No Filler Music Podcast - Bonus Halloween Episode: The Music of It Follows and Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

On this year's extra spooky edition of the No FIller Bonus Halloween Episode, we explore the unbreakable bond of synth music and horror films. We dive into some tunes and find the parallels between the 2014 modern classic It Follows, and the timeless synth of John Carpenter and Alan Howarth from the 1978 film Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Tracklist: John Carpenter, Alan Howarth - Halloween TV Commercial Disasterpeace - Heels John Carpenter - The Shape Stalks Disasterpeace - Lakeward John Carpenter, Alan Howarth - Starker and Marge Disasterpeace - Death John Carpenter, Alan Howarth - H3 Season of the Witch (Re-Mastered) This show is part of the Pantheon Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Halloween. Halloween. Happy after Halloween. Halloween. Silver shamah. Happy after Halloween. Halloween. Halloween.

Happy after Halloween. Halloween. Super chamois. Happy Halloween, Q. Happy Halloween, Jeff. Best night of the year. Hands down. Best time of year, you know, fall.

It's the best. This is my favorite time of year, dude. Spooky season. This is spooky night. Man, yeah, the colors are changing and the leaves up here. It's freaking breathtaking, bro. The oranges, the yellows, the reds. Well, we finally, you know, we finally went below 80.

you know in in Dallas dude I feel like we start every Halloween episode with like what's the weather like right now starting to feel like fall yeah I feel like this is for some reason this is what we start off our Halloween episode with you know it's like what color of the leaves right now in Washington and then I say well in Texas it sure does suck and then we and then we get into the episode you know so why would this one be any different well I mean I feel like with Halloween, it's now officially fall. I know it's already fall. Yeah, yeah. But like after Halloween, you know, it's just the season has started in my mind. Yeah. Well, so if you're tuning in right now, hopefully you are, you're getting ready to hit the town, you know, walk around the neighborhood. You know,

if you're going to raise hell, going to raise hell. Maybe you're going to raise some hell, maybe. Uh, probably not. You're probably like an R-A-A-3. That's kind of a freaks and geeks reference. Remember when they go out and start egging people on Halloween? Oh, yeah. Absolutely egg Sam. That's right, yeah.

He's, what is he the, he's the tin man or something lame like that, right? Something like that, yeah. Man, and it's his sister that eggs him, too. Yeah. Linda Cardinelli, I think, right? Linda Cardinelli is that her name? I think that's her real name. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the actor's name.

Uh, anyway. You remember we had thought about doing a spinoff podcast? I guess it wouldn't be a spin-off. It would be an actual podcast. It was going to be called. I still think that was a great idea, man. Well, let's not say it then because we don't need anybody to steal it. Yeah.

We were talking about doing a freaks and geeks podcast. Anyway, but that's not, that wasn't going to be the, you know, we were going to have a specific topic that we were going to talk about. You're spilling beans. All right, right, right, all right. So anyway, this is our bonus Halloween episode. We do it every year. And if you're in our age group, you're probably,

getting ready to take your children how trick-or-treating. You know what I mean? Like we're not trick-or-treating anymore. So, you know, hopefully you're getting in that mindset. Maybe you're tuning in while you're driving around while you're walking around, put your earbuds in. You don't need to hear your kids talking to you anyway.

You hear that every night, every day. So, you know, just make sure they don't, they look both ways before they cross the road. And they'll be fine. Anyway, so as per tradition, Q, I've done some prep work here for this episode. And that song that played us in, that little jingle that played us in, if you're a horror movie fan like me, you probably recognize that little tune from Halloween 3 Season of the Witch,

which is obviously the third installment of the Halloween franchise. This movie was directed by Tommy Lee Wallace. Hey, didn't we do a whole episode on just this? episode on this this Halloween no we did it so our our very first yeah our very first Halloween bonus episode we talked about

John Carpenter in general and we did our very first was undoing of David Ryan my friend okay fair enough I remember the movie poster and didn't you say isn't Michael Myers just not in this one he's not in this one and that's why it is typically people either love or hit this film

I appreciate it because it's kind of interesting but basically John Carpenter wanted to turn the Halloween franchise into like an anthology series where every single Halloween movie would be a different story entirely. So like the first two were about Michael Myers and then this one comes out and Michael Myers isn't in the film and people are like, what the hell this isn't a Halloween film, you know? And so they very quickly brought back Michael Myers in the fourth one. And it was actually called The Return of Michael Myers.

