The Atrocious Music Collection: Last in a series
Artist: Judson Fountain (1934-2005)
Title: The Old Woman of Haunted House
Category: Radio DramasYear: 1969
Cover art style: N/A
Audio/Video: The Old Woman of Haunted House
Acquisition: recorded from WFMU in 1980s.
I mentioned a yellow tape in an earlier chapter, when I posted innocuous songs from it. This is the dangerous thing on the yellow tape. The thing, if heard, cannot be unheard. You’ve been warned.
I am not the only one who sees Judson Fountain's relation to the radio drama as being like Ed Wood’s to movies. That makes The Old Woman of Haunted House the radio drama equivalent to Plan 9 from Outer Space. Both of these outsider artists are at the heart of why the Atrocious Music Collection exists in the first place, so despite their technically non-musical nature, they deserve to be there, dammit.
At least with a radio drama, the medium of sound remains ascendant.
This drama was on Judson's first recording, made in 1969, untitled, and without a sleeve (the cover above is from a 2008 collection). Judson’s sometimes collaborator Sandor Weisberger plays the role Criswell serves for Woods – mystifying us from the get-go with a disjointed introduction. (Why does he specifically call out Judson's Puerto Rican listeners, for example?)
There so much wrong here – the plot, the sound effects, the editing (or lack thereof), the inner-monologues, the strange leaps of logic, the voices. Oh, the voices! and the accents! And the dialog! Why does everyone have to say their own name over and over (“I’m Molly!” “I’m Pops Soriano!”). And why is there the whole bit about Molly and Pops in the first place?
Look, let’s face the fact that this is, in a way, actually scary. The earworm quotient is so high. (“Boooy!”) The skipping around in the plot without any real explanation creates a dream- (or nightmare-) like quality. The anticipation of things coming together and wrapping up, only to not get that release, is also dream-like, leading us to believe we must have missed something – do we need to listen to it again? No, dear God, no, don’t make me listen to it again.
As Woods made other movies, not just Plan 9, Fountain created other radio dramas, including The Castle of Lo Sein, which is sort of a sequel to The Old Woman. All of the same characters reappear, still doing the same thing, in a Chinese vampire story. Here the introduction includes an interview with Judson, by Sandor, discussing Chinese food, the two Chinese gentlemen who had him at their restaurant, and his writing method. We get a sense of his genuine kindness and charm, when he says, “when someone does something nice for me, I like to do something for them.” And so we get another radio story! A gift, indeed.
But The Old Woman of Haunted House is special, and that is why I saved it until last. For all of its traits, we need to remember that it was also one of his early works, and therefore has that special quality of freshness plus enthusiasm plus a lack of ability which combine to create the wonderfully, unselfconscious, unexpectedly entertaining work of art that is so perfectly Atrocious.
So let’s take Sandor’s suggestion, stop what we’re doing, turn out all the lights, and listen. Listen to ALL of it!