Early Movie Vidding...

par_avion pointed me in the direction of an Ain't It Cool News post where Harry Knowles talks about one of the formative experiences of his youth -- a collection of classic horror film clips set to music that he bought on 16mm when he was very wee. He also put that video up on Youtube for others to view.

"Strangers in the Night by Cortlandt Hull" (Watch on YouTube)

In the comments on the Youtube page, the maker, Cortlandt Hull, left a comment with a little more information. The piece, which had a title card that was cut off in the version Knowles uploaded, is called "Rendezvous" and it debuted at the Famous Monsters of Filmland Convention in 1975. 1975 is also the year that Kandy Fong started doing her thing with Kirk and Spock stills.

Hull had the advantage of having access to the actual films -- probably either 16mm dupes or the 8mm home movie versions released by Castle Films -- but it must have been insanely difficult to put together in any case.

There's a version with the title cards intact but crappier visual quality over here.

I'm afraid I'm no historian when it comes to horror fanworks, so I don't know if this was the first such horror songvid or if there was a tradition that continued from it. I know that Hull made a sequel later.

It's just interesting to see the parallel developments. If horror fandom picked up vidding in the 1970s/1980s, they'd dropped it by the time I came onto the scene (I think -- admittedly I was more of a horror fan than a member of horror fandom). The horror vids that we see today developed out of the tradition and community that came from media/slash fandom and AMVs.