Editorials
Best Halloween Hip Hop Songs from mc chris
mc chris is a nerdcore rapper based out of Los Angeles. He voiced the character of MC Pee Pants in Adult Swim’s “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” as well as writing for “The Brak Show” and “Space Ghost: Coast to Coast”. His new album ‘mc chris is dreaming’ comes out September 30th.
Before I begin I should make it clear that I am by no means a Horrorcore expert. Horrorcore is a huge and often times disgusting genre that takes a lot of time/cocaine to sort through. So, please don’t get mad at me as I attempt to assemble my humble list of Hip Hop’s most hellish Halloween Hits.
“Why should I let some cartoon voiced rapper from the 9/11 days tell me what’s what when I already know everything?”, you might be asking yourself. Well, I didn’t just make rhymes back then. I’ve actually been recording and touring ever since and I have a brand new album out that actually falls under the Horrorcore category. It’s called mc chris is dreaming and it’s all about Freddy Krueger, nightmares, dreams and, more specifically, the brain. There are three tracks inspired by Mr. Krueger as well as a series of skits where Freddy and I face off. (Freddy is played by the very hilarious John Gemberling, who you might’ve seen as Bevers on “Broad City”) The new album comes out on 9/30 so in the mean time let’s dive into the SCARIEST SONGS EVERRRR!
10. “Halloween Night” by Slim Thug (2011)
Slim Thug, out of Houston, made a mixtape appropriately albeit unimaginatively titled, “Houston” and it featured this song which actually doesn’t have a lot to do with Halloween but is creepy all the same. Masks are ski masks and trick or treat means we’ve scoped out your house and now we’re robbing you. It’s a pretty great song to play on your way to a Halloween Party. It gets extra points for references to both Freddy and Jason.
9. “Monster” by Meek Mill. (2015)
There are A LOT of songs called Monster in the Hip Hop pantheon and I listened to a good deal of them, but for some reason I liked this one best. “Monster” didn’t make the final cut and was used as a promotional track to support his first studio album, “Dreams and Nightmares.” Hey, looks like great minds think alike! Extra points for the Freddy reference, and for somehow referencing my new album in the past.
8. “Zombieland” by L.E.P Bogus Boys. (2012)
Off the “Now or Neva” mixtape, this is a song by some real life Chicago gangsters. This group has been through it; the death of its own members, incarcerations, you name it. Coming out of one of the deadliest places in America, L.E.P. Bogus Boys spin tales of street life in a way that brings me back to those first few times my horizons were broadened by Public Enemy. They never were signed or went mainstream, which gives all of their music an even greater level of authenticity. They were just too real for pop music. With a guest appearance by Lupe Fiasco, this is one of my favorite songs on the list. Extra points for references to Dracula, Mummies, Zombies, Jason Vorhees, Alfred Hitchcock, Stephen King and last but not least The Candyman. So many great references on an awesome track.
7. “Transylvania” by Tyler the Creator. (2011)
Say what you will about Odd Future or Tyler the Creator; they reinvented Hip Hop like Cubists reinvented Modern Art. It scared a lot of people off. Rhymes weren’t happening, hooks were thrown out the window. The patterns we came to know and love went bye bye. But it was good. Everything needs to get deconstructed and rebuilt over time. You gotta rotate the crops. And let us not forget, dude worked at Starbucks for two years. I see what those people go through. He gets a pass from me. Extra points for being a great song about being a Dracula.
6. “Ready for Freddy” by The Fat Boys (1988)
This is one of those songs that has to be on the list even though it’s not great. That being said Freddy played by Robert Englund actually raps on the song so that’s pretty cool. That being said Freddy is not a good rapper. Just being honest. They did this song one year after releasing the comedy classic “Disorderlies.” Maybe they were creatively spent. Unlike its Fresh Prince counterpart, this song was actually sanctioned by New Line Cinema and was featured on the “Nightmare on Elm Street 4: Dream Master” soundtrack. The end of the video has the best freeze frame you can imagine.
5. “Demons Inside” by Eminem. (199_?)
This is an early, unfinished “free style” some call Mr. Mather’s take on Horrorcore, a genre that definitely hung its hat in Detroit in the mid 90’s, right when he was coming up. I know there’s some kind of thing with him and ICP (even I got asked to be on Psychopathic Records, I think it’s just a rite of passage.) Maybe this is a little bit of him trying that style out. Horror would always be a big part of his palette. He liked putting on that Jason mask and revving up a chainsaw (Did Jason ever use a chainsaw? Did he wear overalls? Where are the overalls coming from?) You might think “Stan” would be a much better fit, but have you heard that Dido hook? WTF is that? It’s like one half of the song is a Sleepytime Tea commercial and the other half is “A Serbian Film.”
4. “Kill My Nightmare” by Yelawolf. (2011)
Alabama rapper of Native American descent from Eminem’s label wins me over with this track. It’s off of a mixtape of the same name and it’s one of my favorite songs on this list. There’s nothing scarier than a piano. I took lessons once when I was a kid, scared the crap out of me. Never again.
