But take heart.

If you’re bemoaning the return of Daylight Savings Time and the increasing length of each successively sunnier day, you can still find temporary solace through music.

Type O Negative’s seasonally appropriate tune “The Green Man” (from their October Rust album, ironically) evokes a mournful melancholy that contrasts with a lyrical backdrop of springtime images.

As the song progresses the lyrics paint a series of beautiful metaphors for the changing seasons, including “Autumn in her flaming dress” and winter’s “befrosted paths to the unknown.” So by the time the song concludes, the new life it describes in its opening lines eventually returns to the earth as nature comes full circle. (In other words, it all works out fine in the end.)

Plus, like most Type O tunes, “The Green Man” is carried along on the shoulders of a solid melody and a rhythm of heavy, primal power chords. Give it a listen. I hope it lifts your forlorn spirits just a little bit.

The scarecrow beckoned from the haunted cornfield.

The scarecrow beckoned to trick-or-treaters to approach the haunted cornfield and then pointed to the candy bowl in the pumpkin goblin’s lap. It took a brave little soul to retrieve a treat from beneath her sinister leer. A few times the goblin growled or snapped. Mayhem ensued! Bwaa-ha-ha-haaaa!!

The pumpkin goblin passed out treats -- to those who dared take them.

The work is based on an old French superstition in which Death appears at midnight on Halloween and plays his fiddle, calling forth the dead to dance to his tune. As you listen to the piece, you’ll have no trouble envisioning hordes of grinning skeletons reveling through the cemetery as they celebrate their annual night of freedom from the grave.

Near the end of the piece, a rooster crows (an oboe, I think) to signal the coming dawn. The skeletons recoil in fright and glumly slink back to their tombs for another year.

My elementary school music teacher, Mrs. Forsythe (God rest her soul), introduced me to Danse macabre nearly 40 years ago, and I’ll always remember hearing it for the first time. Every October I put it back into heavy rotation on my iPod and let the dead dance through my mind again and again.

The tune is about seven minutes long and is available on iTunes. You can also sample it with various video accompaniments on YouTube.

Give it a listen and let me know if you enjoy it as much as I do.

Click here to witness their misfortune.

Answer: A vampire that…sucks.

Sure, a director can orchestrate atmosphere with enough moonlit fog and shadows. But all that brooding mood dissipates like mist in the morning sun if the character is flat or the actor miscast.

Likewise, a well-written vampire role, brought to life by an inspired actor with the right look for the role, can elevate even an average  production into something worthwhile.

Here are ten who, in my opinion, are truly deserving of their undead immortality.

1. Anders Hove played the vampire Radu in Full Moon Features’ four Subspecies films. Obsessive, vicious, and a touch insane, Radu thirsts for blood from the mythical “bloodstone” like a junkie yearns for his next fix. Hove’s threatening rasp, goth-rock-meets-Orlock appearance and impish, blood-dripping grin made Radu the kind of fiend you almost find yourself rooting for, and a far richer character than his straight-to-video surroundings might lead you to believe.

2. Frank Langella, who played the count in John Badham’s 1979 remake of Dracula, was dashing, aristocratic and smoothly seductive. Imbuing the legendary nobleman with a powerful charisma, Langella’s Dracula captures forever on film the performance he’d spent months perfecting on the stage.

3. Christopher Lee, who played Dracula in several Hammer Studios productions (most notably Horror of Dracula and Dracula: Prince of Darkness), was by turns a perfect gentleman and a sadistic monster. Lee’s towering black-draped count was equally imposing whether glowering malevolently atop a staircase or hissing viciously with fangs bared.

4. Chris Sarandon, who played Jerry Dandridge, the vampire next door in Fright Night, exuded a smug, sarcastic smarminess that somehow was just right for the early 1980s in which the film was set. Oh, but he could turn deadly serious when messed with.

5. David Peel played the handsome (and cunning) Baron Meinster in Brides of Dracula. After tricking an innocent young woman into freeing him from the chains that kept his evil in check, the debonair baron descends on a girls’ boarding school and begins taking victims. Locked in combat with a resolute Van Helsing during the film’s final act, he meets an inventive demise (which, although not exactly correct according to standard vampire lore, is clever enough to be appreciated).

6. Max Schreck played Count Orlock in F.W. Murnau’s silent German classic, Nosferatu. Schreck’s ratlike fangs, trancelike wide-eyed hunger stare and skeletal thinness created a creepy image that has remained unsettling for the better part of a century.

