{"id":1063,"date":"2025-08-22T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/?p=1063"},"modified":"2025-07-03T10:00:35","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T10:00:35","slug":"music-of-the-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/2025\/08\/22\/music-of-the-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Music of the Night"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WARNING<\/mark>: <\/strong>This Article May Contain Spoilers<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listen to the children of the night, what beautiful music they make\u2026<\/em>or whatever Dracula once said. I don\u2019t know if anyone would consider this as sub-genre of horror but you know what, I\u2019m going to and it\u2019s one that is strangely pleasing to know exists. That sub-genre, my friends, is horror musicals and it is a treat you will not want to miss! The funny thing is, now I\u2019ve mentioned this \u2013 those of you reading have now thought of both Phantom of the Opera <\/em>and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, <\/em>so I\u2019ve left them out on purpose\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Repo! The Genetic Opera<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

              I could not tell you how long I\u2019ve been waiting to see this film! You would think from it\u2019s opening that it was a musical spawned from a graphic novel however, like many other films on this list, it is an adaptation of a stage musical of the same name from 2002. They also use the same comic style, reminiscent of Sin City, <\/em>to explain past situation that have an influence on the current story and it somehow makes it more digestible. It\u2019s one of those stories that\u2019s difficult to describe other than it\u2019s a dystopian future I really don\u2019t think any of us would want to come true. Describing this as an opera is pretty apt as rarely is any dialogue actually spoken, almost all of it is sung. I had stumbled across the song Zydrate Anatomy <\/em>a while ago and loved it but the rest of the soundtrack for this film is just as good, but it\u2019s still my favourite song of the lot without a doubt! It\u2019s helped by some of the unbelievable voices provided by people like Anthony Head and Terrence Zdunich. I did feel that could have got someone better than Paris Hilton to play Amber Sweet but then realised, maybe Amber\u2019s isn\u2019t supposed to be very good\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lure<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

              It\u2019s honestly so rare that I get to cover a foreign film as part of these articles but I\u2019m glad that I didn\u2019t use this as my Polish film for the Western European Horror <\/em>article. This probably sounds really odd but I don\u2019t think the sirens singing would sound as beautiful if it was English. Truthfully, that\u2019s the case for most of the songs \u2013 reading the subtitles just isn\u2019t the same. It\u2019s actually rare, if you know your mythology, for sirens to sing in order to come ashore, it\u2019s usually just to kill the men they lured to them. I started to think that this film was only being considered as a musical because Silver and Golden were joining a band and that is where the songs come in \u2013 then they break into song when they\u2019re taken shopping for new clothes and it felt like a typical musical. It is rather difficult to describe this film as a horror though because nothing really \u201chorrific\u201d happens. Yes, Golden kills a man around half an hour into the film and then kills Mietek at the end but outside of that, there\u2019s nothing scary about this \u2013 and I\u2019ve seen a mermaid horror film before. That doesn\u2019t mean that it\u2019s not a little weird at times though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suck<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

              At first I was a little bit worried about using this film because it\u2019s based around a rock band, it might be considered as somewhat questionable but once Flesh and Bone <\/em>is sung \u2013 I realised it was more of a musical than I remembered. A lot of those songs that aren\u2019t performed by The Winners, the band the film follows, are done by well-known performers such as Alice Cooper, David Bowie and Burning Brides (the lead singer of which plays the vampire that turns Jennifer). This film is basically a rock and roll version of Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula <\/em>just this time our lead vampire is a female and the band are surprisingly accepting of Jennifer\u2019s new found power instead of everyone wanting to hunt her down and kill her. It\u2019s almost as if Lucy Westenra became the lead character, which I realise is a reference that only makes sense if you\u2019ve read the book or seen the 1992 film. The only annoying thing is there\u2019s no access to an actual soundtrack to this film as the songs sung by The Winners are nowhere to be found. I guess you can consider this as half jukebox musical half original as songs like Flesh and Bone <\/em>and If One of Us Goes Further <\/em>feature on Burning Brides album Anhedonia <\/em>meaning none of the songs by real performing artists were written specifically for this film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rocky Horror Picture Show<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

              You know when people talk about comfort films or films they can just watch whenever, well for me this is one of those. Now, having said that it means I\u2019ve seen this film several times but this was the first time that I noticed a number of the wedding guests at the beginning are also guests at Dr Frank-N-Furter\u2019s castle – like a perfect stage show ensemble it seems. Maybe I\u2019m distracted by Christopher Biggins every time watch it, making everyone else pass me by. I know you\u2019re naturally supposed to side with Brad and Janet throughout the film but I honestly find Janet a little bit irritating (also not a fan of later behaviour!) but more importantly Dr Frank-N-Furter and his crew of Transylvanian Transvestites (yes, that is really what they\u2019re called) have the better songs! For example, this film is home to what became a family party favourite in The Time Warp. <\/em>I\u2019ll be honest, the reason I keep coming back to this film is quite how amazing Tim Curry is \u2013 both as an actor and a singer. Now, I won\u2019t pretend there aren\u2019t little weird moments but some do make sense at the end however the one thing I\u2019ve been able to work out is the relationship between Magenta and Riff Raff. I know they are referred to as brother and sister but is this really the case?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The Devil\u2019s Carnival<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

              Here\u2019s a rarity \u2013 this musical is from exactly the same director as that of Repo! The Genetic Opera <\/em>which in the beginning I was concerned that it was actually a sequel. You\u2019ll be happy to know however, that it is not. I remember hearing about this for the first time back when I was an avid listener of Emilie Autumn\u2019s music, the singer who plays The Painted Doll in this film. Strangely she only sings once, close to the end of the film, and we never hear her speak! There are also a lot of cross over actors in this film, including Terrence Rzudnick, Alex Vega (it\u2019s crazy how much she\u2019s grown up in 4 years) and Paul Servino. It might be because this film is only about an hour long, it feels a little bit rushed in comparison to the others in this article. This also means that it doesn\u2019t feel much like a musical as even the songs are quite short, almost like a bunch of skits thrown together. Which would make more sense to me if this was had been made first but Repo! <\/em>Actually came earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Little Shop of Horrors<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

              This may be either a well-known or little known fact but even though this is a film adaptation of an off-Broadway musical, it is also a remake of the 1960 film of the same name, directed by Roger Corman. The funny thing is, I knew the soundtrack to this film long before I was old enough to watch it for the first time and I don\u2019t think there\u2019 s a song that I don\u2019t enjoy! Not only does this film have big actors in Rick Moranis and Steve Martin in main roles but there are also cameos made by several other stars including John Candy and Billy Murray \u2013 I would be here for a while if I mentioned them all by name! Once again, and I think this is saying more about me than the films maybe, the bad guy is actually my favourite character in the whole film but again, Audrey II does have the best songs! I\u2019ve also recently seen the stage show and I don\u2019t remember them noticeably having characters like Ronette, Crystal and Chiffon \u2013 who may remind people a little of the Muses in Disney\u2019s Hercules. <\/em>In a weird kind of way, considering they sing the opening and titular song, the girls work as harbingers for what is to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WARNING: This Article May Contain Spoilers Listen to the children of the night, what beautiful music they make\u2026or whatever Dracula once said. I don\u2019t know if anyone would consider this as sub-genre of horror but you know what, I\u2019m going to and it\u2019s one that is strangely pleasing to know exists. That sub-genre, my friends, … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","latest_post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1063"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1064,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063\/revisions\/1064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}