Steven Severin

But McGeoch helped take the Banshees to a whole other level musically.

His whole approach was basically to let Steven Severin handle all the root notes, which freed him up to play all kinds of suspended fourths and added ninths and elevenths on top to make everything sound really mysterious and exciting.

Like, you could just play the chorus of Spellbound as C, D, G, and it wouldn't be wrong exactly, but it wouldn't be anywhere near as cool.

For another example, here's a clip from Happy House, the opening track from Kaleidoscope.

I think it's really good just from a musical perspective.

Johnny Marr was right.

But I think the real star of this one is Steven Severin on the bass.

Like John McGeoch and Budgie are flashier performers, but the bass is what really anchors this entire song and keeps it moving forward.

Mm-hmm.

And Susie Sue got on the bill with Steven Severin, Marco Peroni, and Sid Vicious, who played drums.

And that was their first show.

Yeah.

Then we've got A Desperate Crime, which is, Melies is generally known for his fantasy films, his fantastique films with, you know, his in-camera illusions and things like that.

Trip to the moon being the most famous um and the desperate crime is actually a naturalism film he actually does have a criminal uh gets guillotined he does have a dream sequence in there where the guy's out on death row in the uh prison cell imagining the guillotine you know being haunted by the guillotine which he's going to face the next day and then it's followed by a guillotining afterwards, which we discussed with Steven Severin in that segment, so I wouldn't have to go into it again here.

That is followed by the first British film in the set, which is one I did not know about until we did this, The Doll's Revenge, which is just an absolute beauty of a short horror film.

If you're talking about naturalism, naturalism, naturalism, then we get to dolls revenge.

So Grand Guignol-esque to the max, and it stars Vincent Price.

So why would we not include that?

For disc two, we have original compositions by Neil Brand, Steven Severin, David Jay and Tim Newman, and Michael Mortilla.

Some of these have scores that are a little out there, and then other ones have scores that are

While almost no one alive in the horror community today actually attended a play at the Grand Guignol, many of us know at least something about it and consider it a part of our history.

And as we release this today, Tuesday, October 6th, 2026, Severin Films has just announced their largest box set ever dedicated to the Grand Guignol as both a theater and as a concept that lives in our collective imagination.

Titled Morbid Pleasures: A Compendium of Grand Guignol and the Grand Guignolesque, the set features 12 discs with over 60 films and more than 80 hours of material.

And on this episode, we bring back Severin co-founder and president David Gregory to talk about this monumental set and what made the Grand Guignol special in the first place.

[rock music]

To the dark depths we go.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It is a work of genius.

All the musicians on it, Steve Severin, Susie, you know, it was the original line-up of Susie and the Banshees.

You've got your John McKay and your Kenny Morris on the drums.

And how powerful as an album it was and how it's inspired people.