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Song of the Day #5,591: ‘Tubular Bells’ – Mike Oldfield

Demonic Possession movies are a storied enough subset of the supernatural horror genre to deserve their own category.

I’m not a religious man, but for some reason this is the genre that frightens me the most. Something about the creepiness of ordinary people turned into monsters, I guess.

Because of that, I probably have the most gaps in my viewing lineup for these films as well. I haven’t watched the Conjuring or Insidious films yet, and I haven’t fired up Paranormal Activity. I haven’t gotten around to The Omen, either, a movie that always frightened me from afar when I was a kid.

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Song of the Day #5,590: ‘Hip to Be Square’ – Huey Lewis & the News

Psychological Horror movies are more about the characters’ state of mind than some outside terrorizing force. To be fair, those outside forces are often present, but the filmmaking is more interested in the emotional and mental fallout.

The movie considered by many the best in this sub-genre is Roman Polanski’s 1965 Repulsion, the director’s first English-language film. Repulsion stars a chilly Catherine Deneuve as a woman pathologically averse to the leering presence of men. Hiding in her apartment, beset by increasingly disturbing hallucinations, she descends into murderous madness.

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Song of the Day #5,589: ‘I never dreamed someone like you could love someone like me’ – Katie Irving by

The next category I’ll cover in my horror movie project is Supernatural/Paranormal. These are movies where the scares come courtesy of some extraordinary phenomenon.

This is a broad category with several subsets, including yesterday’s featured Monsters, and Demonic Possession, which I’ll get to later this week.

One of the pleasures of my horror movie binge has been catching up with titles I’ve known for years but never managed to see. One such film is 1979’s The Amityville Horror, which set up shop in my childhood brain as a truly terrifying experience.

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Song of the Day #5,588: ‘Bad Moon Rising’ – Creedence Clearwater Revival

Sometime last year I decided to shed my lifelong aversion to horror films.

I’ve traditionally avoided the genre for a pretty simple reason — I don’t like feeling afraid. I particularly don’t like to be startled (you should see me cringe in the presence of a party balloon). A jump scare is my kryptonite.

So naturally I’ve stayed away from movies likely to scare me. But in doing so I’ve cut myself off from a treasure trove of cinematic artistry.

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Song of the Day #5,587: ‘Safe and Sound’ – Capital Cities

The last time I threw back to 2013, I had to go all the way down to #10 before hitting a song I hadn’t featured on the blog.

Well, the Billboard Hot 100 in the fall of 2013 was awfully static, because today I’m forced — in true Spinal Tap fashion — to go to 11.

The songs making up the top ten are the same batch as last time, in slightly different order: Lorde’s ‘Royals, ‘Katy Perry’s ‘Roar,’ Miley Cyrus’ ‘Wrecking Ball,’ Avicii’s ‘Wake Me Up!,’ Drake’s ‘Hold On, We’re Going Home,’ Jay Z’s ‘Holy Grail,’ Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines,’ Lady Gaga’s ‘Applause,’ and Lana Del Rey’s ‘Summertime Sadness.’

There is one newcomer, slotted right between Drake and Jay-Z. That is Ylvis, with their viral parody song ‘The Fox.’ But alas, I featured that hilarious track on the blog ten years ago.

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