3. “Haunted House of Rock” by Whodini (1983)
This is the grand daddy of Halloween jams. It was the first single on the first album from this pioneering trio out of Brooklyn. A monster mash-esque throw down takes place at “the last house on your left on a dead end street” and pretty much EVERYBODY is there: Wolfman Jack, The Grateful Dead, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Addams Family, The Invisible Man, a Wolfwoman bartender, Dracula, Witches, Frankenstein, the Bride of Frankenstein, Igor, and finally, The Monster Five (which I assume is like the Jackson Five but they’re all Thrillered out.) Extra points for eventually being on a Freddy soundtrack. “Anyway I Gotta Swing It” was featured in “Nightmare On Elm Street Five: Dream Child.”
2. “Nightmare on My Street” by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. (1988)
Yo, they got straight up SUED by New Line for making this song. The music video had to be destroyed. Have you ever heard of that happening? Where something getting destroyed is part of the agreement? Pretty cool. And New Line made them put a sticker on the record that said “This has nothing to do with Nightmare on Elm Street.” Brilliant. That’ll stop Fresh Prince fans right in their tracks. This was the third single off the second studio album by this duo out of (as I’m sure you know) West Philadelphia. It was originally supposed to be part of the “Nightmare on Elm Street 4: Dream Master” soundtrack, but it didn’t pan out. And New Line wanted to put the kibosh on the whole thing, but those Philly scrappers knew they had gold on their hands. It goes without saying that this song influenced my new album if not my whole life. I remember it scaring the crap out of me when I was kid one summer. You don’t ever want to ever hear Freddy’s voice come out of your radio and you definitely don’t want to hear him kill Jazzy Jeff. Like Jazzy doesn’t have it bad enough. Well, he’s got it better than Ready Rock C, the mysterious third member of the group that for some strange reason DISAPPEARED!
1. “Halloween” by Froggy Fresh. (2012)
Speaking of being sued. This guy got sued too or at least they threatened to sue him. He used to be called Krispy Kreme until Krispy Kreme found out about it. He considered the name Jelly Bean Jack before ultimately deciding the call himself Froggy Fresh, an upgrade to be sure. You might remember his series of viral videos coming out of Michigan in the early 2010’s. Very little is known about Tyler Cassidy, like why he has a Southern accent if the music is out of Michigan, but his first song “The Baddest” scored 11 million views on YouTube when it premiered. So, you got to give it up. This song thankfully has a sequel that features lightsabers and there’s even a Nightmare version. I love all three and hope there is many more years of Froggy Fresh in store. How can I pick this over The Fat Boys or Will “The Wild Wild West instead of the Matrix” Smith? Halloween was all about running around your neighborhood raising hell in crappy costumes. And I think these vids capture that vibe so well and they’re funny af. And honestly, I think the beats are pretty great for parody rap. Peddle Mike. Peddle Mike. Peddle Mike with all your might.
Hope you all enjoyed my list! Please give “mc chris is dreaming” a spin when it drops September 30th and catch me on tour this Fall with MC Lars and Mega Ran. www.mcchris.com for info. Happy Halloween! Now pleeeeease, do tell me what I missed.
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Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
A bizarre recurring issue with the Amityville “franchise” is that the films tend to be needlessly complicated. Back in the day, the first sequels moved away from the original film’s religious-themed haunted house storyline in favor of streamlined, easily digestible concepts such as “haunted lamp” or “haunted mirror.”
As the budgets plummeted and indie filmmakers capitalized on the brand’s notoriety, it seems the wrong lessons were learned. Runtimes have ballooned past the 90-minute mark and the narratives are often saggy and unfocused.
Both issues are clearly on display in Amityville Karen (2022), a film that starts off rough, but promising, and ends with a confused whimper.
The promise is embodied by the tinge of self-awareness in Julie Anne Prescott (The Amityville Harvest)’s screenplay, namely the nods to John Waters’ classic 1994 satire, Serial Mom. In that film, Beverly Sutphin (an iconic Kathleen Turner) is a bored, white suburban woman who punished individuals who didn’t adhere to her rigid definition of social norms. What is “Karen” but a contemporary equivalent?
In director/actor Shawn C. Phillips’ film, Karen (Lauren Francesca) is perpetually outraged. In her introductory scenes, she makes derogatory comments about immigrants, calls a female neighbor a whore, and nearly runs over a family blocking her driveway. She’s a broad, albeit familiar persona; in many ways, she’s less of a character than a caricature (the living embodiment of the name/meme).
These early scenes also establish a fairly straightforward plot. Karen is a code enforcement officer with plans to shut down a local winery she has deemed disgusting. They’re preparing for a big wine tasting event, which Karen plans to ruin, but when she steals a bottle of cursed Amityville wine, it activates her murderous rage and goes on a killing spree.
Simple enough, right?
Unfortunately, Amityville Karen spins out of control almost immediately. At nearly every opportunity, Prescott’s screenplay eschews narrative cohesion and simplicity in favour of overly complicated developments and extraneous characters.
