Halloween Countdown: October 27 - derivatives of the damned

The events leading up to the recent economic meltdown, as depicted in The Witching Hour #51 (February 1975):

It sounds like a sweet deal...until you realize that you've leveraged your immortal soul for far more than it is actually worth. When the spiritual commodities market crashes, it crashes hard, and no amount of intervention, government or divine, can stem the karmic tide.

(Satan, being the wily devil he is, was able to finagle a seven figure bonus for himself from the executive board just prior to the collapse -- and government takeover -- of the Beelzebub Brothers brokerage house.)

The Misfits - Horror Business (from the Horror Business EP; collected on The Misfits, 1986) - No Halloween Countdown would be complete without something from the Garden State's unparalled masters of horrorpunk, so here is the band's loving tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, Sid Vicious, and Nancy Spungen.

Patterson's People - Shake Hands with the Devil (from a 1966 single) - Here's a dandy little slice of 60's freakbeat that proudly wears its infernal raunchiness on its sleeve.

Halloween Countdown: October 18 - come on, sing out

Ladies and gentlemen, bats and ghouls, I give you...

...Josie McCoy, Prophet of Doom!
While it may seem unusual that a promising teenage pop star would turn her back on her music career in favor of issuing cryptic warnings about the End of Days, one needs to remember that Josie has shown a certain sensitivity to supernatural influences.

Perhaps it's her red hair. Or maybe because she once listened to South of Heaven and "kind of liked it." Or it could be that Mr. McCoy pledged his infant daughter's soul to the Horned One in exchange for a really sweet deal on a gas-powered leafblower. The true cause may never be known, but the fact remains that the perky frontwoman for the Pussycats walks in the shade-haunted borderlands between the natural and supernatural worlds, and even the most mundane activities, such as buying a piece of costume jewelry at a yard sale...

...can invite the attentions of the Dark Powers.

Fortunately for Josie, she is blessed with friends both pure of heart (Melody) and hep to the sinister snares of the occult (Valerie). Val determines (by making a check against her Lore skill) that Josie's necklace is actually the Falcon's Claw, a totem associated with the Falcon's Nest, one of the many places of unholy evil which surround the Greendale-Midvale-Riverdale metropolitan area.

The girls pile into Val's VW Beetle to check out the place, which has been abandoned since a "vigilante committee" drove the resident suburban death cultists out of town. While axe handles and baseball bats are suitable countermeasures against amateur hour Satanists, they are not quite as effective in dealing with unclean spirits.

The spectral inhabitants of the Falcon's Nest, suffering from abandonment issues and hungry for human company, rush in to greet their young visitors, though perhaps a little too rambunctiously for their guests' comfort...

Before the ectoplasmic shenanigans get too out of hand, however, Josie finally cops wise to the connection between the yard sale trinket and the ghostly manifestations (and they call Melody the "dumb one" of the group), and violently casts the pendant away.

In the process, she also casts the candle she was holding in the direction of the drapery, causing a catastrophic blaze which quickly consumes (or in terms that would please Cotton Mather, "purifies") the Falcon's Next in a matter of minutes.

The girls manage to escape the flames and the story concludes on a cheery, upbeat note...

...followed by an pointed warning about the dangers of buying things from yard sales, because "sometimes you get more than you bargain for." Sure, that second-hand salad shooter seems like a steal at three bucks, but is the convenience worth the cost to your immortal soul? The road to utter damnation is paved with incomplete skittle ball sets.

Think about it.

(from Josie & The Pussycats #68, April 1973)

Halloween Countdown: October 12 - the devil is not rocked

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the hottest musical act of 1973 --- SATAN & HIS 3 DEVILS!

Because "Satan and His 3 Skeletons" didn't sound quite as groovy...
Inspired by the classic sounds of rockabilly and the delicious taste of Underwood's potted meat product, SaH3D are the pioneers of the red-hot "diabolic rock" craze. They play to packed houses up and down the entire length of the Jersey Shore, and teenyboppers and music critics alike can't get enough of the band's unique mix of dime-store costumes, slap bass, and infernal evil.

As is the way with demonic pacts, however, a tragic reckoning is not long in coming -- in this case a dispute between talent and management. Frontman Ricky, tired of Mr. Holman's Colonel Parker-esque accounting practices, takes a long ride with the band's manager out to the moonlit countryside to discuss the matter....

