10 Essential Heavy Metal Horror Flicks
Heavy metal and horror are interlinked. Be it Iron Maiden's "Murders in the Rue Morgue," Ice Nine Kills' many themed videos, Ghoul's entire discography, or Metallica's "Call of Ktulu" (with apologies to H.P. Lovecraft for the spelling), the musical and the terrifying are absolutely linked.
It's spilled over into the cinematic world, as well, and there have been numerous films which either implicitly or explicitly tie the onscreen terrors to the world of heavy metal. For this list, we're going with the explicit. Mere vibes, a musician in a cameo role, or the main character sporting a band t-shirt are not enough. We need bands fighting creatures, on-screen shredding, and more.
Here are ten movies which manage to get bloody and heavy all at once.
Black Roses (1988)
Dir. John Fasano
Black Roses’ opening features people getting rocked so hard, they turn into skeletons. A mysterious band plays their first-ever shows in the small town of Mill Basin to warm up for a tour, and over the course of three days, go from being rock fans to out-and-out victims of rock ‘n’ roll madness. The Sopranos’ Big Pussy, Vincent Pastore, plays a parent of one of the kids who is sucked into a stereo and the lead singer of Black Roses turns into an actual lizard demon. The band King Kobra did the songs performed by the Black Roses band, with the soundtrack also featuring Bang Tango, Lizzie Borden, and Tempest.
Streaming on Peacock and Tubi.
Dead Ant (2017)
Dir. Ron Carlson
Its original title of Giant Killer Ants was far better, but you could do worse than a movie about a washed-up band which features Tom Arnold, Sean Astin, Jake Busey, and a before-she-was-famous Sydney Sweeney and does indeed have a lot of CGI'd giant killer ants. The sole song from the movie's soundtrack to be made available is the single "Side Boob" by Sonic Grave, and it's as sleazy as you could hope. The final scene at a “festival” is very low-budget, but the creatures being destroyed by the power of rock is beyond metal.
Streaming on Peacock and Tubi.
Death Metal Zombies (1995)
Dir. Todd Jason Cook
Shot-on-video, beyond low-budget film directed by Todd Cook feels as though a bunch of friends got together over a three-day weekend and made a movie about their favorite things, namely death Metal and Zombies. As Bleeding Skull's Joseph Ziemba put it, “With its heavy-metal-possession plot and sixth-grader humor level, Death Metal Zombies feels like a 1990s mash-up of Trick or Treat and Splatter University on a budget of four cheeseburgers.” There's a two-person mosh while music plays on a boombox. There is a cursed album won by a character when he calls into a radio show. It's not great, but it's accurate, as the band who recorded the cursed album is called Living Corpse, and their song is called “Zombified.” They probably opened for Exhumed.
Streaming on Tubi.
Deathgasm (2015)
Dir. Jason Lei Howden
Much like Luigi Cozzi's 1989 slasher, Paganini Horror, our band, DEATHGASM (“All spelt in capitals. Lower case is for pussies.”), finds ancient sheet music which offers up the ultimate in darkness. In this case, they're in small town Australia and the townspeople turn into monsters, rather than strange things occurring in a castle, and Cozzi's movie definitely didn't involve a massive dildo being used as a cosh, nor does it feature the likes of Emperor, Nunslaughter, and Midnight on the soundtrack. Many of the films on this list are about being yourself, despite those who might otherwise hate you for it, but this one does it best. A sequel, Deathgasm 2: Goremageddon, is in the works thanks to a successful Kickstarter.
Streaming on Peacock, Pluto TV, and Tubi.
The Devil's Candy (2015)
Dir. Sean Byrne
A man is possessed by a demon and can only quiet the voices in his head by playing big riffs? Ethan Embry plays a dad who rocks out to metal with his daughter, complete with devil horns and headbanging? A soundtrack featuring Slayer, Metallica, Sunn O))), and Pantera? A gallery owner named Belial? The Devil's Candy is so metal, Clem Bastow of The Guardian said that the movie is "just like the music it’s inspired by, it’s loud and sometimes gruesome but also winningly earnest.” Surprisingly touching, despite the almost constant sense of terror.
