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Song of the Day #5,600: ‘Islands in the Stream’ – Kenny Rogers & Kenny Rogers

Throwing back to the week of October 29, 1983, we find Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton topping the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘Islands in the Stream.’ The duet spent two weeks at #1, and gave each of the country legends their second chart-topper on the Hot 100. (Bonus points to any commenter who can name the previous #1 for one or both artists).

‘Islands in the Stream’ was written by the Bee Gees as an R&B song but it got a pop country makeover when it landed with Rogers and Parton. The song was released on Rogers’ album Eyes That See in the Dark, on which every track was written by Barry Gibb (most with brother Maurice).

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Song of the Day #5,599: ‘Roll with the Changes’ – REO Speedwagon

My final horror sub-genre is a kind of movie that crosses all the other sub-genres I’ve covered — the Comedy Horror. These movies can be about monsters, demons, slashers, you name it… what sets them apart is that they are just as interested in laughs as scares.

Last year gave us two great examples in The Menu and Bodies Bodies Bodies, the former a darkly humorous psychological horror about a high-end chef whose disdain for his customers is revealed in increasingly murderous fashion, and the latter a Gen Z satire in which a group of friends are trapped inside during a hurricane with a possible killer among them.

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Song of the Day #5,598: ‘Hello Zepp’ – Charlie Clouser

One horror sub-genre I’ve mostly stayed away from is the splatter film, more recently characterized as torture porn. These are movies that put the gore front and center and revel in the destruction of the human body.

I don’t need to watch that. And, perhaps more important, there just haven’t been many good ones. If the Citizen Kane of splatter films is out there, I’ll give it a shot. But these movies are more interested in pushing the envelope, risking censorship, and drumming up publicity.

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Song of the Day #5,597: ‘Profondo Rosso’ – Goblin

The most fun I had in my year of horror movie immersion came when I went down the rabbit hole of Giallo Cinema.

Previously, I knew the term, and knew it was associated with the work of Italian director Dario Argento, but I didn’t know anything more than that. This project was my opportunity to remedy the blind spot.

Giallo is Italian for “yellow,” and it is the name given to a certain kind of hard-boiled murder mystery (in both book and movie form). The name derives from the bright yellow covers of pulp novels published in Italy starting in 1929. Think of the American “pulp fiction” novels that inspired the title of Quentin Tarantino’s movie.

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Song of the Day #5,596: ‘Silent Night’ – King’s College Choir, Cambridge

I figured it was appropriate to save my next horror sub-genre for Halloween. After all, one of the best-loved Slasher Movies is named after the holiday. And this is the category that probably first leaps to mind when you think of big-screen horror.

Slasher films have given us some of the most enduring villains in film history: Norman Bates, Leatherface, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Ghostface. They usually prey on the young and the sexually active, before being bested (at least temporarily) by a virginal “final girl.” They might not win, but they never seem to die.

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