by Adam Rockoff
Throughout the 1970s, metal and horror movies flirted shamelessly. Alice Cooper sang about Frankenstein and engaged in Grand Guignol–style theatrics. KISS dressed like creatures from another planet and spit blood and fire. The Misfits, more punk than metal but still pretty damn heavy, built a career on lyrics inspired by films such as Blood Feast, Night of the Living Dead, Halloween, and many others. Even their now-iconic logo was lifted from the obscure 1946 serial The Crimson Ghost.
It wasn’t until the 1980s, however, that this marriage was officially consummated. For a kid with a budding love of the macabre, heavy metal LPs were a sonic conduit to horror. Since “real” metal was never played on FM radio, save for the occasional spinning of “Paranoid” and Judas Priest’s “Living After Midnight,” the only place I could actually hear it was at the house of a friend who had an older deadbeat brother. But I could see it at the local CaldorII whenever my mother would drag me shopping with her. Just as the great exploitation film posters promised a smorgasbord of bloodshed usually found nowhere in the actual film, record labels knew how to sell the sizzle. The very first heavy metal album I ever bought was Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast.III The legendary artwork will be familiar to anyone with even a passing interest in metal. In the foreground, the devil lords over fields of destruction. Behind him hovers Eddie, Maiden’s monstrous mascot, three times as large and twice as mean as Old Scratch. I knew the devil was a badass, and if this creature held dominion over him, then I just had to hear the music he represented.
Iron Maiden eventually became my all-time favorite metal band. In fact, they’re the only band, in any musical genre, from whom I still buy every single new release, partly out of blind loyalty and partly in the misguided belief that maybe, even by accident, they’ll once again capture the transcendence of “Phantom of the Opera” and “Hallowed Be Thy Name.” Sometimes I wonder if I would have fallen just as hard for, say, Saxon, had they sounded the same but used Maiden’s iconography. Probably not. After all, except for a few decent songs, Saxon basically sucked, while Maiden is metal royalty. But there’s also a good chance that had music been consumed in bytes and files as it is today, instead of ensconced in tantalizing artwork, I might not have even heard of Maiden until 1986, when their single “Wasted Years” kinda went mainstream.
Looking back at this union, there’s no question that metal made out better. Horror practically informs the music. On the other hand, the few times that horror films tried to incorporate heavy metal into their soundtracks, they were unequivocal disasters. Exhibit A: when Dario Argento slapped Maiden’s rather obscure “Flash of the Blade” into a chase scene in Phenomena. I’ve already established my love of Maiden, and Dario Argento was at one time my favorite director before he seemingly decided to make movies that sucked. I also love ice cream and good Scotch, but that doesn’t mean I want to make a Macallan float. Maiden’s galloping riffs and power chords not only seem grossly out of place among Argento’s dreamscapes, but they absolutely destroy any tension the director hoped to build. Since I’m basically tone-deaf, I’m completely unqualified to deconstruct the acoustics, but there’s a reason that the most effective horror scores draw from classical sources. Winds and strings just sound spooky. They evoke mystery and dread, the cornerstone of most horror films. Metal, on the other hand, evokes power. After all, the gods were given a hammer, not a harpsichord.
I’m assuming Dokken’s “Dream Warriors,” the title song from the third Nightmare on Elm Street film, and Alice Cooper’s “He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask),” from Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, were meant to be taken seriously at the time. Although listening to them again, and watching the accompanying videos, it’s almost impossible to understand how. Then there were the outright parodies, the most egregious being the Fat Boys’ “Are You Ready for Freddy?” I detested this video, in which Freddy Krueger raps, “Elm Street’s the place / You got the time / Listen to this / You’ll bust a rhyme,” as it officially completed Freddy’s inevitable decline from terrifying screen presence to pop culture buffoon.
So let’s recap: Metal drew from horror films with great success; horror films incorporated metal to their detriment. Then there were the times when each was lonely; maybe they had a bit too much to drink and decided to see what would happen. Their offspring—horror films about heavy metal—were a wacky bunch indeed.
