Treadin’ a little on Weird Jon’s territory here, but for the last few weeks, I’ve been heading to Attack of the B-Movies at the local affiliate. I missed out on some of the better films, picking it up around ‘The Wasp Woman’/’The Phantom from 1000 Leagues.’
Planning a daily write-up for here so far once it turns October. My hat’s off to those who are rocking out already, especially to those fly the spooky all year ’round.
As I said, it’s easy to burn out on Halloween, but so far, it isn’t bad. Attack of the B-Movies is a cheap thrill that helps up the excitement. Seeing giant robots and Wasp Women inspires excitement for what has been appropriately deemed ‘cheapness’. Lately, there’s been a great deal of artificial cheapness in both music and television – insincere lo-fi revival and movies from the perspective of cam-corders.
Cheapness is making due with what you got out of sincere love, and probably because there’s unscrupulous hands at the purse strings. There’s a level of fun in these old B-movies. In ‘Voyage to the Pre-Historic Planet,’ there’s guys hopping around in rubber lizard-men costumes. If they didn’t have fun, then they missed the point.
I think that’s where the grave digger’s sense of humor comes from: taking things too seriously drains away some of the spirit that keeps the body going from day to day. With my music choices, it’s good to not get into heavy content music. Goth won’t be circulating on the playlist, instead replaced by death rock and psychobilly.
It’s the difference between ‘spooky’ and ‘scary.’ Spooky means to give you the chills while leaving you smiling at the end. Scary means to make you SCARED.
With movies, it’s hard to tell the difference, I suspect. Weird Jon will have to talk about it. With music, though. You can tell when someone’s trying really hard to be scary because they’re failing horribly at it. Scary is hard in music. I’ve only come across a few examples. It’s easy to be creepy. It’s much easier, and much more rewarding, to be spooky.
