New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

I have a funky relationship with Halloween.

You see, I love the holiday for the horror movies it inspires, and for the fodder it gives me in which to write about. What I don’t love, then, is the actual holiday. I can’t tell you the last time I seriously thought about what I wanted to be, or do, for Halloween.

As can be imagined, this was problematic in my college years. The year I suited up as a slutty pirate, for instance, was me without a shirt, brandishing a sword, and a nametag on my left tit stating: “Hello, my name is Slutty Pirate.” I, or maybe a friend, devised it in minutes.

It seems the twenty and thirtysomethings of this fine country have claimed the holiday for themselves, and use the actual day (October 31st) and its surrounding company as one giant excuse to dress up as misbehaved honeybees and the like and get down one motherlovin’ booze fest at a time.

Now, despite my reluctance for showing up at a party dressed as Jason Sudeikis’ backup dancer character on SNL’s “What Up With That?” in lieu of just, well, showing up, there’s something about the holiday that I so enjoy writing about. It goes without saying that this might be largely due to my on-again, off-again fascination with horror movies. Sometimes I go on movies-long binges that just aren’t satisfied until I’ve seen at least a handful stretched out over a few days.

Well, around this time last year on Make an Argument, I coated the column in the spirit of Halloween spook with a look at recent Hollywood remakes of classic horror movies, from Friday the 13th to Halloween. It was a discussion of my likes and dislikes between them, and which, I thought, turned out best.

Spinning this into an annual thing, this year I want to dig into horror movie music. Or, better said, music that has yet to be utilized in the soundtrack of a horror movie - as far as I know - yet would, in my opinion, shine brightly in Hollywood’s next great slasher. I’ll even discuss the types of scenes I think they’d work well in.

“Tusk” by Fleetwood Mac

Truth be told, “Tusk” is the song that inspired the idea of this column. Listen to “Tusk” and you might let slip that the band behind it is indeed the same that produced guiltless, traditionally pop hits like “Don’t Stop” and “Say You Love Me.” Consider the track - and, from what I hear, the album its paired with - as Fleetwood’s grand experiment as an experimental.

When the song happens to pop on my iPod on one of my daily runs, I curse myself. I can’t help but a) get the chills and b) scan the natural world around me in hopes of not spotting a maniac speeding faster than I who’d settle for little more than to pierce open my stomach - and then, my insides - with a dull knife. I tell you, it’s mighty hard to run outside at night, with this song beaming in your ears, without peering over your shoulder a time or six.

“Tusk” is too chilling for its own good, and this from a band that hit pay dirt with “Monday Morning.”

I’d like to think that a scene in a horror movie would play out similarly to the one I endure every time I’m out running and “Tusk” happens to get cued up. Begin the flick with a runner, in the evening, sprinting his or her heart out amongst rolling hills and a starry night and then - wham! - the kid gets captured by something real ugly.

“Wolfgang's 5th Symphony” by Wolfgang Gartner

I came across this tune only recently, actually, and feel it’d work super well at a ravy house party gone wrong.

As its name suggests, the tune borrowers heavily from Wolfgang’s 5th Symphony we know and love sampled amongst a structured mix of gothic house. The radio edit, at least, seems to be split into two parts that more or less sound the same. I figure a horror flick could get away with playing either end, or the whole thing if its filmmakers were ambitious enough.

Mixing woodwind and brass with electronics I suppose doesn’t happen enough, and Wolfgang Gartner makes it work with a pleasant ease.

The idea I get in my head is one of bloody mayhem. Each recharge of the woodwind/strings beat is met with another body dropping to the floor. Soon enough, a floor full of hopping people is more like a space for dead soldiers. And then their assailant ducks out the backdoor.

“Happy” by Jenny Lewis

We’ll end things with the column’s simplest tune. It’s Jenny Lewis’ “Happy” - off her solo effort, Rabbit Fur Coat, with The Watson Twins.

Including it in a horror movie would play more as irony as anything. I mean, the song is a singer-songwriter on guitar crooning about rather being lonely and watching someone undress. And yet, taken in the context of a villain delicately playing out whatever his or her fetish may be, and damn, you’ve got a scene that might be beautifully disturbing.

With a tune like “Happy,” my mind goes to a villain that carefully preys on his victims with supreme delicacy. The kind of killer that favors quality over quantity, or enshrining the attributes of a dupe caught in a web over merely killing for ritual and chore.