Today, here in my chunk of the ever-burning Phoenix we experienced a massive torrential downpour that lasted around thirty minutes or so. Of course, it’s dry now, but we got a rather wicked display of nature’s homebrewed pyrotechnics - lightning! Thunder, too, and a nice purplish sky that city lights create. Quite an inspiring atmosphere for me and goes great with this week’s track which is Mad World by Gary
Jules.

PCGoddess, one of the newest members of our horror forum mentioned that she liked this song in the Dark Music thread. I didn’t think I’d heard it so I looked up the YouTube video (which I’m including at the end of this article). Come to find out I absolutely did know this song but I never knew the name or really what it was saying. Kind of like that song Tarzan Boy that they used in the old Listerine ads, if you remember those. A song that you get into but doesn’t always register strongly enough that I go out and look it up. I’m glad I did, though.

Turns out Gary Jules version is a cover of the original performed by Tears for Fears, the rockin’ English New Wave band that you’d have to be older than me to really know much about. Gary Jules is considered a folk/blues musician and he hails from California. The guy doesn’t just sing and play piano, he also wields the guitar, harmonica and the ever intimidating mandolin!

This particular version of Mad World was used for the cult classic Donnie Darko, a movie I’m still to lazy to go find and watch despite all the fervent praise I’ve heard from its fans. It’s been used in various American TV shows and also the XBox 360 video game, Gears of War. Over in the UK it managed to make the UK Christmas Number One single which goes to prove those gloomy Brits are scraping new lows for
inspirational holiday music. Sad.

I figure this is about all I need to yap about and right now you probably just want to hear the song/see the video. Well, before you go, in case you wanted to learn more about our ole pal Gary, you can visit his website and buy T-shirts and stuff or hear his music if you’re into that kind of thing.

That wraps us up for this week’s Terror Track and I’ll be back next week with something alot more violent and aggressive, I promise!
 

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Turns out, this is the theme song to the original Lost Boys movie, re-done by the band Aiden for Lost Boys: The Tribe. Yes, Lost Boys has a sequel I, a huge fan of the original, didn’t even know it! That’s because it’s a straight-to-video production but you know what? It still has Corey Feldman! Not Corey Haim, though, because he was apparently unable to remember his lines and act according to what I’ve read. Too bad, would’ve been great to see both of the Frog Brothers back at it again.

Since Red Hawk’s promising us a review of this sequel I won’t go into the whole thing here except to tell you that it’s supposed to share a great deal in common with the original. That first film featured Cry Little Sister by a performer named Gerard McMahon (now known as G Tom Mac due to the media’s inability to correctly pronounce his name during interviews) and his version sold some 7 million copies its release in 1987. Reportedly, that version blew director Joel Schumacher away and I know that it’s incredibly catchy, the kind of song that burns into your brain.

So can Aiden bring us a decent cover? And who the hell *is* Aiden? Other than the name itself being the number one boy name for babies born in 2006, I’d not heard of Aiden. Turns out they’re a post-punk band out of Seattle. When the formed back in 2003 they took their name from the little boy featured in The Ring movies (which you can find reviewed on our site by using the search function to your right) and have been through three record labels already: Unfun Records, Dead Teenager Records and Victory Records. Sounds like an upward progression to me, even if I do think Dead Teenager Records sounds like a catchier name. Aiden’s toured with acts like Lostprophets, The Used, 30 Seconds to Mars, Taking Back Sunday and HIM (His Infernal Majesty) so they’re nothing to sneeze at. Not only this, but they’ve got quite a fanbase in Kerrang! magazine, as well. Not only have they released three albums and two EPs, they’ve got songs in the following movies - Underworld: Evolution, Dead Silence and Resident Evil Extinction. You’ll also find their song Die Romantic featured on the video game NCAA MVP Baseball 2006.

With a resume like that, I expected a lot from the song heading in and I have to say the band delivered. It’s got enough similarities to the original that this version of Cry Little Sister certainly brings back memories, yet at the same time they added their own flare and brought a distinct sound to the table. In the end, I can recommend picking up this track and just may do a full review of an Aiden album in the near future. If you’d like to pick up this track, you can grab it right here: Aiden - Cry Little Sister.

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RE: Your Brains is a simple song about an officeworker, Tom, getting a message from his coworker, Bob, who just also happens to be one of the living dead.

"Things have been okay for me, except that I’m a zombie now. I really wish you’d let us in," croons the soon-to-be festering Bob as he tries to persuade his way into where Tom’s hiding out.

The whole song is sung from Bob’s perspective, complete with a rousing chorus of "All we wanna do is eat your brains," which goes well with the video I’ve included at the end of this article: scenes from such movies as Dawn of the Dead, Return of the Living Dead and a few others.

The singer, Jonathan Coulton, is from Brooklyn, New York, and is mostly known for his songs about geek culture (one song, Code Monkey, even became the theme song to G4’s "Code Monkeys" animated series). Between 2005 and 2006 he embarked on his Thing a Week project, where he recorded 52 pieces of music in a year, one a week. Some other songs he’s known for are Skullcrusher Mountain (looking at a mad scientist’s point of view of a kidnapping) and an excellent boy band style cover of Sir Mixalot’s Baby Got Back.