Take, for example, the wine tasting event. The film spends an entire day at the winery: first during the day as a band plays, then at a beer tasting (???) that night. Neither of these events are the much touted wine-tasting, however; that is actually a private party happening later at server Troy (James Duval)’s house.
Weirdly though, following Troy’s death, the party’s location is inexplicably moved to Karen’s house for the climax of the film, but the whole event plays like an afterthought and features a litany of characters we have never met before.
This is a recurring issue throughout Amityville Karen, which frequently introduces random characters for a scene or two. Karen is typically absent from these scenes, which makes them feel superfluous and unimportant. When the actress is on screen, the film has an anchor and a narrative drive. The scenes without her, on the other hand, feel bloated and directionless (blame editor Will Collazo Jr., who allows these moments to play out interminably).
Compounding the issue is that the majority of the actors are non-professionals and these scenes play like poorly performed improv. The result is long, dull stretches that features bad actors talking over each other, repeating the same dialogue, and generally doing nothing to advance the narrative or develop the characters.
While Karen is one-note and histrionic throughout the film, at least there’s a game willingness to Francesca’s performance. It feels appropriately campy, though as the film progresses, it becomes less and less clear if Amityville Karen is actually in on the joke.
Like Amityville Cop before it, there are legit moments of self-awareness (the Serial Mom references), but it’s never certain how much of this is intentional. Take, for example, Karen’s glaringly obvious wig: it unconvincingly fails to conceal Francesca’s dark hair in the back, but is that on purpose or is it a technical error?
Ultimately there’s very little to recommend about Amityville Karen. Despite the game performance by its lead and the gentle homages to Serial Mom’s prank call and white shoes after Labor Day jokes, the never-ending improv scenes by non-professional actors, the bloated screenplay, and the jittery direction by Phillips doom the production.
Clocking in at an insufferable 100 minutes, Amityville Karen ranks among the worst of the “franchise,” coming in just above Phillips’ other entry, Amityville Hex.
The Amityville IP Awards go to…
- Favorite Subplot: In the afternoon event, there’s a self-proclaimed “hot boy summer” band consisting of burly, bare-chested men who play instruments that don’t make sound (for real, there’s no audio of their music). There’s also a scheming manager who is skimming money off the top, but that’s not as funny.
- Least Favorite Subplot: For reasons that don’t make any sense, the winery is also hosting a beer tasting which means there are multiple scenes of bartender Alex (Phillips) hoping to bring in women, mistakenly conflating a pint of beer with a “flight,” and goading never before seen characters to chug. One of them describes the beer as such: “It looks like a vampire menstruating in a cup” (it’s a gold-colored IPA for the record, so…no).
- Amityville Connection: The rationale for Karen’s killing spree is attributed to Amityville wine, whose crop was planted on cursed land. This is explained by vino groupie Annie (Jennifer Nangle) to band groupie Bianca (Lilith Stabs). It’s a lot of nonsense, but it is kind of fun when Annie claims to “taste the damnation in every sip.”
- Neverending Story: The film ends with an exhaustive FIVE MINUTE montage of Phillips’ friends posing as reporters in front of terrible green screen discussing the “killer Karen” story. My kingdom for Amityville’s regular reporter Peter Sommers (John R. Walker) to return!
- Best Line 1: Winery owner Dallas (Derek K. Long), describing Karen: “She’s like a walking constipation with a hemorrhoid”
- Best Line 2: Karen, when a half-naked, bleeding woman emerges from her closet: “Is this a dream? This dream is offensive! Stop being naked!”
- Best Line 3: Troy, upset that Karen may cancel the wine tasting at his house: “I sanded that deck for days. You don’t just sand a deck for days and then let someone shit on it!”
- Worst Death: Karen kills a Pool Boy (Dustin Clingan) after pushing his head under water for literally 1 second, then screeches “This is for putting leaves on my plants!”
- Least Clear Death(s): The bodies of a phone salesman and a barista are seen in Karen’s closet and bathroom, though how she killed them are completely unclear
- Best Death: Troy is stabbed in the back of the neck with a bottle opener, which Karen proceeds to crank
- Wannabe Lynch: After drinking the wine, Karen is confronted in her home by Barnaby (Carl Solomon) who makes her sign a crude, hand drawn blood contract and informs her that her belly is “pregnant from the juices of his grapes.” Phillips films Barnaby like a cross between the unhoused man in Mulholland Drive and the Mystery Man in Lost Highway. It’s interesting, even if the character makes absolutely no sense.
- Single Image Summary: At one point, a random man emerges from the shower in a towel and excitedly poops himself. This sequence perfectly encapsulates the experience of watching Amityville Karen.
- Pray for Joe: Many of these folks will be back in Amityville Shark House and Amityville Webcam, so we’re not out of the woods yet…
Next time: let’s hope Christmas comes early with 2022’s Amityville Christmas Vacation. It was the winner of Fangoria’s Best Amityville award, after all!
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