"Apart from my ferocious appetites for hookers and blow, I mean."
...but Eustace "Mr. Sixty Percent" Holman turns out to be a tougher negotiator than anticipated, and evokes the dreaded "I will smear you into red paste under my Buick De Soto" clause on Ricky.

He saw the Reaper in the dashboard light.
With the situation between the disputing parties resolved, Holman zips back to the club, hoping that either Sammy Hagar or Gary Cherone have no prior obligations for the evening and can fit into a skintight devil costume. Imagine Holman's surprise when he discovers that Ricky is apparently alive and well and performing like a man posessed....

Honestly, between the heat, the smoke, and the noise, every club venue feels like Satan's domain to me.
Seriously, the kid is on fire this time out, and even Holman can feel it...

"Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"
Having rocked his murderer into the grave, Ricky tops off the set by vanishing into a cloud of sulfuric smoke and hellish laughter, while his befuddled bandmates are left to muddle on through the encore with an off-key instrumental rendition of "Free Bird." (The Horned One does not hold a monopoly on ultimate evil.)

The story ("The Devil Will Get You If You Don't Watch Out") from The Witching Hour #40 (March 1974) ends with a explanation from the sexy witch narrator that it wasn't really Ricky at the end, but actually one of the witch's relatives from "the Low Countries -- the very, very Low Countries." If I understood that right, what she is saying is that the instrument of unholy vengeance is actually a session musician from Luxembourg. Scary, indeed.

Friday Night Fights: The Devil Was a Lady

(from Vampire Tales #3, February 1974; by Gerry Conway & Esteban Maroto)
Unlike her dear old dad, Satana (a.k.a. "The Devil's Daughter") doesn't have a problem indulging in the occasional vulgar display of power.

Elvis Presley - (You're the) Devil in Disguise (from a 1963 single) - In the Name of our King Elvis Aaron Presley! It is he who commands you! It is he who carried you from the depths of Hell to the gates of Heaven with his powerful voice and some killer tempo changes!

(Beyond good and evil.)

the angels got together

I've tried on more than a couple occasions to make sense of the theology under which the Archie-verse operates, but have yet to reconcile the many troubling doctrinal contradictions at work in Greater Riverdale during the early 1970's. While Christian fundamentalist overtones were unmistakably (and vehemently) present, there were also strong occultist (if not outright diabolic) undercurrents in the mix, such as classroom discipline through Satanically-directed face melting (apparently face-melting was "in" that year) and the presence of an actual coven of witches within the city limits. While I would qualify that last example by stating that Sabrina did repudiate, more or less, the dark side of her sorcerous heritage, she did still dabble in forbidden arcanery very frequently.

(Come to think of it, Sabrina has a lot in common with Orion, the son of Darkseid, in that both have attempted to turn their backs on their unpleasant family legacies yet make use of their gifts of heritage when circumstances require it. I smell a fab slashfic idea!)

Over in Josie and The Pussycats, the writers tried to split the Manichean difference with stories engineered to cash in on the popcult explosion of interest in all things occult (engendered by the runaway success of The Exorcist, among other things) while retaining a state of proper Christian grace. The whole teen rock band concept was pushed aside for a time in favor of numerous supernatural-themed stories involving haunted houses, ancient curses, and other manifestations of spiritual evil.

"Vengeance from the Crypt" from Josie and The Pussycats #72 (October 1973), finds the 'Cats setting aside their ongoing feud with the scheming Alexandra as they accompany their frequent foil to the Cabot family crypt. While Alexandra pays her respects to her recently departed grandfather, Josie wanders down to the crypt's lower level, where she accidentally huffs a lungful of uncut Stygian black smoke:

The hit of damnation dust causes Josie to behave in strange and terrible ways.

First she tries to set the Cabots' drapes on fire...

...and then she begins trashing the furniture.

And while those actions in and of themselves might not suggest demonic possession over the more mundane explanation that Josie is simply discovering her inner Keith Moon, her vicious attack on the vision of loveliness that is Melody...

...pushes her beyond the limits of acceptable behavior, rock star or not.

Alex, Alexandra's twin brother and the Pussycats' manager, attempts to subdue Josie, who has moved on to the profanity-shrieking stage of possession:

During the struggle, Josie reaches for something suitable to bash Alex's head in with, but accidentally grabs a conveniently-placed Bible instead. With "a scream from the very bowels of Hell," an agonized Josie throws the Good Book away from her person. This gives the rest of the crew an idea, which results in one of the greatest panels in comics history...