Well, that’s about all I have for this entry. Hope you enjoy the song. Remember, in the event of a zombie attack, keep those doors and windows locked, even if the zombies ask politely to come in. Until next time, this is Red Hawk signing out!

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Pictured: Your typical sea squid in the ocean, all slimey and pretty

[Editor's note: Yeah, I know what time it is but it's STILL Wednesday in Alaska!]

Isn’t July fun, Merry Readers? The warm, sunny weather and the endless days of vacation filled with magnificent barbecues and ever-flowing Kool Aid. Yes, that time of year when we invite our neighbors over to enjoy the pool or toss lawn darts while we secretly hope one lands on the bad neighbor’s roof. The very month that the glorious bastion of freedom we now know as America burst forth from the womb of Europe to declare itself independent of kingly rule. The month when a slippery, screaming Red Hawk (Happy birthday, dude!) squirted out into the world never knowing that he’d one day write for us here at Happy Horror. Also there are fireworks!

Yes, July offers us all the pleasures of summer that we can’t get from Newports or Marlboros alone. Since we were kids we’ve looked forward to the sunburns, the wasp infestations and the perennial torching of California which is unfailingly followed by Florida’s hurricane beatdowns. There’s no substitute for summer, really, especially if you’re a kid.

So this week, in celebration of the year’s hottest month I’d like to offer up what’s perhaps the hottest story I’ve ever offered here at the world headquarters of horror entertainment.

Relax and let me tell you a little story. Sit back, grab a cold one and pop the top because we’re about to go where no Hollywood flick has ever gone and when we get there, there ain’t no comin’ back because the tentacles of my imagination never let go and grow back EVEN IF YOU CUT THEM OFF WITH YOUR SOURPUSS ATTITUDES. I mean I’m gonna unroll a gripping story. Really.

Okay, so we got a summer camp. Let’s call it Camp Aspenbrook. For decades, the camp’s served as one of the hottest locales for upscale suburbanites to send their pubescent offspring. Kids whose lives are rich with opportunity, promise and the latest fashions. Kids who enjoy buying albums the day they come out and get digital cable in their rooms. Kids who get a car on their 18th birthday and have all their freakin’ college paid for them including books and money to party with even though they totally won’t even buy you a beer unless they think you’re cool enough and honestly, who’s cool enough? Right? Still with me?

All right, these high school Dawson’s Creek wanna-be’s get up to Camp Aspenbrook and start unpacking. Of course, the camp directors pride themselves on rustic accomodations meant to build character so they won’t have sattelite TV or any of that, but they’ve got internet access via their cellphones because they cut a deal with Verizon to install a tower about twenty minutes from the camp. And that’s good. We want that. We want them sending frantic cellphone pics and videos as things get interesting.

Of course, these are teens we’re talking about and you know teenagers - they want to get frisky and with a whole gaggle of good lookin’ guys and girls you know that they’ll be up to more than roasting weenies and getting sticky marshmellow goop all over them. These hormone-laced hotties sneak off repeatedly into the woods to score.

However, we got Ivan the caretaker. He’s a local in the small village that’s the only
civilization close to camp at all. He got hired because he understands the local wildlife. He arrived in town back after the fall of the glorious Soviet Union and back in dear sweet Russia he used to be a fisherman. A whaler, in fact. A salt of the sea who still bears the scars of his former career and has grey-hair-covered bulk of muscles to back it. Obviously his English is poor and deeply accented. He’s also generally in a terrible mood, hates the capitalist piglets he’s paid to deal with and drinks on the job as he’s done for decades.

Thing is, Ivan lives with a secret guilt. He never did want to whale but that’s what his daddy did and his daddy before him, etc. And killing whales pays good money. Not necessarily to the sailors themselves, but you get the pride of saying you kills Earths largest mammals. You also get exposed to squids. Giant squids. And if you’re tripping on acid at the time, you hear messages from those squids. Death threats and promises that, "I will stalk you until the end of your days, Ivan." Except in Russian so this part would be subtitled so you unilingual types could still understand the Message of the Squid.

Ivan knows it’s impossible for a squid to be anywhere near the Rocky Mountains. He moved there for a reason - to get away from any kind of squid. He’s secretly in fear that the message will one day come true because that was one nasty LSD trip and he still gets flashbacks. Especially if he drinks and ole Ivan drinks like the proverbial fish if you’ll pardon the cheap irony.

When he begins suffering from a series of awful nightmares, he knows things are going bad for him. When he begins noticing small tremors in the earth, he gets the hell out of camp as fast as his beat up Isuzu will take him.

The kids, though, they stay at the camp. They ignore the ground shakes and keep working to bang each other other. They do some white water rafting and sing a few awful campfire songs along the way, but mainly they’re each on a quest to dabble in the desires of the flesh. That means lots of boobies and that’s a critical component in a film like this.

Then one day, tentacles begin to appear and grab campers one by one at first. Gradually we work our way up to a spectacle to rival King Kong where the squid erups right in the middle of the main lodge and begins squeezing people so hard they pop like ripe grapes! Some he flings about and dashes to pieces. Then the National Guard’s called in but they can’t make it so the Marines arrive and a huge tank-flinging, Apache-slapping battle ensues.

As you can see, this movie will sink the Titanic’s level of popularity and outshine any other monster movie ever created. Tickets will clearly go for twice the price by scalpers milking the E-bay masses. You guys make it happen and the Oscars will follow!

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