So they're like putting it in the title and stuff. He's back. don't worry, he's coming back. Anyway, so John Carpenter produced this film. But anyway, it's John Carpenter. He's, like, one of the, one of the, like, iconic synth wave, like, origins of synth wave, uh, when you, when you have, like, if you had a Mount Rushmore of, like, synthwave artists, he'd be up there because of all his, his, uh, horror,

horror film scores and how he kind of, like, pioneered that, like, 80s synth, horror synth sound, you know? So anyway, that song, though, in the beginning, of this episode was like the jingle that played on the TV during the movie. So basically the idea was like these masks were sold to kids. And there was this TV commercial that would play. And at a certain time, all the kids were supposed to put their masks on. And then this virus or something would be transmitted into their brains via these masks

and their faces went belt and stuff like that. You know, fantastic premise for a film. So I think if it was like standalone, if it wasn't. wasn't sold as a Halloween film. I think it could have been successful just by itself, you know what I mean? But because it was like grouped into like, this is the next Halloween film. I think it was like doomed to fail because people were expecting a slasher with Michael Myers and like he's not even there. Although technically he is he is in the film because for some reason in the background of a scene, one of the Halloween films is playing on TV, which is like, well, this is some weird meta stuff.

Anyway, so we're not talking about this movie by itself today. We're also talking about a newer, more modern film called It Follows. Have you seen that film, Q? I saw it and I got to tell you, Chav. That's fine. We're here to play tunes, Q. So we're going to talk about the soundtrack. Yeah, it was okay.

It was okay. The soundtrack was great because it's a disaster piece. Exactly. So that's what we're doing. And the reason I'm playing some music from Halloween. three is because I want to play some music from both, and you can see just how much of an influence Carpenter had on disaster piece, for sure. Like, there's no way around it.

I'm also going to play at least one track from the first Halloween movie as well. But anyway, so yeah, it follows is about, it's basically like a sexually transmitted disease metaphor, right? I mean, I think that's... Is it really? The way that you get the disease is by having sex, or not disease, but the way that The way that you get stalked by this thing is by passing it out of the next person by having sex with him. Here's the premise.

When carefree teenager Jay sleeps with her older boyfriend for the first time, she learns that she is the latest recipient of a fatal curse that has passed from victim to victim via sexual intercourse. Now, that's a little on the nose, cue, in terms of, like, sexually transmitted disease. And this is, like, an ongoing, like, trope of horror films, even going back to, Halloween about like if you're a teenager and you have sex, you're going to die. That's basically a lot of like, uh, premises behind horror films, basically. Because I mean, think about it. In the original Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis's character, uh, Lori doesn't die.

And she's the only one that doesn't have sex of her friend group. I wonder if that's the same for like the Scream franchise. And I know what you did last summer, like those classic slasher films. Is it the only people that survive the ones that don't have sex? Yeah, maybe. I'm trying to replay the original scream on my head, and I'm pretty sure she has sex, the vinyl girl. All right, so let's kick this off.

We're going to watch the trailer queue, because why not? Here we go. If you've never seen it follows, here's the trailer that you're not going to be able to watch, that you're not going to be able to see, but you can hear. Here we go. You used to daydream about being old enough to go on dates. I had this image of myself,

holding hands with a really cute guy. Just having some sort of freedom, I guess. Jane, I'm sorry. Help. You're not going to believe me, and I need you to remember what I'm saying. This thing... It's going to follow you.

Somebody gave it to me, and I passed it to you. Whatever you are, it's somewhere walking. It's straight for you. All you can do is pass it along someone else. What exactly is supposed to be following you? I don't know.

Just pass it along. You believe me, right? Nothing's going to happen. See, everything's okay. Is something wrong with me? Straight down the line to whoever's starting. It's going to be here sooner or later. I get some chills, dude.