7. Willem Dafoe played Max Schreck in Shadow of The Vampire. The film’s premise is that Schreck was an actual a vampire who, for the making of Nosferatu, masqueraded as a dedicated method actor who chose to stay in character, even offstage. As the aged Schreck, Dafoe evokes sympathy for the once-regal count who has now sunk into lonely decrepitude. Although Shadow comes up a scene or two shy of perfection, the ones in which Dafoe appears are brilliant (verbally sparring with John Malkovich as Murnau or describing why a particular passage in Bram Stoker’s Dracula was “the loneliest part of the book”). Seldom does an actor make an audience feel so sympathetic towards a character who survives by feeding on innocent beings.

8. Kiefer Sutherland, played David, a hellraising delinquent whose motorcycle-straddling gang of vampires stalked a West Coast boardwalk by night in The Lost Boys. Although every sunset signaled party time for David’s gang of hoodlums, Sutherland’s character conveys intelligence brooding beneath the hedonist rock and roll bravado.

9. Kate Beckinsale, who played the assassin vampiress Selene in Underworld, is a dark deadly vision of undead chic in leather and latex. The film is essentially a high-style action movie, so her role isn’t especially deep. But Beckinsale’s cool efficiency as a killer, relentless quest for a hidden truth and occasional vulnerability combine to create a character that’s fairly intriguing. Also, it doesn’t hurt that she’s hot.

10. Stuart Townsend, who played the vampire Lestat in Queen of the Damned, gives his character plenty of sexy swagger and rock star recklessness. But what makes Townsend’s performance great is when he shows us the shred of humanity Lestat still retains despite being more than two centuries old.

Honorable Mention: Vincent Perez played the vampire Marius (in Queen of the Damned), who enjoyed his undead existence despite being charged with the gravest of responsibilities—as caretaker of Akasha, the sleeping mother of all vampires. Perez finds elements of humor in his character. And as Lestat’s “father” he convincingly conveys the paternal attributes and emotions that his “son” Lestat evokes in him: pride,
disappointment, patience, anger and pain.

So those are my favorites. Who are yours?

Axis Annie, 1997

I mentioned in an earlier post that I used to be in a band called Axis Annie. Here’s one of our better songs: Water, which has a nice semi-acoustic intro before launching into all-out rock and roll.

Lifeline is another song I’m proud of. I came up with the music one night, a few months after graduating from college, while I was plinking around on a piano. For ten years I didn’t know what to do with it. Then I found myself in a band, and I eventually played the music for them. They liked it. Our singer Lila put words and a melody to it, and it became something pretty special, although I wasn’t 100% happy with the way the recording turned out. Here’s another version of it, recorded onto a boom box during practice. The fidelity is poor, but it’s more powerful than the studio version.

(Oh, and by the way, I realize the band name isn’t the most politically correct in the world, but they were already calling themselves that when I joined, so please don’t call me a Nazi if you choose to comment.)

P.S. — The original version of the song has lyrics and vocals. Fortunately for you (and anyone else within earshot), I have removed them in the version linked in the first line above. My voice is utterly wretched and no one should be subjected to it.

Cthulhu

If you found your way here there’s a chance you’re a fan of H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), writer of many weird tales of horror and the macabre.

Although movies based on Lovecraft’s stories are almost always abysmal, the opposite is true of songs inspired by his work. Truth is, they hella rock.

Five in particular stand out as fitting musical monuments to Lovecraft’s nightmarish visions. Three of the five draw upon the author’s best-known story, The Call of Cthulhu.

They are:

1. The Call of Ktulu — Metallica, from Ride The Lightning
2. The Thing That Should Not Be — Metallica, from Master of Puppets
3. Cthulhu Dawn — Cradle of Filth, from Midian
4. Lovecraft’s Death — Septicflesh, from Communion
5. Behind The Wall of Sleep — Black Sabbath, from their self-titled first album

No doubt more Lovecraft-inspired masterworks are lurking out there; I just haven’t found them. If you have, please comment and bring these dark, brooding tunes to light.

Nosferatu stamp from Bizarro.com

I have a little rubber stamp I use to mark off each day on my deskpad calendar at work. It’s Count Orlock climbing through a window to claim his next victim. 

Stamping the Count on each passing day lets me know I have one less
to live.

Whenever I need motivation, I look back at past calendar pages and see the hundreds of days the Count has claimed. And I realize that eventually he’ll have them all.

Morbid, yes. But in life it’s easy to fall into a rut sometimes and not appreciate what we have. The Count reminds me that every day is a precious gift, not to be wasted.