PRAISE JESUS!
The full bikini exorcism is a success, and the unclean spirit is cast out of Josie...

...though the implied place of its exit is better left unsaid, methinks. "Bowels of Hell," indeed. (I have exorcised many diabolic fast food meals from my body in a similar manner.)

The arrival of the elder Mr. Cabot sheds some light on the source of the demonic incursion. A spinster aunt of the Cabots had cursed the family on her deathbed, and had somehow mobilized the legions of Hell to intercede on her behalf, with the gruntwork subcontracted through an unwitting Josie. (It may sound like an efficient arrangement, but just try and get the Hadean comptroller's office to sign off on a work-for-hire pay voucher.)

Armed with this new knowledge, the gang decides to put an end to the curse, but not before indulging in some pre-game hosannas...

I'd just like to point out that Alexandra herself is a practitioner of the dark arts who has used her witchity powers to vex the Pussycats on several previous occasions.

She must be a Unitarian.

Down inside the crypt, the kids are all set to unleash some Deuteronomic whoop-ass on the wayward aunt's earthly remains...

...only to discover that the Big G has beaten them to the punch. I suppose incinerating a old casket is easier than, I don't know, solving world hunger or some other work with wider beneficial consequences, but I'd have thought an omnipotent and omniscient Being would set the bar higher for Himself or Herself.

So what have we learned today?

1. You may think you're being with it and groovy, but snorting ectoplasm can have dangerous consequences.

2. Always keep a Bible handy, lest your bikini-clad friend go on a demonic rampage in your living room.

3. Don't piss off spinster aunts, and if you do, don't inter her body in the family crypt, but instead leave the corpse out to be worried by jackals.

4. Archie comics stories from the early 70's are really fucking disturbing.

Josie and The Pussycats - Real Wild Child (from the Josie and The Pussycats OST, 2001) - Featuring Kay Hanley on vocals. I know there are some of you out there who will violently disagree, but I thought the movie was pretty entertaining, and far better than what I expected, even if I can never fully accept the idea of professional booze vacuum Tara Reid as the goodhearted and pure Melody.

Josie and The Pussycats - (They Long to Be) Close to You (from Josie and The Pussycats, 1970; collected on Stop, Look, & Listen: The Capitol Recordings, 2001) - Just in case you didn't get your full RDA of diabolic evil for today.

Halloween Countdown: October 23 – her eyes were the color of insanity

Andrea was warned about what would happen if she decided to kick off her Sunday shoes. She foolishly ignored the advice of her parents and her pastor, and look what happened:

DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU.
RESIST SATAN'S CALL TO CUT FOOTLOOSE.
Bauhaus - St. Vitus Dance (from In the Flat Field, 1980) - Perfect for getting one's dyskinesiac groove on.

Flogging Molly - Devil's Dance Floor (from Swagger, 2000) - Not to be confused with this.

Halloween Countdown: October 12 – a sound to die for

Jazz trumpeter Mason Chaney has hit rock bottom, but when a wandering booking agent spots Chaney chugging isopropyl alcohol in a back alley, he is given one last chance to redeem himself. The only problem is that Chaney has long since pawned his horn in exchange for a gallon jug of Thunderbird.

Seaching for a suitable replacement that won't set him back more than a few units of plasma, Chaney stumbles into a local branch of Ye Olde Sinister Curiosity Shop^TM (NasdaqGS: YOSC), where the franchise owner offers Chaney a deal on a unusual substitute for his horn:

"Yeah, it's not as if the one incredibly fortuitous chance for me to get back on top depends on whether on not this weird-looking hunk of brass actually functions properly or anything. I mean, if you can't trust the quality of merchandise found in a pawn shop, what can you trust?"

Chaney is able to perform as scheduled, and his show is a big success...

...providing one measures success by the number of wealthy jazz enthusiasts killed, and really, who doesn't?

Well, Chaney for one, who returns to Ye Olde Sinister Curiosity Shop^TM to file a complaint with the branch manager, who just happens to be the earthly embodiment of evil incarnate (which bears out my impression of franchise holders and middle managers in general):

This just goes to show that it's essential for even the most omniscient and omnipotent divine beings to have a comprehensive loss prevention policy complete with an aggressively proactive system of inventory management in place.

