Grim Reaper in the Sky: a small personal mystery solved.

[full_metal_ox]

YouTube is a merry media mosh pit for the worst and the best (and the most mediocre) of what happens when human imagination is presented with audiovisual technology, an arena, and no editor. Unsurprisingly, it's a showcase for Sturgeon's Law, but also for bits of retrieved memory and works of brilliance that make sifting through the dorky karaoke and home movies more than worth the annoyance.

This animated AMV for Vaughn Monroe's rendition of “Ghost Riders in the Sky”, the work of one Pukipu, is one that I've come to regard as the definitive video for the song in question; the stiff, minimal, and primitive flavor of the animation somehow seems perfectly of a piece with the period setting, and its repetitiveness serves the incantatory nature of the song. More than that, it struck me somehow as having an unassailable rightness; the imagery was somehow hauntingly reminiscent of a memory I was at a loss to place:

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Watch on YouTube

A discussion of favorite childhood TV commercials over on dungeonwriter’s blog helped supply the missing piece of the puzzle; this haunting PSA from the late 60's (the narrative Voice of Impending Doom is variously suspected of being either James Earl Jones or Thurl “Tony the Tiger’ Ravenscroft) was the stuff of nightmares to a lot of people in the late Baby Boom/early Gen-X age bracket:

Watch on YouTube

Pukipu (if her userinfo is accurate) is Brazilian, and too young to remember the ad, making it an unlikely influence; nonetheless, I find the resemblance striking.

Comments

[kosaginolegion.livejournal.com]

Between the two voice actors, I'd say Ravenscroft. James Earl Jones has that roll of thunder in his voice that I tend to associate with classically trained black actors. William Marshal and the professor on the Cosby Show being other examples. I'm not hearing much, if any, of that resonance in the commercial.

Or it could be an unknown VA who never made it big enough to be recognized.