This is going to be the scariest spoken word record you’ve ever heard. We’re not joking…and neither is Vincent Price. The star of such horror classics as House of Wax, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, and Theatre of Blood (and, of course, narrator of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video) can barely hide his delight while he takes his audience through a graphic and occasionally grisly history lesson in witchcraft from the Bible through the Middle Ages, the Spanish Inquisition, and Nazi Germany. Then, accompanied by occasional eerie, abstract electronic music, Price’s sinister satisfaction only mounts as he provides instruction in the dark arts, with such tracks as “How to Make a Pact with the Devil” and “Curses, Spells, Charms.” It’s all in good fun, of course…or is it? The mysterious writer of the script, one Terry d’Oberoff, has only one other credit to his name: as the “mascot” of an early ‘70s band called…wait for it…Black Magic.
This 1969 double-LP release has long been coveted by collectors of the curious and macabre, and for its first reissue in over 50 years, we are giving it the Real Gone treatment, reproducing the gatefold jacket AND the full-size, 8-page booklet that accompanied some copies. It’s a combination history textbook and how-to manual in witchcraft, with a title page depicting a particularly unsettling spell called “The Hand of Glory” involving the severed, salted, and dried hand of a convicted felon.
Tracklist:
Side One
1. Prologue/The Tale of Master Seth
2. Hitler and Witchcraft/Witchcraft in History
3. Women as Witches/Witch Burning
4. Witch Tortures
Side Two
1. Witch Tortures (Cont.)/The World of Spirits and Demons
2. Preparation for Magic/Instruments of Magic
3. How to Invoke Spirits, Demons, Unseen Forces/The Magic Bloodstone
4. The Witches Cauldron/How to Communicate with the Spirits
Side Three
1. How to Communicate with the Spirits (cont.)/Gerald Yorke and Necromancy
2. How to Make a Pact with the Devil/How to Become a Witch
3. Curses, Spells, Charms
Side Four
1. Curses, Spells, Charms (Cont.)/Potions
2. The Hand of Glory/The Witches Sabbat
3. Witchcraft Today/Epilogue
