The Lucky 13: Week Six: Rock n’ Roll Horror
by Brutal As Hell staff
Intro by Marc Patterson
Rock n’ roll horror. It’s got to be one of my favorite “good times” sub-genres of horror. Horror and rock n’ roll belong together. They were made for each other. Both are subversive and fly in the face of conformity. They challenge the status quo. Rock n’ roll and horror will plow down anyone who gets in their path without hesitation or discrimination. It’s no wonder that horror has given birth to some of the most awesome spectacles of body mutilation and guitar shredding, bass thumping and head exploding cinema. I don’t know about you all but my personal library contains some fan-fuckin-tastic flicks that run the gamut from iconic 80’s films such as Night of the Demons, Slumber Party Massacre 2, Return of the Living Dead, Demons, Trick or Treat just to name a few.
The 80’s were a great time for rock n’ roll horror. But, it doesn’t stop there. Horror has its own twisted variety of musicals with such operatic opuses as The Phantom of the Opera, Phantom of the Paradise, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and most recently, Repo! The Genetic Opera, a musical that is interestingly enough proving to be the Rocky Horror Picture Show for a new generation of cult cinephiles.
Then there’s those old classics that often get overlooked. Titles like Del Tenney’s Horror of Party Beach and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.
And as much as rock n’ roll rebellion is a youth culture phenomenon the universe of horror wouldn’t be in balance if we didn’t have some high school rock n’ roll meltdowns. Flicks like Dance of the Dead, and Class of Nuke ‘Em High epitomize kids taking the power back and fighting “the man”.
This week we, along with our partners in crime over at The Vault of Horror, take a look at a few of our personal favorites in this wickedly fun genre of horror. Dig it, you crazy cats!
Annie Riordan on The Incredibly Strange Creatures who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies
This may be considered blasphemy, coming as it does from the lips of a woman who spent over a year frolicking onstage in a slutty maids outfit and an inch thick layer of modified corpse paint, but The Rocky Horror Picture Show was not the first rock n’ roll horror movie ever made. Ten years earlier, the late great Schlock Meister Ray Dennis Steckler (alias Cash Flagg) presented us with The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, a movie which would have been damned to eternal obscurity had it not been for a television show called Mystery Science Theater 3000. Filmed on location at a Southern California seaside carnival, TISCWSLABMUZ (I am so not typing out that long ass title again) gave us dancing girls, corny folk songs, more dancing girls, hip-shaking rock numbers, obscure Civil War ballads, syrupy love songs and even more dancing girls. Occasionally, it remembers it’s supposed to be a horror movie and gives us a couple of bloody stabbing scenes, a gratuitously psychedelic dream sequence and the mixed-up zombies of the title who go on a very mixed-up halfhearted killing spree. But the real horror is the climactic, all-out rockin’ dance number “Shook Out Of Shape” as performed by Carol Kay and the Stone Tones and featuring a bevvy of beehived can-can girls who couldn’t dance their way out of those proverbial wet paper bags.
And just think: I paid full ticket price to see this move on the big screen. A really shitty bright pink copy of the film on the big screen. But hey hey, at least I got to meet Ray. Cool cool, daddy-o.
Ben Bussey on Trick Or Treat
Subliminal satanic messages revealed in heavy metal albums played backwards, urging the young to do the unthinkable… how very, very 80s. How astonishing it is that, for some time (and perhaps for some it remains so), this was a very real concern for parents. And what an awesome concept it makes for a horror movie.
Directed by Charles Martin Smith (who – get this trivia fans – also directed the very first episode of Buffy), Trick Or Treat follows young metalhead misfit Eddie, whose already gloomy disposition only gets worse following the death of his icon, poodle-haired spandex rocker Sammi Curr. But when he comes into possession of the only copy of Sammi’s unreleased final album (courtesy of Gene Simmons, in a cameo as a DJ), shit gets weird. Eddie always felt that Sammi’s records spoke to him – but now they’re literally doing just that. Backwards messages giving cryptic commands. At first it seems like the spirit of Sammi is just helping Eddie get one up on the preppie pricks who beat him up at school, but pretty soon Eddie realises things go much deeper and darker than that.