That was a good trailer and awesome music. The music is consistent. by many to be one of the reasons the film was so successful, which is funny because there's a, if you watch the first Halloween film, if you watch the DVD commentary or the Bluay commentary, which by the way, you know, young people, if you're listening, DVDs are these discs that you used to put in something called the DVD player. Yeah. And it was basically how you watched movies back in the day.

and what was cool about it is a lot of times there'd be like director commentary and stuff like that. Anyway, John Carpenter said that he showed a screening of the first Halloween film and it didn't have the music yet. He hadn't written the music for it yet. And people were like, this isn't scary. This is like boring, like so slow. And then once he added the music, it like made the film. And I think that's true for this, for this film too, for sure.

So yeah, you heard actually a lot of the music I want to play in that trailer. but let's just jump right into it here. So disaster piece is the name of the artist that did the soundtrack to It Follows. His name, his God-given name, his birth name is Rich Vreeland. And I know we've featured his music on this podcast before as of what you heard or something at least, right? But he's known for his video game soundtracks. And this is his first film that he did, which is really interesting because the director of the film, knew about him through his video game music, which is really interesting.

Yeah, let's just play some tunes here, Que. I know this is a rapid fire, as we like to say. Just going to jump right on tunes. These songs are pretty short, but I figure we start with the title track, because this is the very first piece of music that he wrote for the film, which is the title sequence, not the title track, the actual first scene that happens, kind of like the intro scene.

All right, this song is called Heels. There we go, Q. Simple, but effective. You know what I liked about it, dude? What did you like about it? I feel like he was kind of nodding towards psycho. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, wee, we, we, we, we, we.

Just the, like, very jarring, repetitive, just like stabbing, you know. The one note, the one note, the one note, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, it's funny you should say that, Q, because tell me what stands out to you on this track. We're going to travel back in time 40 years, Q. Actually, let me get the exact spread because I was curious about this the other day. It follows. It came out in 2014.

The very first Halloween film came out in 1978. So you do them, yeah. A little under 40 years later, or four years prior to that. And shit, let's just see when did Psycho come out, Q? And the original Psycho came out 18 years prior to this Halloween film. So here we go. This song is like tied with like when the action finally starts to happen in the original Halloween, like toward the last 10 minutes of the film is when this song kicks in.

and it's called the shape stalks. So, of course, this is John Carpenter. Here we go. You know, it goes on like that cue for another two minutes, but that's kind of the whole beauty of the soundtrack, both of these, is how it kind of mirrors the killer, like relentless. Like, it's not going to stop.

It just keeps coming at you. And there's so many similarities, like between, The way that this thing that follows you and it follows, it just walks and it moves very slowly. And that's what was always so creepy about Michael Myers. He never runs, right? He never runs. He just pursues you, like, just like it follows monster. So I would like to think that that's why he's pulling from the John Carpenter soundtracks, right?

like he's he's sort of giving a nod to to that but what's funny is in an interview here he says that he's he's really not a big horror fan um the the composer of rich freeland of disaster piece fame uh he's not really a big horror fan but like you can't i refuse to believe you that he's not familiar with the work of john carpenter because like it's such a obvious nod right well i think that if you're not a uh horror fan all you can think all you can think when you think of horror, you think of Halloween, right? If you're not. That's true.

Steeped in it like you are. Yep. That's probably, he may have gone straight to Halloween for like, you know, research. Sure. But, so did he compose the score for it follows after it was filmed? Well. Does it say? I'm not sure if it was like finalized, but like he, he was kind of like, he was struggling to get,

to get an idea going. and then they sent him the first scene. Okay. And that was the first song that he wrote, which is the one he heard. And that's, you know, from there, he was able to, because he said that, that scene basically set, set the, set the bar for him in terms of like the intensity level that he needed to hit. Because that first scene is crazy, right? So anyway, all right, let's keep going here. So I'm going to jump down.

We're going to play something a little bit softer here. Let's play a song off of the is. follows soundtrack called Lakeward. So that reminded me a little bit of Vangelis' track. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, which is, you know, a heavy hitter in the world of synth music. I bet he got some influence from him as well.

I liked that, dude. So what scene is that? What's going on in that scene? I mean, I think they're at the Lakehouse, is my guess. It's still, even though it's like more calming, it's still kind of off putting. There's still something off about it. Yeah. Especially like the little thing at the end of the track, the little sort of like a little melody.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Now, I might be grasping here, but I'm trying to look for parallels between it follows in Halloween three. So I'm going to play another. Of all the Halloweens, why do you choose Halloween 3 is the one that you want to find parallels? Because Halloween 3 has my favorite music of all the Halloween films for sure. And I think I, you know what, we got a credit. This is a shame, dude, that I haven't mentioned.

