The 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat #11 - Even More Death & Horror

Hello dear guys and ghouls! Welcome back to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat! Come in, sit down, and make yourself comfy! For I've got the battered old gramophone out again and some prime platters to spin for you! 

Now then, on our last visit to the 'Orrible Old 'Ouse, we learned about the infamous Volume 13 of the BBC Sound Effects record series - Sounds of Death & Horror. An infamous disc that brought us a host of memorable tracks with titles such as "Head Chopped Off" and "Heavy Breathing (Female)". And despite the somewhat predictably outcry from self-appointed moral guardians, the LP was a huge success. and the BBC were soon looking to give the kids what they wanted - another volume of gruesome and gory sounds! 

So then, a year after the first album's release, 1978 saw the Sound Effects series of LPs reach Volume 21, and this addition to the series was to be another black disc of violent vinyl! For this LP was Sound Effects No. 21 More Death & Horror! Once again helmed by the Radiophonic Workshop's Mike Harding, and this time aided and abetted by Peter Harwood, this putrescent platter served 21 tracks of madness, mutilation and mayhem! And once again it came in a brilliantly lurid sleeve designed Mr Andrew Prewitt

Now unlike its predecessor, this reprehensible record wasn't arranged into handy sections. Rather this lurid long player just jetted one long torrent of terror at the listener! There were 26 tracks in all, and here's the full run-down of those golden greats!

1. Death Of The Fly
2. Vampire Feeding
3. Death By Harikiri
4. Sweeney Todd The Barber
5. Wind Through Crack In Door
6. Wind In The Trees
7. Synthesised Wind (Electronic)
8. Sea Monster
9. Sharpening The Knife
10. Falling Scream
11. Premature Burial
12. Wild Dogs
13. The Iron Maiden
14. Death In The Swamp
15. The Sewer Rats
16. The Poisoned Drink
17. The Rack
18. Midnight Strangler
19. Assorted Gun Shots
20. At The Dentist
21. Time Bomb
22. Death By Electrocution
23. Gouging Eyeballs
24. Russian Roulette
25. Death By Garrotting
26. Suicide by Gas 

Now if I had a criticism, I would say that personally I'd have been inclined to tweak the running order so that "Synthesised Wind (Electronic)" would have been followed by "Suicide by Gas", purely for comedy reasons. However the inclusion of the track "At the Dentist" does rather suggest the makers did indeed had a dark sense of humour., albeit one not as childish as mine. Anywho, if you wish to hear the killer cuts above, here they are courtesy of some thieving git on Tube of You... 

However that's not the end of this grisly saga! For there was a third LP in the series! Well, three is the charm as they say. Released a few years later in 1982, Even More Death & Horror BBC Sound Effects Vol. 27 hit the record stores to serve up one final deadly disc of doom and destruction. 

Now of all the LPs in Sound Effects horror trilogy, this platter is now the rarest. And it was also the shortest, clocking in at a mere 27 minutes. However what a mad half hour it was! And while it may have been the briefest outing in the world of lurid listening, certainly it featured perhaps the most imaginative and darkly hilarious tracklisting yet!

1 Intentional Death
Staking A Vampire - Three Mallet Blows
Two Throat Cuts Or Two Throats Cut
The Gas Chamber - The Cyanide Tablets Drop Into The Acid Releasing The Deadly Fumes
Wrists Cut - The Blood Drips Into The Bucket
Assorted Stabbing
Drilling Into The Head - Enough Said
Body Put Into The Acid Bath
Self Immolation
Silencer (Pistol) - Vocal/Synth/Mechanical
Electric Fire Thrown Into The Bath
Boiling Oil - Poured Off The Castle Wall

2 Torture
Tongue Pulled Out
Fingernails Pulled Out - Assorted
Fingers Chopped Off (5)
Trial By Ordeal - A "Medievil" Practice Where The Accused Would Pick A Ring Out Of A Deep Pot Of Boiling Water - If The Resulting Burns Healed Up Quickly The He/She Was Innocent - Some Chance!
Whipping - A Touch Of The Lash Keeps You On Your Toes (Or Knees)
Torture Lab - A.D. 2500

3 Accidental (?) Death
Lift Falling (With Passengers)
Female Falling From A Height (Ladies First)
Male Falling From A Height

4 Reaction (To The Sounds You've Just Heard)
Viz: Involuntary Regurgitation

5 Nasty Animals And Birds
Werewolf - The Transformation From Human To Beast
Giant Killer Bees - No Honey From These
Sleeping Dragon - Don't Waken It Up
Dragon - On The Move Through The Bushes - With Occasional Flaming Bad Breath
Dragon Kill - The Death Of The Monster
Pterodactyl Flying - With Squawks
Vultures Feeding - If You Lie Around Long Enough, They'll Clean You Out
Piranha Fish Feeding - Don't Go For A Swim
In The Snake Pit - They Hiss With Forked Tongues
"The Birds" Attack A Feed - On What You May Ask
Triffids - (i) Sting (ii) "Talking"

And so then, while this may be the shortest outing in the series, and its sleeve art seems somewhat lacking compared to the phantasmagoria of the previous two volumes, even the harshest critic would be forced to admit that they really out-did themselves with the track listing for this one! Every opportunity for a ghoulish gag is taken! It's all killer and no filler! A very fitting end to the series I feel.

