, formerly of the band Coil, has compiled. In his new book (new to the U.S., that is—it came out in England last year), Haunted Air, Brown shares images from Halloweens past that span the years 1875–1955, and you can take it from us (and Brown), Halloween ain’t what it used to be.

These images manage to both delight and chill. We can’t promise you won’t have nightmares after viewing them, but we expect you’ll find it difficult to stop looking.

No less an authority on strange and unsettling art than David Lynch wrote the book’s forward, which tells us all we need to know, really.

We looked for a slide show from the book that we could embed here for your enjoyment, but alas, we didn’t come up with one. Instead, we’re providing links to three different proprietary slideshows that should whet your appetite. We’ve already ordered our copy; we suspect many of you will follow suit. (If you are so inclined, just click the book’s title a couple of paragraphs back or look for the Amazon widget in the lefthand column; if you do, we’ll benefit a bit from your purchase, and as always, we appreciate your support.)

Thrills and chills, at no cost to you

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Halloween is upon us, a time when we’re reminded that sometimes less is more, that suggestion can sometimes be more effective than graphic representation.

Which is why we appreciate that the good folks over at OTRcat.com are again offering free streams and downloads of a handful of old-time radio programs, each with a Halloween theme. No graphic violence or gore for us, please. We prefer to shudder in our seat due to a sense of creeping dread rather than leap out of it in reaction to some shocking bit of cinematic violence.

Here are horror and mystery programs—Inner Sanctum, Quiet Please, and Suspense, among others—and even an episode of the popular comedy show The Great Gildersleeve.

And if you find listening to these few frightening offerings whets your appetite for more, now’s the time to take the leap, as the folks at OTRcat are offering their collections of scary programs at 20% off. We’re not certain just how long the savings will last, so hurry over.

We’ll share with you one of our favorites among the programs available at the site, an episode of The Whistler, a series that ran from 1942 until 1955 and was adapted into a movie series starring Richard Dix.

The Whistler: “Death Comes at Midnight” (October 18, 1942)

As we’ve said before, we have nothing whatsoever to do with OTRcat.com; we certainly don’t make a dime from promoting the site and its wares. We just like their product and the fact that they’re willing to occasionally give away some of what they’re selling. Anyone who introduces more people to old-time radio is okay in our book.

A box of creeping dread, at popular prices

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We’re not a shopping site, as regular readers know, but every now and then, we come across a bargain that we think the Cladrite Clan will appreciate knowing about, and on those occasions, we just have to share.

Today’s deal is especially apt for this time of year, as no filmmaker’s work better represents the spirit of Halloween than the pictures of producer Val Lewton.

Lewton worked with a number of directors and rarely had a big budget with which to work, but each of his pictures exhibits the understated eerieness that has made him one of the most acclaimed motion picture producers of the 1940s. These aren’t gory, shocking pictures, even by the standards of the day, but they get under your skin with their moody atmosphere and sense of creeping dread.

We’re confident that most of our readership is familiar with at least a few of Lewton’s efforts—Cat People (1942) and its sequel, The Curse of the Cat People (1944), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), and The 7th Victim (1943), for example.

The six-disc boxed set we’re recommending to you today, The Val Lewton Collection, includes those four titles, plus The Body Snatcher (1945), Isle of the Dead (1945), Bedlam (1946), The Leopard Man (1943), and The Ghost Ship (1943)—nine movies in all, every one a creepy view. Also included are a pair of documentaries, Shadows in the Dark: The Val Lewton Legacy (2005) and Martin Scorsese Presents: Val Lewton–The Man in the Shadows (2007).

Amazon offers this set for just under $49, and that’s not a bad price at all, at ten bucks under the list price. DeepDiscount.com sells it for about three dollars less, which is an even more tempting price.

But we’ve got a real steal for you on this great boxed set: You can buy it here for just $22.98, shipping included (you might have to pay tax, depending upon where you live, but it’s still a bargain).

If you’ve an old movie buff, this is a no-brainer. And if you’re curious about what frightened your parents or grandparents (or even, perhaps, your great-grandparents), here’s your chance to find out.

This set also makes a great gift (hey, like it or not, the holidays are just around the corner) for any movie buff on your list.

Don’t worry about picking one up for us, though—we already bought ours.