Suppose that this was to be the Day of Judgement: All the hosts of Cherubim, Seraphim, and Archangels are ready to go off to wage the final battle against the forces of darkness at Meggido. God motions to Gabriel to sound the call to battle, and the hapless angel starts patting the folds of his celestial robes in search of his trumpet. "Um, one moment, Your Greatness, it's got to here somewhere. I had it with me when I left, honest. Let see... Y'know, maybe it's in my other set of vestments..."

Perhaps if Chaney had bothered to read the newspapers before balling them up and sticking them in his clothes for insulation, he might have been aware that the Ye Olde Sinister Curiosity Shop^TM chain had been sold to the Amalgamated Diabolic Consortium (NasdaqGS: ADCS) for $6.66 per share last fall.

While the Horned One values Chaney's patronage very much, and wants to ensure that he has the most satisfying customer experience in dealing with the forces of evil, Satan does have a reputation to live up to, and so...

Death by "Flight of the Bumblebee"? Wow, the devil really is a cruel motherfucker...

That should have been the end of this nonsense, but since this is a horror comic story published in the 1970's...

As a result, readership of the New Yorker dropped by 90%, NPR had its worst ever year for fundraising, and a prodigious amount of tenure track vacancies opened up in college English programs across the nation...

(Taken from "The Demon Horn" by Gerry Boudreau and Gerry Talaoc, which appeared in Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion #15, February-March 1974 )

Artie Shaw - Nightmare (from The Very Best of Artie Shaw, 2001) - The King of Clarinet's signature tune is a downtempo bluesy bit of big band swing perfect for inducing some noir-ish night terrors.

Halloween Countdown: October 8 – you've got to pick up every stitch

Today we have an excerpt from "The Diabolist Method of Classroom Discipline in Practice: An Illustrated Case Study" by M.F. Stopheles. Ed.D; from Parapsychological Theories in Education, Autumn 1972 issue) :

Step 1: Diagnose the source of disorder.

Step 2: Consult the writings of the thrice-damned rulers of the netherworld in framing a suitable response. Remember to follow standard safety protocols -- protective goggles, warding circles, Satanic apron -- while conducting your forbidden rites.

Step 3: Administer the means of unholy retribution. It is vital that you remember that this method of discipline works best if your students are unaware that you are practicing it. While a viridian bolt of flesh-searing eldritch energy lobbed in the direction of a habitual note-passer will make a dramatic impression on your charges, it may very well create more problems than it solves.

Providing that you've properly phrased your demonic pacts, and followed the instructions in the arcane codices to the letter (or "rune," depending on the text), the results should not be long in coming:

Of course, proportionality is key, though standards of acceptable discipline may vary from district to district. (Ironically, the more religiously devout a community is, the greater its tolerance for harsh punishments, as long as one remains circumspect about the source of one's power.)

Generally speaking, however, you will find that successful results will speak for themselves, especially in today's cultural and political climate.

(Images taken from "Assignment in Fear" from Chilling Adventures in Sorcery as Told by Sabrina #1; September, 1972 -- a comic that dares to answer the question "What would an issue of EC's Vault of Horror look like if it was drawn in the Archie house style?" The answer is "pretty effing bizarre.")

Donovan - Season of the Witch (from Sunshine Superman, 1966) - Do you think Plant, Page, and Company were big fans of this track? Compare the first minute or so of "Season of the Witch" to that of "Ramble On," and you'll see what I mean.

(Edit: As aTom Ten pointed out in the comments, future Led Zeppelin members John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page were involved in the recording of the song, which would explain the similarities. The AMG write-up on the song has all the details. And thus I have come one step closer in my quest for the Unified Field Theory of Classic Rock. Jeff Lynne is the key to unlocking it, I just know it.)

Specimen - Hex (from Wet Warm Cling-Film Red Velvet Crush, 1997) - A delightful bit 80's goth pop, despite the fact that the song's title reminds me of my inability to locate a copy of this much sought-after cinematic oddity. A supernatural-themed biker/western flick set in the immediate post-World War I period? I must see this film.

Screamin' Jay Hawkins - I Put a Spell on You (from I Put a Spell on You, 1958) - And so great is its power, there shall be no saving throws for half damage.