Space Age Terror Trilogy
Memory Wheel Halloween 2025
Three (or more!) terrifying title tunes. Conflicting time signatures. Polyrhythms. If someone could interpolate all three cues in one arrangement, that would be spooky!
Title music from Suspiria, Zombie and Halloween III with a couple Easter eggs thrown in.
No Sampling. No AI. This is a new recording of a new performance.
LISTENER NOTES
I first came across the word interpolated in a musical context—or indeed any context—when I was 8 or 9 years old and discovered that John Williams interpolated a stealth version of “When You Wish Upon a Star” into his music for “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”. It was a strange word and an exotic idea. I worked extra-hard in wrapping my brain around it.
Flash forward and I’m a classically trained composer who should be able to execute a little interpolation of my own.
So, for this Halloween season, I’ve chosen to interpolate Fabio Frizzi’s macabre Italian horror theme from Lucio Fulci’s 1978 film Zombie on top of the ultra cool John Carpenter and Alan Howarth cue “Chariots of Pumpkins” from the brilliant, underrated film Halloween III, Season of the Witch. Add Goblin’s haunting “Suspiria” for good measure.
Zombie
Fulci’s “Zombie” is variously known as Zombie, Zombie 2, or even “Zombie Flesh Eaters”. Whatever you call it, it may be among the top 10 movies you will ever see where a zombie fights a shark in hand-to-hand (hand-to-fin?) combat, probably inspired by the success of Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster Jaws. Zombie’s status as a recognized British “video nasty” may not be to everyone’s taste, but the third act is legitimately drive-in movie high-octane action fuel.
Shifting gears to the more thoughtful side of horror, I challenge you to debate the following:
Halloween III
“Halloween III Season of the Witch” is a bona fide masterpiece.
Somewhere in the multiverse there is a reality where the Halloween series went on to become a Nigel Kneale inspired anthology series, and Halloween III spawned numerous unique and thoughtful non-stabby, non-Michael Myers spook shows all centered around the concept of Halloween.
Meanwhile in this reality, Halloween III is a genuinely effective offbeat chiller boasting the gorgeous cinematography of Dean Cundey, and that is a Hill House that I will die on.
John Carpenter, in association with Alan Howarth, created the effective ’80s music for this opus. They were using a technique John Carpenter called his “musical electronic colouring book”, which is to say that they were improvising and recording live to tape while watching the film patched into a TV monitor.
Alan Howarth jokingly named this lush track “Chariots of Pumpkins” as a parody of Vangelis’ Oscar-bait synthesizer hit from a year earlier, “Chariots of Fire”.
The Halloween III theme has a melody of sorts, but in this case I’ve chosen to interpolate the long line melody from Lucio Fulci’s Zombie 2 (music by Fabio Frizzi), an effective theme that was underserved by its original recording, and to my knowledge has never received a quality re-recording.
Suspiria
Dario Argento’s Suspiria is another honest-to-goodness work of art. Prog outfit Goblin deserves their ongoing success. Like John Carpenter, they occasionally tour and are well worth seeing.
I set myself up for failure here by choosing three tunes in different time signatures (as well as one Easter egg in NO time signature). If you are so inclined, pay attention to the animated 70s bassline in Suspiria, which is meant to evoke a 5/4 feel, even though I adapted all three tunes to work together in the same time signature. Unless you know the original soundtrack quite well, you may be fooled into thinking that my bassline is the authentic original. It’s nowhere close.
Interpolation Accumulation
A year ago, Hurricane Debby was passing directly over my head. I spent the time to record themes for an imaginary movie about cowboy ghost pirates, which I thought would make a smashing film, or at least a decent Halloween themed music video.
Although the appeal seems to be exclusive, the themes are solid, and the high-concept idea is kind of trippy. Check out the link in my channel. Orchestral horror/adventure is a tangential match for my channel concept of space and planetarium music.
So the idea here is that I would adapt Halloween III, Suspiria, and Zombie 2 to somehow be “Space Music”.
Well you’ll be glad to know that for this Halloween, I’ve abandoned the “strictly Space Music” concept again. Please enjoy an only slightly spacey version of Halloween III Season of The Witch (“Chariots of Pumpkins”, if you prefer) with Suspiria and the brilliant but underserved theme from Zombie.
“Interpolated” for your listening pleasure.
— André
October 23, 2025
Space Coast, FL