The seed of the idea to cover “Thriller” was planted when one of my piano students was learning the song and started playing the iconic bass line with a shuffle feel. I said “No! That's not how it goes!” and proceeded to show him how it is played with straight eighths. Later on the shuffle groove came back to me as an ear worm and got me to thinking “what if?” When I found the video of “House on Haunted Hill” and discovered that it is in the public domain, I decided to go ahead with the project.

I'm playing all of the instruments: piano, guitar, organ, organ bass, drums and singing. I also recorded, mixed and mastered the track in my humble basement studio.

The Film: House on Haunted Hill, 1959, Directed by William Castle “House on Haunted Hill” is such a great fit for the lyrics. The clock, the screaming ladies, the “dancing” skeleton, the self-playing organ, and of course Vincent Price. I was lucky to get a mini-monologue by Price, without any background music to use at the end of the video. Carol Ohmart is the screaming blonde at the end, and received second billing in the movie. Carolyn Craig, who received much smaller billing in the original, is the other screaming lady, and I edited the video so that she gets a starring role in the first half of the video. The exteriors were shot at the Ennis House, built by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1924 in Los Feliz, CA., and the interiors were shot on a sound stage. The film received notoriety when first released because director William Castle rigged some theaters with a pulley system to fly a skeleton over the audience and frighten them at just the right time. Allmovies called House on Haunted Hill a horror classic that is “campy and creepy in equal measures.”