THIRTEEN HEAVY METAL HORROR FILMS FROM THE EIGHTIES

Balladeer’s Blog takes a look at a baker’s dozen of movies from the 1980s subgenre of Heavy Metal-related horror. Why only thirteen? Because I already reviewed Black Roses and Rocktober Blood years ago.

PAGANINI HORROR (1989) – Directed by Luigi Cozzi, better known to us fans of psychotronic movies as the Italian Ed Wood. Three women and one man constitute a heavy metal band desperate for a hit song. They strike a Faustian bargain with the mysterious Mr. Pickett, played by Donald Pleasence.

Pickett takes their souls as payment for a lost musical composition by the long-dead violin virtuoso Niccolo Paganini. The rockers adapt the piece of music as a heavy metal work and decide to film the song’s music video in a mansion once owned by Paganini himself. 

Playing the piece while filming at the mansion causes Paganini to rise from the dead and lets loose other forces of Hell. Those characters not butchered by the masked, undead maestro via a knife that pops out of his violin are slaughtered by the supernatural forces now at large in the house.

Cozzi being Cozzi we also get the kitchen sink in the form of time loops, portals to Hell, family curses, cosmic Lovecraftian concepts and some of the daffiest death scenes imaginable. Some victims die by wood fungus, an inexplicable car fire and even by having invisible walls close in and crush them. Insert your own mime joke here. 

TERROR ON TOUR (1980) – This flick is the often-forgotten trailblazer in terms of 1980s Heavy Metal Horror. A band called the Clowns are on tour and at each stop audience members and groupies are killed by a menacing figure wearing the Clowns’ bargain basement “KISS meets Juggalos” type of makeup.

Is it one of the band members or just an overzealous fan caught up in the fake decapitation murders that the Clowns perform as part of their stage act? You’ll be laughing too hard at all the continuity errors, lame acting and Manos the Hands of Fate-length awkward pauses between some of the lines of dialogue to care. 

Terror on Tour was directed by Don Edmonds, the man behind the 1970s movies Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S. and Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheikhs. The Clowns are played by the real-life band the Names, who used to open for Cheap Trick, and best of all for trivia buffs, THE SOUP NAZI (Larry Thomas) made his very first film appearance in this little honey.

MONSTER DOG (1984) – The one and only ALICE COOPER stars in this Heavy Metal Horror/ werewolf movie mix. None of the movies in this blog post are actually any good but Monster Dog is in a class by itself in terms of cinematic suckery.

Cooper stars as rock singer Vince Raven, who insists his band members and his girlfriend accompany him on a vacation at his family estate in Spain (where this movie was made). Lots of people wind up getting killed by what seems to be a particularly nasty dog at large.

Local townspeople as well as Alice Cooper’s bandmates become victims, and the locals realize their long-held suspicions about “Vince Raven” and his family line are spot on. A mob forms to hunt down and kill the monster on the loose. Cooper sings Identity Crisis and See Me in the Mirror. Directed by Troll II’s Claudio Fragrasso. 

HARD ROCK ZOMBIES (1984) – Psychotronic film legend Krishna Shah directed and co-wrote this tongue-in-cheek smorgasbord of horror movie tropes with a Heavy Metal Horror motif holding the whole thing together. It’s as disjointed and painfully unfunny as Horror House on Highway 5.

E.J. Curse of the Gene Simmons-produced band Silent Rage stars as Jessie, the leader of heavy metal group Holy Moses. While traveling, Jessie and company wind up in a backwoods town where Adolf Hitler has been hiding for decades.

Adolf and some neo-Nazis plan to launch a Fourth Reich via dark science and black magic. Those villains employ homicidal midgets and werewolves, and along the way the members of Holy Moses wind up dead. Music is used to resurrect the band so they can slaughter the bad guys. Hard Rock Zombies is available rated R or uncut rated X for violence.     

TRICK OR TREAT (1986) – Speaking of Gene Simmons, he has a supporting role in this flick as a sinister DJ who provides a nerdy heavy metal fan (Marc Price) with the final record made by the nerd’s rock idol, the late Sammi Curr.

Playing the record backwards unleashes a backward-masked chant that brings Sammi back to life possessed of hellish powers and an appetite for killing. He also grants the nerd his wish to be a heavy metal star in exchange for his soul. 

We also get Ozzie Osborne in a cameo appearance as a preacher crusading against heavy metal music who suffers a horrible death at Sammi Curr’s hands. All that plus a Carrie-like ending with Sammi unleashing a massacre at the nerd’s high school AND the Showbiz Pizza Bear for Rich Evans fans everywhere. 

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL NIGHTMARE (1987) – Canada’s hard rocking Jon-Mikl Thor’s other horror film alongside Zombie Nightmare. And happily enough he’s accompanied by Frank Dietz from Zombie Nightmare PLUS Black Roses!

The band Triton, led by Jon Triton (guess who), drives (and drives and drives and drives) to a remote farmhouse which has been outfitted with studio-quality recording equipment (just go with it). The family who owned the farm mysteriously disappeared years earlier. 

When Triton performs some of their songs, they unleash demonic creatures who prey on the band and their groupies. SPOILER: Jon Triton turns out to be an angel (I swear!) who came to the farm to fight the infernal forces infesting the place. He fights the sub-Sigmund and the Sea Monsters “demons” behind all the horror.

