Long before the internet allowed us to find in no time at all an ocean of Halloween-themed music and stories, Disney released this memorable oddity.
It's the kind of record that's been around for a while. Perhaps it was the power of Disney, a juggernaut even in 1964 when this album was first produced, that caused it to become so pervasive during the Halloween season. The version I had was the 1973 edition of it, so I was still in single digits, age-wise, when I first got it.
The evocative cover image set the mood: simple, but spooky. Listening to it recently for the first time in years, I'm struck by how odd and disjointed it is. The first side presents brief narrated vignettes that attempt to put a scary context around non-scary sounds. Look at this track list:
1.
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"The Haunted House"
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3:00
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2.
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"The Very Long Fuse"
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1:28
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3.
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"The Dogs"
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1:13
|
4.
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"Timber"
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1:45
|
5.
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"Your Pet Cat"
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0:49
|
6.
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"Shipwreck"
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1:39
|
7.
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"The Unsafe Bridge"
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1:21
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8.
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"Chinese Water Torture"
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2:02
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9.
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"The Birds"
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0:46
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10.
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"The Martian Monster"
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1:41
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It starts out strong, at least as strong as a Disney record of this vintage can be. "The Haunted House" is a tour-de-force, combining many of the sound effects found on the album - and some that aren't - into an effective, old-fashioned haunted house aural landscape. But the going gets rough from then on.
"The Very Long Fuse," "The Unsafe Bridge," and the anachronistic "Chinese Water Torture" tracks don't have much of an impact. It's damned tough to make dripping water sinister. "The Martian Monster" is a silly bit of fluff. I mean, it just is, even if the crunching and munching is grating.
There is some eeriness in "The Dogs," with a lonely, far-off hound baying in a presumably darkened landscape building into a huge pack in full pursuit by track's end. But for someone like me who has grown up around dogs, the dread just never really manifests. The most successful track of the first side, besides "The Haunted House," is "Your Pet Cat." Yes, the narration takes up two-thirds of it, but that screeching is nerve-wracking to me.
The second side is where this record really lights up, and I recall endless replays of it by my eight-year-old self.
| 1. | "Screams and Groans" | 0:57 |
| 2. | "Thunder, Lightning and Rain" | 2:01 |
| 3. | "Cat Fight" | 0:37 |
| 4. | "Dogs" | 0:48 |
| 5. | "A Collection Of Creaks" | 1:54 |
| 6. | "Fuses and Explosions" | 1:11 |
| 7. | "A Collection Of Crashes" | 0:45 |
| 8. | "Birds" | 0:33 |
| 9. | "Drips and Splashes" | 1:18 |
| 10. | "Things In Space" | 0:53 |
Devoid of any context, the narration of the first side absent here on the second, my mind would create its own horrific scenes. "Cat Fight" sounds brutal. "Thunder, Lightning, and Rain," regardless of its canned sound, evokes the storms of old movies. "Things In Space" is a nicely mysterious track of what I would have imagined a flying saucer or other alien craft would sound like...despite the fact "Things In Space" wouldn't, y'know, make any sounds.
But the track that is solid gold here, not just on this side but on the entire record, is "Screams and Groans." It's worth the price of admission alone. I don't know who these actors are, or were, but Holy Toledo do they go above and beyond to cut loose with some unsettling shrieks.
The second side is a nice collection of sound effects for...well, just for listening in a darkened room with friends, or even a budget-rate haunted house. Sure, you can find recordings that are technically better from a technological standpoint, but few have the vintage sheen of this one.
I love this post. I have no doubt this is what I would hear on Halloween night while trick-or-treating. It would always be playing at the houses that had "gone all out." These sounds and the presence of dry ice meant those guys were serious. But you didn't address the bonus material. I gotta ask, what were the spooky party hints?
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