Saturday, May 18, 2013

How much does one little scratch cost you?

Phantasm.




 I love this soundtrack. One of the most prized items in my collection The soundtrack to the 1979 Horror flick Phantasm. Horror flick is really too generic of a term, more like Evil-Mortician-from-another-dimension-wants-to-turn-you-into-a-homicidal-dwarf-and-portal-you-to-another-planet-which-may-or-may-not-be-Mars-via-flying-killer-orbs-flick.

Yes it really does contain all that and more.

I'm watching the third film in the Quadrilogy as we speak and it is no wonder these films have been granted such high cult status.

This record is worth a lot of money. Copies have sold through Discogs for about $120. It's being sold on ebay for $350+.  Every now and again if a new copy turns up on ebay it wont sell for less than 3 figures.

Its valuable for a lot of reasons. Its rare, it's over 34 years old, and it has quite a lot of cult cache. A lot of the record's value is in it's desirability; it's a hit cult franchise and it was out of print on all formats for over a decade.

So here's my problem. The record has a scratch in it. Just one. The sleeve is in VG condition and the album plays through near mint. Except for track 6 on side one. Just one place where it gets stuck. I've tried to wash it delicately, tried to apply pressure to the tone arm to try and skip through the groove but alas it doesn't fix. Still stuck. It's an infuriating predicament.

So I guess my $350 record is really only worth 20 bucks. Oh well.

I love this soundtrack though, i really do. The title theme is as iconic as say Halloween or Jaws or Suspiria or any others of its ilk. And in many ways is the blueprint to a lot of horror themes since then. An off kilter lullaby, choral singing, a bit of synth for added effect.  Its a classic.




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