Halloween Radio Spots....S s s s s s s" & Young Frankenstein

It's Halloweenie season, peeps, and as is tradition around here, I'm kicking things off by taking a hard left turn into Weirdsville.

I had a few spooky grails on my want list this year, but despite my best efforts, they continue to elude me like a reasonably priced original garage 45 at a flea market. At this point, I've got several years' worth of Halloween posts squirreled away, so if I ever do find those missing monsters, something else is going to get bumped into a future year's lineup. It's becoming less of a Halloween series and more of a haunted scheduling problem.

I picked these up nearly a year ago as part of a larger haul from a guy who occasionally opens up his magical "Wherehouse," a place where records seemingly reproduce in the dark when no one is looking. As luck would have it, I get to go digging there again today. YIPPIEE! Somewhere between the excitement and the caffeine, I've already mentally spent money I haven't handed over yet.

What makes these especially interesting is that they're the first radio spots I've ever found in all my years of collecting. Thousands upon thousands of records have passed through my hands, but radio spots? Practically mythical creatures. Maybe they were hiding behind all the Herb Alpert albums.

Now, these aren't the scariest recordings ever made. Nobody's sleeping with the lights on after hearing them. But they're delightfully oddball, which is often even better.

"SSSSSS... once this picture sinks its fangs into you, you'll never be the same. Touch your skin... it's scaled. Look for your legs... they're gone. Feel your body... it's cold. Listen for the hissing. Don't say it... hiss it."

I mean, come on. How freaking cool is that? It's the kind of gloriously over-the-top copy that makes me miss an era when advertisers apparently thought the best way to sell things was to turn people into reptiles. While not a "horror" movie fan...I do think I want to try to find this one to watch! The movie poster advertisement is AMAZING!

And then there's Mel Brooks. Really, who can resist Mel Brooks? The man could probably record himself reading a lawn fertilizer label and I'd happily sit through it twice.

I've got a few more of these radio spots tucked away, and they're weird enough that they'll probably deserve a future megapost of their own. Because if there's one thing record collecting has taught me, it's that no matter how strange the item in your hand may seem, there's always something even stranger waiting in the next box.