Smolkin's songs


1) Sing a song of graveyards, an acre full of germs. / Four and twenty landlords, dinner for the worms. / When the box was opened, the birds began to sing. / Isn't that a dainty dish to set before a thing?

2) Three witches have heads, but they'll sever them all. / The head of Helene is the third that must fall. / All the king's horses and all the king's men / Can't put the witches together again.

3) Hickory dickory horse. / My guest is dead, of course. / The clock struck two! / He's turning blue, / With little or no remorse.

4) Hey diddle diddle, the rat and the fiddle. The corpse jumped over his tomb. / The murderer vowed ???? as he strangled the girl in the gloom, gloom, gloom.

5) Old Mother Basket opened her casket to fetch her poor dog a bone. / To take one she tried, but the corpse sadly cried, "Be off, ghoul, and leave me alone."

6) Jack Pratt would eat no fat. His wife would eat no lean. / And so, between the two of them, they licked the coffin clean.

The only copy I could find was that horrid thing on YouTube. *sigh* I HATE that Mysticwhateveritis! Any film buff should detest people taking obscure films and overlapping them with extremely unfunny remarks. If someone did this at a real theater, you'd be making them shut up or reporting them to management. I know that I would! Anyway... The snarky remarks make it very difficult to interpret some of the lyrics. I especially had trouble with the fourth one.

If anyone can correct any of these, I'd really appreciate it because I want to add them to my HubPage, where I'm collecting poems and lyrics from movies, ones that might be tricky to track down generally. I'd love to have accurate Digger Smolkin songs.

~~MystMoonstruck~~

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re: the rat and the fiddle-I think the lyrics
go: "the murderer laughed to see such blood
as he strangled a girl in the gloom, gloom, gloom."

So this is how liberty dies-with thunderous applause?

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Thank you! I listened to that one so many times, but these old ears couldn't seem to catch it.

Maybe that's the result of working in a factory and going to too many Heavy Metal concerts. =}

*** The trouble with reality is there is no background music. ***

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I've got to admit-that gravedigger character
always cracked me up with his "unique take"
on classic nursery rhymes.

So this is how liberty dies-with thunderous applause?

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I recalled when I first got to see this film and was amazed that it isn't shown more. Just the fact that it has Allison Hayes should guarantee it being aired, as she has a following. I really enjoy this one, which is why I was bugged about it being available only with the snarky remarks in that program, which I truly despise.

"The Terror", "Little Shop of Horrors" and other quickly filmed movies are run by TCM, THIS and others. "The Undead" should be, too!

*** The trouble with reality is there is no background music. ***

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Oh, when is this movie going to be streamed or released?
This was so funny.

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1) Sing a song of graveyards, an acre full of germs. / Four and twenty landlords, dinner for the worms. / When the box was opened, the birds began to sing. / Isn't that a dainty dish to set before a thing?

The melody is actually from a Norwegian children's song by Thorbjørn Egner, which was written in 1952, near as I have been able to find out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oWRuISSRKw

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It's "Hey diddle, diddle the rat and the fiddle, the corpse jumped over a tomb, the murderer laughed to see such a sight, as he strangled a girl in the gloom,gloom, as he strangled a girl in the gloom." Smolkin's creepy song riddle adds suspense superbly to the scene it's sung in Roger Corman's "The Undead." The film is a Halloween hypnosis story that includes genres of sci-fi, horror, and true love. In it a lovely "lady of the evening" - Diana, is set back into middle ages to save herself in an earlier life from being hanged as a witch. Beautiful buxom Livia, played by Allison Hayes, has framed her to get her knight who loves Diana. The knight is the hypnotist who sends Diana back in time. "The Undead" was released after "It Conquered the World"- a Corman sci-fi horror film. In it a look-alike for our damsel in distress, Karen Kadler, plays a pretty aero-space scientist who is strangled by her co-scientist, who's under the mind control of an evil alien, who releases hideous batlike creatures who implant antennae into the victim's medulla oblongata to cause the control.
Back to the suspenseful nature of the lyrics about a murderer strangling a girl, it's sung as Smolkin delivers Diana into a gloomy graveyard. No spoilers you'll have to watch "The Undead" to see if it ends as a horror story, like "It Conquered the World" or another Corman classic, "A Bucket of Blood" in which another beautiful woman, played by blonde, bombshell, Judy Bamber, is strangled with her scarf by a psycho bus boy clay artist while modeling for him in the nude. Be those Corman films as they are, any lyrics about a murderer strangling a girl add considerable suspense to a scene in a gloomy graveyard, and tilt the film toward horror.

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