The first out of the gate was 1986’s Trick or Treat, most memorable for cameos by Gene Simmons, who’s wasted (as in misused, not fucked up) as a radio DJ, and by Ozzy Osbourne, who’s surprisingly believable as a television evangelist railing against heavy metal. The film stars Marc Price, whom most folks from my generation fondly remember as lovable loser Skippy Handelman on Family Ties. Here he plays lovable loser Eddie Weinbauer, a heavy metal–obsessed high schooler who inadvertently resurrects his dead idol, rocker Sammi Curr. Initially, Sammi helps Eddie take revenge on the classmates who have bullied him. But soon, as Tygers of Pan Tang once warned, “If you mess around with fire, you’re gonna get yourself burnt,” and Eddie is forced to destroy his own creation. Making nearly $7 million at the box office, Trick or Treat was hardly a failure. But coming out when it did, at the tail end of the slasher cycle, it quickly disappeared into obscurity. Forgettable metal outfit Fastway was responsible for the title song and accompanying soundtrack. This is their legacy, which should probably tell you everything you need to know about the band.IV
Even if Trick or Treat didn’t exactly kick open the floodgates, like an earnest opening act, it prepped the crowd for the headliner. Enter John Fasano, the John Hughes of low-budget, heavy metal–themed horror movies. It’s rare when a director perfectly captures the zeitgeist, and even rarer when he has the balls to try it twice—failing spectacularly each time. Fasano wasn’t even a fan of metal. The Long Island–born director preferred Bruce Springsteen and hometown hero Billy Joel to anything by Armored Saint. It was only after he teamed up with the Canadian jack-of-all-trades “Rock Warrior” Jon Mikl Thor that he made two of the most surreal rock films of all time.
The first of the two, Rock ’n’ Roll Nightmare, opens with a prologue in which a young kid witnesses the charbroiled body of his mother come shrieking out of the kitchen oven. Actually, it might be his mother, or it might be a demon. I’ve seen the film a handful of times and I’m still not exactly sure. Ten years later, the heavy metal band Triton, led by lead singer Thor, arrives at the same location with their girlfriends. For some reason, the basement of this desolate Ontario farmhouse has been converted into a recording studio. According to Thor, if they can’t come up with some new material they will be forced to return their advance. And in light of their “talent,” these guys will desperately miss the money. For rock stars, the band spends an inordinate amount of time washing dishes, discussing washing dishes, and fighting about washing dishes. Then a one-eyed penis monster appears and turns one of the girlfriends into some sort of demon.
The majority of the film entails the band members rehearsing, wandering around the property, fooling around with their respective ladies, and then disappearing. During this time, we’re treated to the longest and least sexy shower scene in the history of cinema, during which Thor does something vaguely resembling French kissing with his tongue. At about the one-hour mark, the kid from the prologue returns, unaged but now possessed. Shortly after, Thor’s girlfriend turns into the devil and summons all the other penis monsters. Thor doesn’t seem overly concerned or even surprised at the sequence of events, and proceeds to give the devil an oral history of Satanism. Thor then reveals that he may or may not be alone at the farmhouse—the entire film thus far could be a figment of his imagination—and tears off his shirt to battle the devil in a spiked Speedo. Eventually, Thor defeats the devil through the power of rock ’n’ roll or some shit like that.
Obviously, the film doesn’t make much sense, which is why played straight it’s such a beloved piece of mid-eighties cheese. According to a 2013 Fangoria interview with Fasano, Night
mare was made for around $52,000 and ended up grossing $400,000. As a result, the film’s distributor wanted to see what Fasano could accomplish on a $400,000 budget. The result was the similarly themed Black Roses.