BLODAREN (The Bleeder) (1983) – This was a Swedish horror film that jumped on the Heavy Metal Horror bandwagon. The real-life all-female band Revansch starred as the fictional band the Rock Cats.

Our main characters are on tour when their bus breaks down in the middle of wintry nowhere. This development leaves them at the mercy of the title slasher, played by rock singer Ake Eriksson from the band Attack. Sadly, this thing is a snooze despite its potential. 

Blodaren just escaped from a mental institution and is happy to have more victims to slice and dice. He’s got a long facial wound that slightly bleeds constantly and he has the goofy habit of sticking out his tongue before each kill. Even sillier is the way he pushes a cart as he walks along, like he’s doing a slasher version of Lone Wolf and Cub. 

SLAUGHTER-HOUSE ROCK (1987) – The one and only Toni Basil herself plays Sammi Mitchell, a transgressive heavy metal singer who leads her band in sneaking onto Alcatraz Island late at night and performing a song that brings a cannibalistic serial killer from the 1800s back to life from his long ago execution on Alcatraz.       

Toni/ Sammi and her band are killed by the revenant and somehow her song and brutal scenes from the serial killer’s murders begin haunting the dreams of college student Alex Gardner. We get nightmares within nightmares and eventually the dreams even start affecting Alex’s friends and girlfriend in the waking world.   

A professor of the paranormal talks Alex and company into confronting the source of the nightmares and the haunting song at the point of origin – Alcatraz Prison. They all break in at night and begin falling to the supernatural serial killer while being helped by the ghost of Sammi Mitchell.

BLOOD TRACKS (1985) – Also released under the title Shocking Heavy Metal, this is another Swedish entry following up on 1983’s Blodaren. The real-life heavy metal band Easy Action played the fictional band Solid Gold.

That band, their groupies and a film crew decide to shoot the music video for their new song Blood Tracks at an abandoned factory in the snowy mountains. Trouble is, the place isn’t really abandoned. It’s home to a clan of boil-covered, inbred cannibals who have spent years preying on anyone foolish enough to enter their territory. 

An avalanche strands the intruders in the factory and the lurking cannibals begin whittling down our cast by a high body count of eighteen. The cannibals have even set up some sadistic booby traps for trespassers, adding to the macabre charm of this movie. 

SCREAM DREAM (1989) – This shot on video effort runs just 69 minutes. Carol Carr plays Michelle Shock, the controversial lead singer for a heavy metal band. Her outrageous behavior often puts her at odds with the rest of the group.

Presently she bites off a male fan’s sex organ, which causes her to be fired.  Since Michelle is an actual witch she calls on the forces of black magic to empower her deadly revenge on the band, even letting her possess the new lead singer, played by Melissa Moore.

All kinds of low budget bloody mayhem results, with Michelle proving capable of turning into a really fake looking monster with an equally fake looking cat creature beside her. We even get some chainsaw kills but it all looks as cheap as shot on video messes usually do.

LONE WOLF (1988) – An obvious attempt to ride the coattails of Teen Wolf but adjusted for the Heavy Metal Horror subgenre. A metal head is new in town and is suspected of multiple murders. Lone Wolf is not a comedy, but it provides a lot of unintentional laughs.

We get high school students who look like they’re in their 30s, heavy metal music, fake blood and gore, and one-dimensional characters that we spend WAY too much time getting to know. Our main characters’ fellow students are getting mauled to death by what the cops claim is a pack of wild dogs.

In truth, there’s a werewolf on the loose but who is the beast’s human form? There’s a very obvious red herring in the form of a brooding and melancholy “teen.” Much of the action comes toward the end during the heavy metal performance at a Halloween costume party.  Cult figure R.C. Bates appears. 

HEAVY METAL MASSACRE (1989) – The lowest of the low for this subgenre of horror flicks. The fact that it was filmed in Providence, RI is at least a bit of “hey, how about that” trivia for you.

Our main character hangs around a kinky heavy metal nightclub called the Dungeon, where he slips drugs to assorted female victims who catch his eye. He then goes on to kill them in various ways, but there’s no real storyline, just a series of lather, rinse, repeat stalking and slaying scenes.   

Among the ugly behind the scenes stories about Heavy Metal Massacre are claims that a death by sledgehammer scene was so badly done that the actress was knocked out for several minutes and a reprehensible tale stating that the filmmakers got cheap police footage by way of a false emergency call to 911 to lure the cops to their locale. 

HARD ROCK NIGHTMARE (1988) – Troy Donahue was in his “just pay me and I’ll be in your movie” phase when he showed up in this oddball film. The main character in Hard Rock Nightmare is Jim, the lead singer for a heavy metal band.

He and the band and assorted females visit the lead singer’s hometown from long ago. Jim discusses his dark secret – when he was a child his grandfather was joking with him about being a werewolf but little Jim got scared enough to believe him and killed him.   

Because of this the townspeople still resent him and now that includes his band. When a series of seeming werewolf slayings occur, the locals think Jim has gone nuts and is committing them, but he thinks someone is framing him. Actually, a real werewolf is on the prowl. 

FOR MY BLOG POST COVERING DOZENS OF HORROR FILMS WITH A WILD WEST THEME CLICK HERE.