Since a kid I've been fascinated with graveyards and Music ... the music part will eventually make sense.
Having a Gothic heart even as a grade schooler, my fascination for graveyards was never disrespectful or profane -- my melancholic mind grappled with the puzzling contradiction between the reminder of life's finality and the peaceful park-like pleasantness of the settings.
My friend and I would often ride bikes through the local cemetery in our small town: the hill there was great for coasting and the cemetery was always cool, regardless how hot the rest of the world. Later, in my mid-20s while living in Havre de Grace, Maryland, I would take weekend day trips throughout the rural countryside finding small, unmarked graveyards dating back to the 1700s.
One day I found a small graveyard in the middle of nowhere. Under an oak tree I found a horizontal slab sitting on a raised stone rectangle, maybe 6 inches off the ground. The slab had been disturbed, so it didn't sit flush on the base, but instead exposed some of the dirt underneath. The stone, for a teenage year old girl who had died sometime in the early 1800s, read "Taken from the Evil to come." I was creeped out for days.
Graveyards of course are staples in horror movies, so any top list of movie graveyards would be futile due to the scope. Instead, for this Halloween, I've decided to simply pick five of my personal favorite graveyards in movies and other videos, and to make it more interesting, I've decided to only pick ones somehow tied to music. I told you the music would eventually make sense.
So, in no particular order, here are my top five favorite depictions of graveyards ... connected to music.
The Chosen: Halloween 2016 Edition: Favorite Depictions of Graveyards ... Connected to Music
This strange and darkly surreal concert film came out in 1975, although I saw it quite a bit later. What I did see around that time, though, was a glossy printed program from an Alice Cooper Concert showing a similar graveyard. I was a kid and was with my father, who was visiting a hunting buddy, a large and imposing guy named Ivan who had shoulder length Greg Allman-style hair and a large feather earring. Needless to say, Ivan was cool to a kid, and not knowing much about Alice Cooper at that that age, I was stunned when he showed me the pics -- rock and horror blended! Pretty much couldn't get more cool than that -- except when I learned that my horror icon, Vincent Price, did narration. Young. Mind. Blown.
I don't know how many times I've seen this, but I never tire of watching the cats hiss and the skeletons dance. I'm a fan of 1920s/30s cartoons anyway, but this is a favorite (this, and that supremely bizarre video for Cab Calloway's "St. James Infirmary" with Koko the Clown and Betty Boop in a glass coffin). Partly because of its age and animation style, partly because of its weirdness, this always makes my eventual demise seem a little less frightening.
I've got to be honest. The first time I saw Fantasia, I was a little bored. A lot bored. Watching it felt like a movie adults thought kids would like yet wouldn't. After sitting through abstracts, classical numbers that felt like they stretched on forever, and ballet-dancing hippos (just not cool for a horror movie kid), all without popcorn, I got the big payoff -- "Night on Bald Mountain". Scary enough even for me as a kid, ghosts are summoned from a creepy graveyard by a terrifying demon, all without a hint of dainty music. As an adult I certainly now have appreciation for the movie as well as classical music, but as a kid, it was that graveyard summoning -- that and Mickey as a sorcerer's apprentice -- that got me through.
You probably knew this was coming. Cliche? Probably. Still, "Jack's Lament" sung while strolling through the wonky, wobbly, tilted graveyard world of Tim Burton remains, and will always remain, awesome. And you get a ghost dog. Every graveyard can use a lovable ghost dog. Wish there had been a ghost dog in the graveyard where I rode my bike.
Beautiful animation matching a beautiful song, this 2008 song from Morcheeba's Dive Deep features a video highlighting the talents of animator Joel Trussell. I return over and over to watch this. A group of animal friends in a graveyard that awake the dead, only to go sky surfing on tombstones. This may well be my favorite music video ... ever.
"With the moonlight to guide you feel the joy of being alive, the day that you stop running is the day that you arrive...."
