Could there be any better Halloween gift than to wander around in Alice Cooper's brain for an evening, watching him teeter on the edge of sanity, just about to fall off?
Proooobably not.
That's why this year, Halloween Horror Nights 2011 at Universal Studios Hollywood will veer from its traditional horror movie theme with a personal addition from Alice Cooper himself: a haunted maze that draws on elements from the shock rocker's theatrical concerts and feature music from his 1975 concept album, Welcome to My Nightmare.
Imagine actual snakes, a sadistic insane asylum, Cooper's childhood bedroom where he turned from Vincent Furnier to Alice Cooper forever, and decapitations, all set to themes from some of his classic songs.
A bit of a spoiler alert, but examples include a room called "Bedroom Closet," where visitors leave the real world to head into Cooper's nightmare via his bedroom closet, navigating through disemboweled bodies hanging from the ceilings that actual smell, before heading into a Toy Box room filled with dolls--some stuffed, some with actors inside-- to the soundtrack of "Dead Babies."
There's Morgue room, where zombie characters pop out of coffin drawers in the confined narrow hallway, and it ends at a zombie gnawing the face off a hot nurse as "blood" drenches visitors. The soundtrack? "I Love the Dead."
Other songs include "Killer," "I Am The Spider," "Black Widow," "Halo of Flies" and "Inmates, We're All Crazy."
Alas, we all know Cooper has had, what, 28 studio albums by now? There's a huge inventory of songs that pair perfectly with Halloween, much like the beauty of having a glass of red wine wash down a juicy, bloody steak.
Here's a handful of favorites that we here at Up On The Sun thought should have been repped in Cooper's twisted mind-fuck of a madhouse.
"Ballad of Dwight Fry" from 1971's Love It to Death
In this song, Cooper is a screaming madman, creating the straitjacket-inspired "Ballad of Dwight Fry." Perfect for a set up with a father on too much medication scaring the hell out of his family. "I was gone for 14 days/I could've been gone for more..."
"Cold Ethyl" from 1975's Welcome to My Nightmare
A song to his corpse bride, full of puns like "One thing, no lie/Ethyl frigid as an Eskimo Pie/She's cool in bed/Well she oughta be cause Ethyl's dead..."
"Go To Hell" from 1976's Alice Cooper Goes to Hell
The lead-off track to Cooper's follow-up to "Alice Cooper Goes to Hell." Cooper sentences himself to Hell for criminal acts and violence on stage, telling himself in his own song that his grandmother is sickened by him. "Only Women Bleed" from 1975's Welcome to My Nightmare
Performed by Cooper while he fake murdered fellow performers on stage, ideal for a bloody murder scene among groupie fans.
"Clones" from 1980's Flush the Fashion
Although the song in itself isn't that creepy, Cooper does have a chilly, robotic delivery that would pair nicely with surging zombies in a haunted maze.
"Sick Things" from 1973's Billion Dollar Babies
With Cooper sneering "sick things, my things, my pet, my things" and talking about how he "eats" his thing, is cannibalism something that would come into play? What about Alices eating Alices? Not to mention he laughs maniacally like the Penguin from Batman at one point. That's creepy enough in itself.
"Black Juju" from 1971's Love It to Death
Creepy organs and such lyrics as "dead feelings are cool" and "under the soil now, waiting for worms" and "bodies need their rest" would be an awesome outro to any haunted house.
"Millie and Billie" from 1978's From the Inside
A song about the two characters killing Millie's husband and cut him into small pieces to fit into individual sandwich baggies.
