Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Grooving to some toe tapping trick or treats for Hokey Halloween Musical Fun

With Halloween only a couple of weeks away, now is the time to begin getting into the mood for some scary fun. Part of the joy of this sinister time of year is in small scare nostalgia, especially if your notion of horrifying entertainment is more about treats than tricks.

To set that tone, I have pulled up a short yet spooky playlist of songs that make for a mildly haunting good time. First up is the theme for the upcoming Goosebumps movie with the subtle title of "The Bumps Gonna Goose Ya!" Featuring the film's big star Jack Black, this happy slice of singing cheese is flavored with 1990s goofiness:


Speaking of the nineties, a forerunner in the cinematic cheddar singalong category is MC Hammer's "Addams Family Groove" that has nearly the whole cast joining in for some seriously silly promotional party time:



 When it comes to marvelously mild All Hallows Eve fare, Disney is tops in that department and while the recent made for TV movie Descendants isn't really a fear factor type of story, it does have some fine musical moments of evil.

One of the best numbers belongs to Kristen Chenowith's Maleficent as she offers some noteworthy advice to her troubled teen daughter by asking "Don't you want to be Evil Like Me?" :


Of course, the go-to these days for Disney Halloween fun is Hocus Pocus, which has become the cackling counterpart to A Christmas Story in terms of repeat seasonal viewing. Hocus Pocus is definitely more on the scary side than Descendants but Bette Midler's musical magic as she and her back-up sisters hit the stage with "I Put A Spell On You" is just as charmingly chilling as Chenowith's menacing mother-daughter act(if not more so):


For our finale, pop culture parodies do tend to offer some engaging earworms here. Speaking of such, with the multitude of plays on Bruno Mars' "Uptown Funk" airing online this year, the one that stood out the best was KFace's Harry Potter themed "Dark Lord Funk".

Giving the wizarding world's greatest menace a mike,plus a giant snake and a posse of Deatheaters ready to help him strut his wicked stuff ,was a stroke of parody brilliance. Not to mention that the song itself is pretty funky fun to boot:


 While Twilight has a bit of new attention to it these days, it's good to keep a sense of humor about it and to that end, this amusing complaint about the new wave of "Emo Vampire" is worth a chuckle or two:



So, as you prepare for your Halloween hijinks, just remember that your personal level of pop culture fright may not be shared by all yet we all like to have a good scare or two sometimes.

The Goosebumps movie may not your cup of terrifying tea(I was much too old for the books by the time they came out) but it should be a nice bit of old school mixed with new cool that will bring back enough menacing memories there at the movies this weekend. Have fun,folks and beware as you go in for the scare!:


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