32 Days of Halloween XII, Day 21: Dead Men Walk!

Today’s musical selection is from 1983: “Surf Bat” by 45 Grave. There are, of course, many great stories of how bands got their names. Their story is one of the best I’ve heard in quite a while. Don Bolles said in an interview over at Victim of Time that bandmate Paul Cutler had gotten him a gift at a thrift store. A giant button with a slogan on it.

It said “We Dig” and a huge number “45” and underneath it said “grave.” WE DIG 45 GRAVE. I said what? I’m just lookin’ at this thing like it’s this mystical object from space. We were laughing our asses off! ‘What the hell is this?’ … And I said, obviously this…obviously 45 Grave is now the name of our new band and this is obviously our 1st fan club button. And everyone said yes, of course, obviously.

Fantastic. So…”Surf Bat.”

Occasionally, I start out trying to find one sort of thing for 32 Days and wind up somewhere else completely. I was checking the list of episodes of This is Your Life and You Asked For It to see if there were any we hadn’t posted thus far. But I ran across mention of a short film about the Winchester Mystery House that was show on the latter show multiple times. And then, when trying to find that short film, I ran across this documentary about the house instead, from 1963. So that’s how Halloween rabbit holes look these days.

For tonight’s main event, we go to 1943 and Dead Men Walk, starring George Zucco (Moriarty to Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes in 1939) and Dwight Frye (Renfield to Bela Lugosi’s Dracula). If you’re going to kill your twin, make sure they aren’t going to use their occult prowess to come back to life and kill others and possibly you. So again, yet another cautionary tale.