Alan Haworth or Haworth. He was one of the other composers or musicians that worked with Carpenter. He actually did a lot of the music with Carpenter on most of Carpenter's films. Anyway, so I just wanted to put that back other. But yeah, I think Halloween 3 just has some really, really interesting music in it. So anyway, all right, we're going to play another track of a Halloween 3. Hello, Grandma. And it's not going to be Hello, Grandma, although that's a good track.

All right, this song is called Starker and Marge. My brain gets forced into like a neighborhood street at night time. With, you know, with just the street lights illuminating the saddle. Like with his music, just in general, I can't not go into that. That's where I am. I wonder what it is about like warm synth, 80 synth that brings you into that space. skew. And not only that, dude, but it's, I mean, it's a, I'm in the 80s. I'm, you know, I'm a kid in the 80s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Out in the streets in my neighborhood. And something's off.

Something's off. I feel like I'm getting followed. It follows. Well, do you have a witch, a skull or a pumpkin mask on? Thank you. Because those are your options by the Silver Shamrock company that sold these masks. Which one are you wearing right now? So it's not necessarily Halloween in my mind. I'm just saying. Okay. I get thrown.

I have to be, like my brain just takes me to a neighborhood at night. Is it the synth or is it just? It's the way that it's, it's their music. What they're doing. It's the music itself. Well, dude. It's necessarily. That's considering.

that this film is about kids trick-or-treating at night. Sounds like they were spot on cute with the vibes. When was the last time you were walking around a neighborhood at night? Hmm. I mean, because when I think about walking around a neighborhood at night, I go back to Halloween as a kid. Or I go back to, like, you know, when we used to TP houses and stuff with our friends. Aside from that, like. When we used to trespass and...

Yeah. Yeah, just. destroy people's properties, dude. Weird times. We didn't destroy. I mean, TPD, you know, we decorated. Okay.

We inconvenienced some people, that's for sure. We inconvenienced to a lot of people. So we're going to play a song to close us out to you by the Fez soundtrack. Have you ever played Fez before? It sounds very familiar. Well, if you've ever watched the documentary indie game, the movie, then you know all about Faz because it's one of the video games featured in that documentary

and it was created by this guy named Phil Fish who's sort of this he has a reputation about him as being kind of a kind of a yeah he's kind of an asshole but he's the creator of the game anyway Disasterpiece scored the game I actually have actually played this game

yeah it's a cool game it's actually a pretty interesting cool idea yeah so anyway DisasterPase scored the game and when he finally sat down and kind of was like tapped into the sound he was going for for the It Follows soundtrack by the way he did it in three weeks he made this soundtrack in three weeks he pulled influence from this particular song from the Fez soundtrack so we're going to play it we're going to react here I said close this out but we're actually going to just listen to it and react here so here you go I think you're going to see the similarities pretty quickly all right the song is called death i'm going to expand on that that's his style of of music is just what

makes synth music great yeah and it's obvious like like you said vangelis carpenter as well like he's he's pulling from the grates you know and that's what that's what makes it a timeless sound too you know like that synth sound is just so like there's just something about it man there's like a there's that analog quality there's that warmth to it you know there's like i wish he would have gotten offered to do the soundtrack for stranger things i think it would have killed it oh man yeah totally it could have been it could have been totally different vibes but it's very i mean it's similar yeah and obviously uh well they're dixon right kyle dixon what's that guy's name dixon and something dixon and something yeah yeah stranger things soundtrack there you go

Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein, like they were clearly drawing influence from 80s movies. That was the whole point of the show was like 80s nostalgia, right? So like, you know, it's obvious that why the Stranger Things soundtrack was a had synth music, right? Because the whole thing was an 80s nostalgia trip. But what I like about disaster piece is, you know, it follows command 2014. and he decided to go with a synth score, you know, because I think a lot of, a lot of, in a lot of ways, like synth music is very much tied to horror films because of, you know, the rise of the slasher film in the 80s and how a lot of those scores were synths soundtracks, right?

