Did these three flicks about musicians struggling to make it big in a world full of unthinkable horrors rock my world? Let’s find out.
HAIRMETAL SHOTGUN ZOMBIE MASSACRE (2016)
I’ve had this horror comedy, which has now been uploaded to YouTube, on my “to see” list for almost a decade because it never received any kind of distribution. It’s a shame, because I would definitely add it to my movie collection despite one glaring issue, which we’ll get into.
My guess is the makers of this film really grew up in the 80s, both immersed in horror and heavy metal, because this is perhaps one of the most authentic feeling and looking retro horror flicks I’ve ever seen. It is easy to believe this was actually made at the end of the 1980s. Even the guys playing the members of the main metal band have an insanely accurate 80s rocker look, from their body types to their faces to their hair, which looks real, not like bad hair metal wigs.
The opening intro text is right on the mark as well, describing this as taking place in “some irrelevant year after 1989…the true year hair metal died”. If you were there, you know.
We meet the members of a Texas metal band looking to strike it big. Adding to the throwback vibe, one dude’s bedroom is covered in horror posters like From Beyond and Freddy’s Dead.
Next we see them at a gig—all the music used captures the true sound of 80s metal and totally fits the tone of the film—where there are only like four audience members, plus a rival band. This is where we get the first taste of an issue that plagues the movie. The main band members repeatedly have gay slurs thrown at them for being a hair band, which was common in those days when late 80s rockers were glamming it up with full makeup, hairspray, and skin tight clothes in neon colors. The point is made right up front, but it never ends. They are called fags, trannies, and drag queens, and sexually threatened by pretty much every character they encounter. Historically accurate homophobia for sure, and I grew up in that era, so it’s shit I’m numb to, but younger generations may find it jarring. I also can’t help wonder if the filmmakers are poking fun at the homophobia against hair bands or if they are bigots, because one bandmate is fond of the Confederate flag, and has it on his guitar and shirt. Ugh.
If you can look past that, you get a great homage to Evil Dead, zombie flicks, and direct-to-video heavy metal horror flicks from the 80s. All the performances are great, the humor totally works, the practical effects and makeup rock, and the setting and atmosphere nail it.
Hoping to record an album, the band heads to a ramshackle cabin in the woods…with a cemetery right outside. There are even jack-‘o-lanterns in the cemetery, so I assume it’s supposed to be Halloween, although the holiday is never mentioned.
At the cabin, the band collaborates with a new producer while awaiting the arrival of a record exec and referencing numerous bands of the era. Desperately in need of a gimmick, they conveniently find a trapdoor leading to a cellar in which there is an ancient occult book. Uh-oh.
They hatch a plan to make a satanic concept album, but before they can start recording any music, words from the book are read out loud and the dead begin to crawl out of their graves in a cloud of fog machines and eerie blue light. Awesome.
Someone makes a reference to them being demons, not zombies, but for all intents and purposes, they are totally zombies. If it looks like a zombie, walks like a zombie, and eats like a zombie, it’s a zombie.
Windows are boarded up, guts are munched, and the band is forced to figure out a way to either make it to daylight, when the demons go back to hell, or to fight their way out of the cabin. There’s even a cameo by Tom Araya of Slayer.
If you love 80s horror, I’d highly recommend checking this one out. It so deserves some attention and should be on some streaming services and at least released on DVD, dammit.
PUSSYCAKE (2021)
When I make reference to moist, frosted cakes, PussyCake isn’t exactly what I have in mind. With a title this icky, the horror better deliver. And it does. This is a sticky, bloody, nasty romp wrapped up in a lesbian romance, but don’t expect any of it to make any sense. Hard to believe something so fun could completely fail to deliver any semblance of a logical plot.
We first meet a teen dealing with the fact that his scientist father claimed to have discovered a parallel universe right before vanishing from the face of the earth. Perhaps dad went to that other dimension using the machine in his garage that his son turns on, which seems to return his father to him as a zombie.
Next, we’re introduced to an all-girl band. Two of the girls are in a relationship, and one of them is extremely protective of the other.
They land a gig that will give them a chance to perform for a record exec. However, when they arrive at the location, the whole town looks abandoned. Not quite. Before long, the girls are being chased by zombies that puke what looks like loads of cum into the mouths of the humans they grab. Do we ever find out why? No, but I think they might be inseminating them with some sort of life form.
Victims are also buried up to their necks in the sand on the beach. There’s also this big ominous baddie in a robe and wearing a sort of gas mask that stomps into town and starts terrorizing the girl band while also gathering little embryos from the bellies of those that have been filled with zombie mouth jizz.
What does it all mean, and what does it have to do with the other dimension and the scientist, whose house is in the same town? Have the girls somehow entered that other dimension? What exactly are the zombies trying to spawn, and why does that big boss baddie want to destroy them? No idea, and there’s no explanation. There’s simply the girl band fighting to avoid having zombie loads puked down their throats or embryos implanted inside them.
There’s goo, there’s gore, there’s violence and brutality, there are two lesbian leading ladies, and there’s even a slimy little leech monster that latches onto people’s heads.
It’s all reminiscent of Stuart Gordon’s wacky Lovecraft adaptations of the 80s, and that’s enough to make it hella entertaining, but I really wish some of the horror details would have come together.
ART OF A HIT (2024)
I pondered whether or not to even watch this one based on various comments on the internet that claimed it is not a horror movie but merely has some horror visuals that seem to be dreams or delusions. The promise of some nightmarish sequences, plus the fact that it’s a movie about a struggling rock band in the 90s led me to cave and check it out.
The best way to look at this is like Jacob’s Ladder. The main character experiences some disturbing and terrifying shit, but we never learn where it stems from and what it all means.
If I had to guess, I’d say this one is about the lead singer of a band that is gasping its last breath of stardom suffering some sort of mental breakdown due to the pressure of trying to rejuvenate their relevance. It begins with him seeing a flash of a bloody-mouthed man that looks like a zombie as his band is performing on an awards show in 1996.
After that, the band heads to France to work with a new producer in a chateau in hopes of reinventing themselves and rocketing back up the charts. However, the lead singer gets a phone call about their record deal that he can’t bring himself to share with his bandmates or the producer.
Meanwhile, the producer is unconventional and brutally honest with them. He also warns them not to enter one particular door in the chateau.
Every night, the lead singer is awakened by weird noises, followed by a phone ringing. He follows the sound with a flashlight. He keeps encountering the bloody-mouthed presence from his awards show vision.
The chateau and the flashlight beam combination are quite creepy. The producer, who mentions rumors of the place being haunted, has a large box hidden away that is supposed to cut off all sound when you get inside, and it looks suspiciously like a coffin.
During a night of partying, one of the band members starts to act possessed, and while everyone blames it on drugs, the only Black member calls it as he sees it…it was like some shit from The Exorcist.
On top of all that, the lead singer has more visions and nightmares of having his playing hand cut off and of his bandmates mutilating themselves. He’s eventually stalked by the bloody-mouthed presence, which is wielding an axe.
There’s plenty of symbolism in all this, and that’s cool and all, but it really would have been more intense if the great horror elements sprinkled throughout the film had culminated in something substantial…like maybe the lead singer actually snapping and going on a murder spree.
