Horror Friday! Musical edition
I can’t believe that we’re only three weeks from Halloween. Have you started to get your costume ready yet?
This post is for all you theater folks out there. Let’s talk about horror musicals. These two genres at first glance seem to be totally at odds with each other. We’re used to musicals being very upbeat and sweet. They can however, be dark and full of black humor as well. This unexpected dark side is probably what makes these musicals such cult classics. You’ve probably heard about the midnight showings of Rocky Horror Picture Show where the audience dresses up and takes part in the action of the film. This kind of costumed fun is perfect for this time of year. Nothing like people singing while slinging fake blood packs to get you in the Halloween spirit.
Unfortunately we don’t have all of these suggestions in our collection, but this will hopefully allow you to track them down in other local libraries or media outlets.
- Rocky Horror Picture Show
- Little Shop of Horrors- (audio available in our collection)
- Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street
- Repo! The Genetic Opera
- Phantom of the Opera- (audio available in our collection)
Apparently there is a new trend of horror musicals based on horror films. As I was researching for this post I stumbled on a bunch of projects (all suffexed with ubiquotous “the musical”) that are in the works or have recently been released. Most of these come with great taglines that show how they’re playing on our ideals of the usual musical. I’ve provided links to these various musicals for you to explore.
- Creature from the Black Lagoon: The Musical (”Gil meets girl. Was it love or was it lunch?”)
- The Fly: The Opera
- Night of the Living Dead: the Musical (”Like Rent, only with zombies. And not gay”)
- Young Frankenstein: The Musical
- Giant Killer Shark: The Musical
- Toxic Avenger Musical
- Evil Dead: The Musical (”Death, dismemberment, dance numbers”)
Hopefully you’ll feel like dressing up like Dr. Frankenfurter and doing the time warp after reading this post. If not at least let me know how Giant Killer Shark: The Musical was….
Submitted by Emily