The Bite #57

Horror Musicals, Frank Frazetta Art, Upcoming CANDYMAN Movie, and More!

May 07, 2019

In this Issue:

Horror History: The Music of the Night
Image of the Week: Creepy Queen
Tiny Bites – This Week’s Best Horror Headlines
Things We Love: Tiny House of Terror
Hey, That’s Us! – Shudder in the News

HORROR HISTORY: THE MUSIC OF THE NIGHT

There’s a lot more to horror musicals than doing the Time Warp or feeding Audrey II. When it comes to the theater, horror musicals on Broadway tend to be big and serious, while those off-Broadway (or off-off-Broadway) are sometimes so crazy they issue ponchos to audience members in the first three rows (aka “the splatter zone”).

In honor of the 37th birthday of the theatrical adaptation of Little Shop of Horrors (which premiered on May 6, 1982), here are some of our favorite all-singing, all-dancing horror musicals:

The Rocky Horror Show — Surprisingly for what some consider the most successful horror musical in history, even though the show had successful runs in London in 1973 (where it ran for 2,960 performances) and Los Angeles in ’74, it lasted only 45 performances after it opened on Broadway in ‘75.

Sweeney Todd, or the Demon Barber of Fleet Street — Possibly the greatest horror musical of them all, this 1979 Tony Award-winning reimagining of a Victorian barber-killer and his human meat pie-making accomplice has songs by Stephen Sondheim with titles like, “God, That’s Good!”

The Phantom of the Opera — In 1988, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Charles Hart added poignant songs to Gaston Leroux’s immortal story, and scored the longest-running show in Broadway history, with more than 13,000 performances (and counting!) since its premiere.

Little Shop of Horrors — Premiering off-off-Broadway in 1982, this one eventually wound up on Broadway, and so bridges the gap between the majors and the minors. Featuring music and lyrics by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman and improbably based on the cult classic 1960 Roger Corman film, who can forget the immortal song “Feed Me (Git It)”?

Carrie — After this show opened on Broadway in 1988, the New York Times called it “the most expensive quick flop in Broadway history” (it only ran for five performances). Song title that says it all: “The Destruction”.

The Addams Family — Could a stage play capture the magic of the beloved cartoons, the television series, and the movies? Capture the magic it did, running for over a year on Broadway (starting in 2010) with Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth as Gomez and Morticia.

Evil Dead: The Musical — After premiering at a club in Toronto in 2003, this show started covering audiences in off-Broadway gore in 2006; in 2012, it opened in Vegas, and it’s still there. Best number: “Do the Necronomicon.”

Re-Animator: the Musical — Lucky for audiences, Stuart Gordon, director of the original Re-Animatormovie, was also the one who adapted the story for the stage, the only musical on this list for which that happened.. After premiering in Los Angeles in 2011, it splattered off-Broadway in 2012. Check out the beheading scene clip on YouTube.

Beetlejuice – Broadway’s newest horror musical (it premiered in Washington, D.C. in October 2018 and moved to Broadway in April 2019) has just been honored with a whopping eight Tony Award nominations. And yes, it does include “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song).”

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

Creepy Queen

Frank Frazetta is known as the King of Conan the Barbarian artists — but his art has also appeared on the covers of numerous horror comics from the ’60s and ’70s. The most famous of these appeared on an issue of Eerie in 1969, and the original painting is currently being auctioned. The bidding’s now at $2,200,000, with the final price expected to be around$5,000,000.

TINY BITES

STEPHEN KING MELTS, TONY TODD TEASES & MORE

Tony Todd has spoken to producer Jordan Peele about the upcoming Candyman movie and believes “the fans are going to be happy.”

In other Jordan Peele news, Twilight Zone has been renewed for a second season.

Director Mick Garris said a scene in which he melted Stephen King was deleted from the 1997 TV miniseries adaption of The Shining because it “put us into monster movie territory.”

Meanwhile, Greg Yaitanes, director of the Castle Rock season 2 premiere, explained why working on that episode was “my Stephen King nerd dream come true.”

Plus — a digital billboard in Times Square revealedwe’ll get to see the IT: Chapter Two trailer Thursday.

The 17th Annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards were handed out last week, and Hereditarywon best film of 2018. (And congrats to Joe Bob Briggs for winning “Monster Kid of the Year.”)

The surprisingly great trailer for the new giant alligator movie Crawl — from The Hills Have EyesdirectorAlexandre Aja and producer Sam Raimi — has been viewed more than 10 million times in less than five days.

Here’s a triple helping of Top 10 lists — the 10 greatest cinematic portrayals of Satan, the 10 deadliest horror movie slashers, and the 10 deadliest horror movie monsters. (Great to see Mister Frost on the first one, but would’ve been nice to see Death from Final Destination on the last.)

David S. Goyer, who’ll be producing and writing a reimagining of Clive Barker’s 1987 horror classicHellraiser, said he’s “committed to making something dark and visceral.”

A blogger struggling with depression revealed how movies like Halloween and The Babadook helped him cope.

Syfy Wire debates the best horror films of the ’90sand they get instant cred for including Peter Jackson’s amazing Dead Alive.

The house which inspired Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s classic 1892 feminist horror story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is for sale. Asking price: $488,000.

Finally, Vox does important journalistic work by taking us “inside the haunted doll markets of eBay and Etsy.”

THINGS WE LOVE: TINY HOUSE OF TERROR

Someone built a haunted house out of Legos, loading it with multiple iconic horror movie scene recreations per floor, including include characters from Beetlejuice, Evil Dead, Scream, Poltergeist, Gremlins, and more. Here’s a video tour of his amazing creation.