In the small town of Mill Basin, the popular heavy metal band the Black Roses arrives to play a series of shows. The local townspeople are all up in arms. Surprisingly, it’s the mayor—who might have the worst hair in all of human history—who convinces them that it’s nothing more than good clean fun. But of course it’s not. During the next night’s show, the Black Roses’ lead singer, Damian, turns some of the concertgoers into the Martians from Mars Attacks! The rest of the kids in the audience are transformed into sexpots and murderers. The reason for all this has something to do with black magic, but just like Rock ’n’ Roll Nightmare, none of it is very clear. Eventually, the well-liked high school English teacher figures something is amiss. Why? Probably because during class his once-model students begin chanting, “Damian! Damian! Damian!” By the end of the film, Damian has all the kids under his spell, so he yanks off his wig and turns into an evil salamander. Luckily, the English teacher sets the amphibian on fire, freeing the children from the power of Satan and restoring law and order to Mill Basin.
In every respect, Black Roses is an improvement over Rock ’n’ Roll Nightmare. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement, but it’s the most diplomatic thing I can say. After all, neither is a very good film. But if you read some of the glowing online reviews of Black Roses you might assume it’s a lost David Lean masterpiece. I guess this just goes to prove that fans eat this shit up and are exceptionally forgiving when it comes to the fondly remembered films of their youth.
One thing for which Fasano, who died unexpectedly in July 2014, should be commended is his stunt casting. Julie Adams has a small role, since the first movie Fasano ever saw was Creature from the Black Lagoon. One member of the fictitious Black Roses is played by Carmine Appice, the legendary Vanilla Fudge drummer who inspired a host of other hard-rock skin beaters. Vincent Pastore, still years away from The Sopranos, has one of the best and most politically incorrect lines of the film when he tells his recently ear-pierced son, “Only two kinds of men wear earrings. Pirates and faggots. And I don’t see no ship in our driveway.”
Bada bing!
It might seem as if it was only their aesthetic similarities (to grossly simplify, both were hard, brash, and uncompromising) and analogous fan bases (comprised of misfits who wore their outsider status not as a scarlet letter but as a badge of honor) that made heavy metal and horror movies perfect partners. But where they really made a formidable tag team was in the battle for the hearts and minds of America’s youth.
There was, however, one big difference between the responses they provoked. Whereas Siskel and Ebert’s antislasher campaign disappeared faster than a coed going to get her boyfriend a beer, heavy metal faced a more formidable opponent.
Contemporary music came under the scrutiny of Tipper Gore when she realized that not everything on Prince’s Purple Rain album might be appropriate for her eleven-year-old daughter. “She bought it because she liked ‘Let’s Go Crazy,’ ” explained Tipper about her daughter’s purchase. “But then I heard the words to ‘Darling Nikki’ with its lyrics about a girl masturbating with a magazine, and I started paying attention.”
And she started talking. And voicing her concerns to her fellow members of the privileged class. She soon discovered that more than a few of them shared her views on the issue, including Susan Baker, wife of Treasury Secretary James Baker.
In the spring of 1985, Tipper and Baker formed the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), along with their compatriots Sally Nevius, wife of former Washington city council chairman John Nevius; Pam Howar, wife of real estate developer and Republican fund-raiser Raymond Howar; and Ethelynn Stuckey, wife of former Georgia congressman William Stuckey.
The PMRC’s mission was to inform parents about the potentially offensive lyrics their children might be listening to and persuade the recording industry to adopt a voluntary rating system—similar to that used by the MPAA—that would be clearly visible on the album packaging.
To their supporters, they were culture warriors, protecting innocent children from the dangers of rock. To their opponents, they were blue-blooded yentas, busybodies who simply had too much time, too much money, and too much self-righteousness to be ignored. But whatever one may think of the PMRC’s mandate and its methods, it’s impossible to deny the subtle—and sometimes blatant—sexism they faced. Even their nickname, the “Washington wives,” defined them not by their own convictions but by the success of their husbands.