So it's a good, it's a good move, man, to make a synth inspired or a synth. soundtrack for a horror film, dude, because for some reason, those two were just locked in place. And, like, the way that he pulled in the one-note, you know, relentless one-note sort of melody is, like you said, psycho, you know, the Halloween soundtrack. Like, this guy knew what he was doing. He did it in three weeks, and he's not even a fan of horror movies. I mean, maybe he is now, but he wasn't at the time that he made it. So, anyway, I've always loved video game soundtracks.

I think I've made that pretty obvious on the show. And, like, one of the reasons is because with video games, like, you have to write music for a lot of different scenarios. So, like, there's typically, you know, for most video games, there's going to be a death scene that you're going to have to write a piece for. Or some other type of, like, you know, scarier type scene. Because, I mean, every video game, you go back to freaking Mario. every video game has a darker level that's kind of like underground or something like that and it's going to be maybe a little bit of a creepier vibe and so like it makes sense that like a video game composer would be able to produce a really solid uh horror movie soundtrack and like

he drew inspiration from his death song for fez you know like the this i guess the song that plays when you die or something like that or some death scene i haven't actually finished fast, but the name of the song is death. So obviously, you know, there's some death going on during that part of the video game. So anyway, there you go, Q. It's Halloween. I hope you enjoyed some synth from two great horror films. It follows as a modern classic dude. It's definitely a beloved film for the way that it kind of like subverted the horror tropes, you know, although it didn't, it didn't, it didn't do any favors for a sexually active teenagers queue. That's, that's one trope. It did not. But like you said, do, do any horror movies

do any favors for, for sexually active teens? If you're getting, if you, if you're getting freaky in a horror film in the 80s, your, your, your, your clock's ticking, dude, you know, it's the only a matter of time before you get a, you get a spear through the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the throat. rip Kevin Bacon Do you know what I'm talking about? Of course not. Come on, man. Kevin Bacon death scene

Friday the 13th. Here we go. Oh, he was in Friday of the 13th? Cute. Here we go, Jack Burrell's death. This iconic scene, dude, 40 seconds. Here we go. No one knows what's happening

since there's no video here. Oh, you know. If you know this film, you can see it your head, dude. What a dream boat. It was just right after he had sex? That's why he's lighting up a doobie. Yeah, exactly. It's right after they had sex. She's in the shower. He did. He did. He did. There you go, Q. Kevin Bacon, shooting to had sex. All right. Go watch it follows if you haven't seen it. It's an interesting film.

if you want to watch Season of the Witch, Halloween 3, go for it. But, you know, there's no Michael Myers. So just, you know, I feel like if you go into it knowing that Michael Myers isn't in the film, you know, you'll set the bar. The bar will be set lower. You know what I mean? All right. Well, I'm going to close us out with the title track to Halloween 3, which is this awesome opening title sequence. Like, it's really cool.

And the song, the music is also really interesting because, like, You know, the whole film is about this commercial that's playing on this TV that's sort of like enticing kids to go by these masks and stuff. And like the opening scene is like very zoomed in on this cat, like this old like, you know, this old cathode ray like TV. And like you can see the lines, you know, like the lines back in the day like on the TVs and stuff. And like the soundtrack, the song kind of like, I don't know, it just kind of works really, really well with that opening scene. I feel like they were kind of going for, like, electronic kind of sound. Obviously, it was a synth, so, like, it was electronic, but, like, I don't know. I'll play it.

I'll play it for you, because you can see it. But, like, anyway, all right. Well, that was it. Go, go get your candy, everyone. And, well, we'll see you in a couple weeks for our next episode. And we are quickly approaching our year-end countdown episodes. Dude, let me say it, man. I feel like the bands wait until the end of the year to drop their albums, man.

I can't keep up. I can't keep up. There's some good stuff that's dropped lately. There's a lot of good stuff that just came out in the last couple weeks. This is why it's always a risk if we record these early, you know, because you might have miss something. Well, under the hood here, we've recorded one so far. Yeah.

And yeah, I have to narrow down my list again because I just have so many that I keep adding. to my list. All right. Happy Halloween, everyone. We'll talk to you guys in a couple weeks. Thanks, as always, for listening. My name is Travis. And I'm quitting. Y'all take care. Unwrap holiday magic at Holt Renfrew with gifts that say I know you. From festive and cozy fashion to Lux beauty and fragrance sets. Our special selection has something for every style and price point. Visit our Holtz holiday shop and store or online at Holtrenfrew.com.