Buttkickin' Halloween Songs: "Dark Night" - The Blasters (1985)

I thought these things didn’t happen anymore.
I thought all that blood had been shed long ago.

It’s a dark night…

In the early winter of 1996, Robert Rodriguez’s epic horrror/crime/vampire/exploitation flick From Dusk Till Dawn exploded into theaters and into the hearts of grindhouse movie lovers everywhere. Even if it wasn’t that much of a big hit, it almost instantly became an underground smash. I remember it all too well; I ended up seeing it twice the weekend it opened, and came out of it a slavish devotee. So much to love in one movie, it can’t even be described. And Salma Hayek in her curvaceously awesome prime… I need a moment.

OK. We’re back. Our Buttkickin’ Halloween Song of the day is The Blasters’s Dark Night, a 1985 tune that was brought back by Rodriguez to play under the movie’s opening credits, to great effect. It set the perfect stage for what was to come: secrets in darkness, lowered shades, locked doors, small town suspicions, tragic histories, and of course bloodshed and murder. The opening lines reek of sweltering heat and ominous decay: “Hot air hangs like a dead man from a white oak tree…” A family movies to town, a new boy falls for a local girl, but the other locals know exactly what will transpire over time. The young lovers attempt a rendezvous outside of town, but their secret is known, and events culminate in a single moment of horror and tragedy.

The song is Grade-A creepifyng with a grooving Southern Rock twang. So bar the door, latch the windows, kill the lights, and wait for sunlight. For all the good it’ll do you…