As one of their first orders of business they released the “Filthy Fifteen,” a list of fifteen particularly objectionable songs. Some of the choices were understandable; W.A.S.P.’s “Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)” is self-explanatory. Some were curious; why the center would choose the forgettable Ian Gillan–era Black Sabbath ditty “Trashed,” somewhat of a cautionary tale against drunk driving, is beyond me. Especially since Sabbath has far more well-known songs—“Snowblind” and “Sweet Leaf”—that practically sing the praises of cocaine and weed. I guess any group that lumps songs by Sheena Easton, Madonna, and Cyndi Lauper together with those of Venom and Mercyful Fate, for any reason whatsoever, is begging not to be taken seriously.
However, when you have the ear of the country and the balls of the men who run it, you’re taken seriously by default. The center scored an early victory in August 1985, when nineteen of the largest record companies agreed to place parental guidance labels on albums with explicit lyrics. But before the labeling was put into effect, the Senate convened a hearing on the issue. Officially, this was held under the auspices of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, whose grouping of disparate disciplines makes about as much sense as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. But hey, that’s Congress for ya!
On the morning of September 19, 1985, the hearing commenced in the Russell Senate Office Building. The committee chairman, Senator John Danforth (R-Missouri), an ordained Episcopal priest, opened the festivities with an assurance that “the reason for this hearing is not to promote any legislation . . . [b]ut to simply provide a forum for airing the issue itself, for ventilating the issue, for bringing it out into the public domain.” Of course, nobody believed him. At least no metal fans, opponents of censorship, civil libertarians, or concerned taxpayers, who wondered what the fuck this committee was doing in the first place. Still, one has to give Danforth some credit for trying to assuage these fears.
The hearing started off fairly predictably.
Senator Fritz Hollings (D–South Carolina) commends the PMRC for bringing this issue to the “nation’s attention,” then calls the current state of rock “outrageous filth” and openly wishes there was “some way constitutionally to do away with it.”
His cohorts are equally disdainful. Senator Paul Trible (R-Virginia) quotes Plato, poet John Donne, and some nineteenth-century Irish activist before remarking that this might be “the most important hearing conducted by the Commerce Committee this year”—which should have sent chills down the spine of anyone listening who actually cared about commerce. Susan Baker spells out the word “fuck” since she apparently can’t bring herself to say it, decries “the proliferation of songs glorifying rape, sadomasochism, incest, the occult, and suicide,” and then tries to give some context to teen suicide statistics by invoking three songs—“Suicide Solution,” “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” “Shoot to Thrill”—that have absolutely nothing at all to do with suicide.V Jeff Ling, a PMRC consultant, quotes objectionable lyrics from dozens of bands, from Metallica to the Mentors. The net effect is less shocking than it is an unintentional indictment of the quality of modern songwriting.VI
Now, in defense of the PMRC, or at least in defense of Tipper, when asked point-blank by Senator Jim Exon (D-Nebraska) about the center’s purpose she is unequivocal.
Senator Exon:
I guess a key question that I would like to ask you is, if there is one thing that has come through loud and clear to me at least, it is that you do not want federal legislation and you do not want federal regulation, at least at this time. Is that correct?
Tipper Gore: Yes, that is correct. We do not want legislation to remedy this problem. The problem is one that developed in the marketplace. The music industry has allowed the excesses that you saw and we believe the music industry is the entity to address those excesses. We would like them to do this voluntarily. We propose no legislative solution whatsoever.
Senator Exon: When you say “legislation,” do you also include the term that I use, “regulation”?
Tipper Gore: Yes.
Naturally, there were those who questioned Tipper’s sincerity on this point. After all, most of the PMRC harpies would have been positively ecstatic to see legislation introduced. But one thing was certain: they weren’t going to go unchallenged. The “friendly witnesses,” those either from the PMRC or called in to validate their concerns, were only the appetizer. What anybody who had a rooting interest in the issue really wanted to see were the “opposing witnesses,” the artists themselves, for whom even the slightest hint of censorship was unacceptable.
Things get off to a weird start. Chairman Danforth explains that although John Denver was slated to speak, he was forced to leave the hearing for another engagement, as if it was just a neighborhood barbecue and he had somewhere else to be. But, Danforth assures the room, “he plans to be back.”