However there is a postscript to this tale. For some five or six years later, nearly a decade after the first LP's release, in a few issues of the blood-drenched Fangoria magazine, the following advertisement appeared under the heading "Sound o' Splatter"... They just don't write ad copy like this anymore... 

The 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat #08 - The Tatlight Zone

You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of tat. A journey into a dubious land whose boundaries are that of the imagination of tired marketing executives. That's the signpost up ahead - your next stop, the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible of Tat!

Yes, welcome once again dear friends to this marvellous repository of the weird, the wonderful and the wonky! Now then, on our initial tours of the collections of questionable ephemera here, we've had a gander at some items that were rather fondly remembered. However, now it's time to take the gloves off, and delve into some of the darker recesses of the 'Orrible 'Ouse, and sample something that is not so well loved. Or even well remembered... And quite possibly deservedly so! 

Now I must confess I never owned the item in question, but in my defence, from my researches into the matter, I'm not entirely sure anyone ever owned one of these! For it is not very often that one discovers some piece of tie-in tat that isn't listed multiple times on the likes of Ebay. But I am getting ahead of myself... Follow me, let's take a quick trip back to the Dark Ages. Well, the 1980s at least... 

Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a world that didn't have the internet. Yes, I know, hard to believe, but it did happen. Anyhow, if you were a devotee of the weird and wonderful, the pre-web could be a somewhat sucky place. For in all probability the town where you lived didn't have a games shop, or a comic book store, and even if you wanted something relatively mundane, like the latest copy of House of Hammer, or Starlog, or Fangoria or Starburst, you had to traipse around many newsagents to find one. Now given this state of affairs, marvellous mags like the seminal journals I just mentioned were always full of ads from assorted mail order companies; places that would happily sell you tomes, comics, soundtrack LPs, models and all kinds of tie-in tat. Indeed, in future excursions in the 'Orrible 'Ouse we will no doubt be looking at some of these fabled items of tantalising mail order swag.

But the trouble was, back then mail order was a long slow process, and for most kids somewhat impractical. For it meant that parents had to be cajoled into parting with credit card numbers or cheques. And naturally most parents took a dim view of their offspring wanting the score to Cannibal Holocaust, a chestburster T shirt, or a life-size poster of Frankenstein's Monster. Plus quite often the mag you were perusing came from the other side of the Atlantic which meant coughing up more for the shipping than the original item. However despite much of the readership being kids without access to credit, or simply being in an entirely different country to the vendor, evidently these mail order outfits did well enough from this fan market over the years for some very strange things to be offered. 

And the one of oddest of all, I spotted in the pages of dear old Fango, way back in 1986. It was an ad that ran several times, and I have always wondered whether anyone bought one. Now this was a little item called The Zone Box, a bit of tie-in tat for the classic TV series The Twilight Zone. Now at that time, the show had just been revived the year before, in 1985, and of course Rod Sterling's original series was still running late at night on many TV stations round the world. However despite its status as a recognised bona fide titan of television, I am still to this day at a loss to explain quite why anyone would need this particular treasure. Here's the ad -

Yes, the Zone Box! Just a box that plays the intro to The Twilight Zone... Why? I ask! Why in the name of Shatner's Gremlin would you need this? I don't even think it has The Twilight Zone written on it anywhere (despite being officially licensed allegedly)! I mean, seriously, who need this thing?!? It's as much use of Burgess Meredith's specs at the end of Time Enough At Last!!! 

Alright, enough exclamations marks now... Perhaps more seriously for any maniac considering buying this outrageous bit of old tat, it doesn't even specify which version of the intro the Zone Box plays - for the original show actually had several different ones. But from the blurb, I'd guess it uses the best known narration and theme combo that opened episodes in seasons 2 and 3. But obviously, having never seen a Zone Box in the flesh, I have no idea... But given that there does not seem to be any floating around for sale on the internet I suspect no one else has either!   

However I did turn up a couple of pictures of this highly dubious item, which do reveal what no doubt many of you older readers have suspected - that it works with one of those old miniature plastic record players. For younger folks, in the days before microchips and assorted cyber-tat, if you had something that made a noise or "spoke", whether it be some doll or a Palitoy Talking Dalek, the sounds were produced by a small turntable which played a tiny plastic record. Yes, proper old skool! Usually they were battery powered, but some operated with a pull-cord to spin the Borrower sized platter. Obviously they weren't very loud, and the cheap plastic discs never sounded anywhere near as good as a proper size vinyl LP. Plus, being cheap plastic they often got scratched to buggery very quickly. So then, I think it's safe to assert that Rod Sterling's famous narration probably sounded less than majestic coming from the depths of The Zone Box. 

I vividly remembering wondering who in Hades would desire such a thing, and indeed who exactly so badly needed to read Rod's dulcet tones on such a regular basis. And looking at it now, I can only marvel at the misguiding thinking that led the makers to actually trademarking the name "The Zone Box" - for I honestly can't imagine a huge demand for this item even among the most dedicated Twilight Zone fans, nevermind a market for pirate knock-offs. And judging by this piece of terrible old tat being virtually unmentioned in the vast expanses of the modern internet, I can only assume that very few were ever sold. Ironically it is a tie-in item that seems to have vanished into the Twilight Zone itself! 

Having said that though, it probably now sells for an absolute fortune. Possibly for the price of a small house. And hence in a twist worthy of the great Rod Serling himself, I'm now regretting not getting one back in '86...