32 Days of Halloween IX, Day 2: Alice Cooper & Faust!

Welcome to Day 2. For today’s selections, I was going to go with Alice Cooper‘s 1978 appearance on The Muppet Show. Specifically his performance (with his own band of Muppets, The Vile Bunch) of “Welcome to My Nightmare.” However, Mr. Cooper has provided a commentary of sorts on his appearance, so we have to go with that. Be warned, he doesn’t say a whole lot, but what he does say is pretty much gold.

And oddly enough, as he reminds us in that commentary, the film had a definite Faustian theme to it. Which is fortunate, as I had already chosen for tonight’s feature film, the 1926 Faust. A German silent film directed by F.W. Murnau (yes, the man who helmed Nosferatu), it’s his last before moving to the U.S. to do things like Sunrise. That film would go on to win two of the first Academy Awards, one of which we would think of Best Picture now but I won’t list the full name of the prize because I think they just couldn’t get to the point in 1928. As with a lot of black and white, silent films, some of the imagery is bloody amazing. Enjoy.