Light Upon Blight Scares Up Film Score

Best Video brought back one of its most anticipated annual events on Saturday night: the Light Upon Blight live scoring of a horror film, and this year’s choice — the 1932 classic Vampyr — provided ample spooky and surreal images to inspire four musicians to create a matching soundtrack that suited the mood.

The premise for Light Upon Blight film scores is simple: the musicians set up in front of the screen inside Best Video where the film is shown and provide musical accompaniment to a silent horror film, typically with only one or two rehearsals under their belts, thus improvising a soundtrack that builds upon what they are seeing on screen and what they are hearing from one another.

This year’s group of musicians included group founder Jeff Cedrone on guitar and synth, Pete Riccio on drums, Lys Guillorn on lap steel guitar, and Conor Perreault on a variety of electronics, pedals, and other objects, including chimes, a recorder, and a colander. Cedrone has led a variety of musicians in this event over the past six years through a stellar list of classic films, including The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Haxan, Carnival of Souls, Faust, and The Phantom Carriage.

Costumes were encouraged through the event invitation, and many chose to participate in that endeavor, including Best Video’s executive director Hank Hoffman. A couple of cats and elves appeared in the room, and band members joined in the celebration with holiday-appropriate garments and accessories. The store’s piano held a variety of candles, as well as a photo from last year’s show of Cedrone and musician Rob Nelson, who passed away earlier this year. Cedrone had noted on the show’s Facebook event page that this night’s performance was dedicated to the memory of Nelson, ​“a Vampyr lover, LUB contributor, and missed friend.”

Hoffman began the proceedings by welcoming everyone ​“back indoors,” as the venue has been hosting shows out on their deck for the past few months. He and Cedrone noted that this was the sixth year of this event, with last year’s being cancelled due to Covid restrictions

The healing balm that is live music proceeded with a slow lush build-up of each instrument as the credits rolled for the night’s feature, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr, originally released in 1932. The film focuses on the experiences of one Allan Grey, who ​“immersed himself in the study of devil worship and vampires,” according to the film’s prologue, which also described him as ​“preoccupied with superstitions of centuries past,” noting that ​“he became a dreamer for whom the line between the real and the supernatural became blurred.”

Grey finds himself at a riverside inn where a mysterious stranger leaves a package — on which he has written ​“to be opened upon death” — in Grey’s room. The man also utters the phrase ​“the woman mustn’t die,” and leaves. Following shadows that lead him to another abode, Grey meets a doctor and witnesses an exchange of a bottle of poison between the doctor and an old woman. He also witnesses the man who gave him the package getting shot by a shadow. As he enters the home to offer assistance, Grey then meets the man’s daughters, one of whom appears to be ill. He then opens the package to find a book about vampires, and thus begins his odyssey into a much darker realm than he ever expected.

With images that ranged from stark to dreamlike, the film offered a wide range of surreal and ethereal creepiness for the band to explore. Each musician offered their own take on the proceedings while also melding into an orchestral noise-rock symphony of sound. As shadows fell across the screen, Cedrone’s synth sizzled, and when characters became more distraught, his guitar screamed when they could not. Guillorn’s lap steel offered enough twang to shake your bones, and Riccio provided the heartbeat of the whole operation. While no lyrics were sung per se, Perreault did engage in a multitude of sound effects via his own voice as well as the pedals and other objects on his table of plenty, adding a screech, a scratch, and the occasional bellow to the room. The audience was held captive throughout and responded at the end of this 75-minute film with resounding applause and appreciation.

Did Grey make it out alive? Did the daughters succumb to the vampire’s curse? And what about that strange doctor and his bottle of poison? No spoilers will be provided by this reporter. Instead, here is a quote from the book that was left with Grey called The Strange History of Vampires: ​“For who can decipher the strange riddle of life and death? And who can penetrate the dark secrets concealed from the light of day?”