ROCKTOBER BLOOD (1984) -This example of the Heavy Metal Horror films of the 1980s was produced, directed and written by Beverly and Ferd Sebastian, a well-known pair to all of us Bad Movie Geeks. The premise of this hilariously bad movie is that Heavy Metal star Billy Eye programs something sinister into his latest album by way of backward-masking. (Like “I buried Paul” and others)
After listening to those hidden messages to make sure they “took,” Billy Eye molests his just-dumped girlfriend Lynn Starling (Donna Scoggin) then uses a knife to injure her. He’s just getting started, though, and from there he proceeds to slaughter most of his band members, a security guard and nearly 20 other innocent people!
Billy is tried, convicted and executed for the killing spree. One year after his execution his former flame Lynn Starling has formed her own Heavy Metal group called Headmistress. The band is starting its first nationwide tour, called the Rocktober Blood Tour, unaware of the tedium horror about to envelope them. Continue reading
THE DEAD PIT (1989) – This horror film was the directorial debut of the very prolific director Brett Leonard. While not a four-star movie The Dead Pit is enjoyable enough for the Halloween Season and should certainly appeal to anyone into 1980s horror flicks. This movie’s hybrid of zombie elements and slasher elements is both its charm AND the reason behind its love-it-or-hate-it status. 
From 1979 to this calendar year the movies in this under-appreciated horror franchise forever changed the way we look at funeral homes. And funeral home directors. And Roman Numerals for that matter. For better or worse writer/director Don Coscarelli never sold out, never let the sinister Tall Man become an outer-space joke like Jason Voorhees or a Borscht-Belt Charles Manson like Freddy Krueger. (And it’s hard to believe the first Phantasm was rated X for violence in 1979.) 
Balladeer’s Blog’s month-long celebration of Halloween continues with this look at some of the films from one of the most envelope-pushing horror directors of all time: Germany’s “auteur of the transgressive,” Jorg Buttgereit. 
DR CALIGARI (1989) – “The Cabaret of Dr Caligari” might make a more fitting title for Stephen Sayadian’s genre-bending Dr Caligari. Long before Dandy Dust there was this fun movie which was sort of a hybrid of Eraserhead and The Rocky Horror Picture Show with sprinklings of Liquid Sky and Repo Man. Nightmarish visuals and deranged sexuality abound. 
This movie, which is full of absurdly horrific imagery and horrifically absurd imagery is simultaneously a celebration of AND a parody of art films and silent movies – especially of the German Expressionist variety. The Cabinet of Dr Caligari kicked off that cinematic style in 1919 and we’re told that the title character of this 1989 product is the great granddaughter of THAT Dr Caligari. 
Welcome back to Balladeer’s Blog’s month-long celebration of Halloween!
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