I have vivid recollections of seeing posters for Trick Or Treat outside my local cinema on release, and must admit that to my very young self that combination of horror and metal was frankly terrifying, yet oddly alluring. I didn’t finally see it until relatively recently, and was happily surprised to see that for the most part it’s actually pretty damn good. I was always the oddball indie kid at high school rather than a metaller, but even so a great deal of the anguish and abuse Eddie faces for not conforming is very familiar to me. One of my favourite scenes has a popular girl approaching Eddie and asking him, with seemingly genuine concern and confusion, why he has to be so weird and can’t just be like everyone else. It’s a great moment that really encapsulates those cliquey notions of what is or is not acceptable behaviour, and the intolerance and segregation that ensues. And, alas, that which takes root at high school tends to flower into adulthood…
But never mind the teenage angst: we’re talking horror. And there’s some genuine creepiness in Trick Or Treat, a real sense of dread creeping in as the record begins to talk to Eddie, and the first hints of Sammi Curr’s resurrection come along. Unfortunately, once Sammi is fully resurrected things get a bit less interesting. The final half hour or so lapses into all-too familiar cat and mouse territory, rather than the Iron Maiden album cover vision of hell on earth that (budget allowing) it should have been. But still, thanks to its early sinister atmospherics, cheesy-but-catchy tunes from Fastway, an endearing performance from Marc Price as Eddie, and the oft-noted, amusing cameo from Ozzy, Trick Or Treat is a great rock’n’roll horror movie, and in its own way as perfect an encapsulation of 80s anxieties as Wall Street.
Marc Patterson on Return of the Living Dead
If you couldn’t tell from my intro, this was a difficult choice for me this week. I was able to narrow my list down to Return of the Living Dead, Demons and shockingly enough, The Horror of Party Beach. (There’s just something about old school beach dance off’s with a creature from the murky depths about to cause widespread havoc on bikini babes.) At the end of the day though Return of the Living Dead rises to the top for one reason and one alone. I have loved this film since I first laid eyes on it’s trademarked VHS cover artwork when I was but eleven years old. As a child of the 70’s growing up in the 80’s I wasn’t old enough to watch it and my parents sure as hell wouldn’t have let me anyway, but I was instantly entranced. I was always fascinated with punk rock culture ever since I saw Deborah Harry perform on The Muppet Show. I must have run around singing One Way or Another for two weeks. Then came The Ramones! Oh yes. But this was death and punk rock epitomized and married together perfectly.
Finally when I got the chance to see it, it changed my life. Who knew horror could be so comedic, flashy, and just plain FUN? Up to that point horror was haunting, macabre, forbidden, and dark. It was something of the Devil. But Return of the Living Dead? This was a different beast altogether. I hadn’t yet seen Night of the Living Dead, so I had no concern for the parody ROTLD played on it. I was only a teen and access to these films wasn’t exactly the easiest. My parents were deeply religious and abhorred my rebelliousness. Leather jackets and ripped blue jeans? I was an abomination. This stuff was my drug though and I couldn’t get enough. These punks? They were my role models. And Trash? Oh my fuckin’ lord. That woman was a pure liberated goddess!
Musically this film was pretty defining as well. The soundtrack is one of my most played, especially during the Halloween season. Featuring tunes from Roky Erickson, The Cramps, The Damned, and The Flesh Eaters, amongst others, this is a soundtrack that is non-stop fast and furious punk rock action. This isn’t just old school punk rock. It’s the original school of punk rock. I’d be remiss to not mention the most recognizable tune from the bunch Partytime by 45 Grave. You want to party? It’s party time!
Acid rain, Tarman, Clu Gulager being the best damn goof he can be and Linnea Quigley? Return of the Living Dead isn’t just the best punk rock horror film, it might just be the best zombie film made. Yeah, I know that’s an arguable statement, but Return of the Living Dead finds a treasured spot in my collection for personal reasons that transcend critical logic and reason, and that is what The Lucky 13 is all about.
