Screeches, Clanks and Howls carves out a niche for itself in the cutthroat world of Halloween sound effects recordings by mixing the conventional scares of its title with tracks like "Demented Dentist" and "Hungry Ghouls" -- two cuts that flesh out the monotony of the genre with imagination and even some backstory. "Demented Dentist" includes the normal eek-inducing sounds of a whirring drill scraping into an incisor and cutting into gums. But by including the words of the doctor himself, the track approaches the sadistic camp of the 1996 Corbin Bernsen vehicle The Dentist. Meanwhile, "Hungry Ghouls" makes waves in a more traditional way: by instilling pure, unadulterated fear. Sure, "Wolves in the Wind," "Lunatic Laughter," and especially "Screams from Beyond" are spooky, kooky, and guaranteed to frighten with a smile. But "Hungry Ghouls" takes things into George A. Romero land with its slurping, chewing, and hints of smiling pleasure between bites. Becoming dinner for a pride of hungry zombies is almost as scary as the thought of sitting through The Dentist II -- hearing it happen is downright bone-chilling. ~ Johnny Loftus