Now that we are well into August, the summer heat drags on, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to run another “Out of the Slot” post and…likely bore the snot out of anyone who actually hits my blog for muses about vintage slot cars and diecasts. But then again, it seems there’s always some fellow lost soul out there who remembers the things I do, and if you’re one of those, read on!
Longtime readers might remember my post “Ding A Ding Dang My Dang A-long Ling Long” — my little adventure from early this year, in which I finally tracked down the source of those deranged soundbites that open Ministry’s “Jesus Built My Hotrod.” That rabbit hole led from a 30-second video of toy cars to John Huston, Flannery O’Connor, and a stack of Southern Gothic literature I’d somehow never gotten around to reading. It took me more than 30 years to finally solve that one — and the only reason I solved it at all is because we now live in an age where the answer to absolutely everything is a few key-strokes away.
Well… here’s another one that’s been simmering for even longer!
If you’re a Siouxsie & the Banshees fan (and if you’re not, you ought to be!), you know their 1985 album Tinderbox. It’s a masterpiece from a band who’s every work was a masterpiece, and its one of those records that has a season attached to it — summer heat, thunderclouds, flickering power lines, the smell of hot concrete. And on that record is a track called “92°.” The song opens with a piece of dialogue that I’ve had living rent-free in my head since I first heard it:
“Did you know that more murders are committed at 92 degrees Fahrenheit than at any other temperature? I read an article once… At lower temperatures, people are easy going. Over 92, it’s too hot to move. But just 92… people get irritable!”
For years I thought it sounded like Cary Grant.
Later, someone swore to me it was taken from an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
Both guesses felt “right” — mid-century, vaguely sinister, delivered in that calm, perfectly enunciated way that somehow makes it worse.
But although there was a very loose adaptation of the concept done for an ep of AHP called Shopping for Death, neither of them was what I was looking for.
A little digging (aided by the modern magic of searchable transcripts and obsessive forums) finally gave me the answer:
The line comes from the 1953 sci-fi movie It Came from Outer Space — a scene where Sheriff Matt Warren (played by Charles Drake) matter-of-factly explains the idea of “murder weather.”
So then! !hat does that have to do with Ray Bradbury?
A lot, actually.
Bradbury wrote the original story treatment for It Came from Outer Space, and although the final script was adapted by others, a few unmistakably “Bradbury” touches slipped through — including that eerie, offhand remark about 92 degrees. And here’s where the rabbit hole drops a little deeper: the very next year, Bradbury wrote a short story called “Touched With Fire.”
The premise of that story?
Two men discussing how 92°F is the perfect temperature for murder — high enough to agitate people, low enough so they still have enough energy to act on their worst impulses.
Sound familiar?
It’s not just the idea that’s the same — even the phrasing is nearly identical.
At this point you have to wonder:
Did Bradbury recycle his own line from the movie when writing the short story?
Or was this already a little nugget of folk wisdom floating around the 1950s — the kind of thing you’d find in old pulp magazines or overhear at a roadside diner?
I don’t know.
But what I do know is this: Siouxsie & the Banshees grabbed that line, isolated it, looped it, and turned it into something that feels like a fever breaking. The whole song plays like a heatwave that’s gone on three days too long — humid, claustrophobic, and slightly dangerous.
That, my friends, is murder weather.
“The volcanic depths of Hades’ ocean
Bubble under these crazed emotions
It wriggles and writhes and bites within
Just below the sweating skin”
Once again, it took decades for me to finally look this up — and once again, a 30-second detour on the internet led me right to the source. Apparently, this is just what I do now: chase down half-remembered fragments from my pre-digital youth and try to pin them down before they evaporate completely.
(And for anyone following along from the earlier “Ding A Ding Dang…” post — yes, I did eventually read Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood. Turns out the movie is so faithful to the novel that it could be used in film school as Exhibit A for how to adapt a book without ruining it. Just thought I’d mention that.)
Anyway… next time you hear the haunting strains of “92°” on a hot summer afternoon, you’ll know:
it’s not Cary Grant, it’s not Hitchcock —
it’s Bradbury, whispering through a 1953 B-movie via actor Charles Drake, trying to tell you that when the needle hits ninety-two, it’s not just the heat that makes people dangerous.