Streaming on AMC+.
The Gate (1987)
Dir. Tibor Takács
Some workers digging a hole in baby Stephen Dorff's backyard accidentally open a gateway to hell, courtesy of a geode and reading random incantations. Demons escape after the pre-teen metalheads listen to a mysterious record and read the lyrics within. Madness ensues, with a body melt scene which will instill no small amount of kindertrauma before a toy rocket takes out a demon. Terror Vision Records released a version of the score with a wrap featuring the artwork for Sacrifyx’s The Dark Book album.
Streaming on Tubi.
Invoking Yell (2023)
Dir. Patricio Valladares
Director Patricio Valladares’ film manages to be three things not often seen in heavy metal horror. Firstly, it’s found footage. Secondly, said band is Chilean, making this a rare foreign entry into the genre. Finally, the band is made of women, keeping this list from failing the Bechdel test. The plot revolves around a black metal band attempting to record at a notorious haunted location deep within the remote woods, looking to capture “psychophony, plus screams in the forest” for their “cursed demo.” Much like The Blair Witch Project, it takes a minute to get going, but by the end, it’s a wild ride.
Available on VOD.
Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare (1987)
Dir. John Fasano
Between this and Zombie Nightmare, heavy metal musician Jon Mikl Thor had a very solid 1987. In Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare, he gets to show off both his musical chops and bodybuilding physique as this Ontario-set film starts off like an Evil Dead knockoff full of hair rockers before turning into a battle against Beelzebub himself. Thor’s character, John, is not only the frontman of the band Triton, but the Intercessor, an actual archangel. Bonus points should be given for the fact that we get to see not one, but two full performances of the songs “We Live to Rock” and “Energy,” with the band in full concert regalia.
Available on VOD.
Rocktober Blood (1984)
Dir. Beverly Sebastian
The grandaddy of them all, 1984’s Rocktober Blood was the first movie to capitalize on the intersection of metal and horror. Despite its plot being a bit of a mess, wherein the lead singer of a band seems to go insane and kill the recording engineer and his assistant before being captured, tried, sentenced and executed, and then seems to be back from the grave to kill his bandmates, the focus is 100% on the music. Bookended as it is by the band Sorcery’s song for the film, “I’m Back,” sung by London’s Nigel Benjamin, along with two other performances from the band within in it, Rocktober Blood might be the most music-filled film on this list.
The soundtrack was reissued on vinyl from Lunaris Records in 2016 and in August of 2023, boutique Blu-ray and record label Terror Vision announced they’d be releasing it on disc, although there’s no street date as of yet.
Not streaming.
Trick or Treat (1986)
Dir. Charles Martin Smith
While not the first heavy metal horror movie, this might be the go-to for any fan of both genres. Both Ozzy Osbourne and Kiss’ Gene Simmons make appearances in this movie starring Marc “Skippy from Family Ties” Price, and the soundtrack is by Fastway, the hair-adjacent band featuring former Motörhead guitarist "Fast" Eddie Clarke. The story is about a misfit metal fan, Eddie "Ragman" Weinbauer, whose favorite musician, Sammi Curr, suddenly dies in a hotel fire, and then Eddie is gifted Curr’s final album, Songs in the Key of Death. Repeated listens bring the spirit of Sammi Curr to take vengeance upon those who mistreat Eddie, and a final resurrection brings the burned musician back to life.
The title song is an absolute earworm, and rumor has it the reason the film and soundtrack were unavailable for so long was due to the fact that Fastway’s frontman, Dave King, now fronts Celtic punks Flogging Molly and didn’t want to acknowledge his musical past, but recent years have seen multiple soundtrack reissues from Real Gone Music, and the team at Synapse is currently working on a Blu-ray release.
Streaming on Screambox.