Heavy Metal Massacre (1989) — Triskaidekafiles

HEAVY METAL MASSACRE

WRITER: David DeFalco

DIRECTOR: Bobbi Young

STARRING: Bobbi Young as the Killer

Michelle De Santis as Shauna

Nick Hasomeris as Reese

John Thayer as

Sami Plotkin as Lisa

QUICK CUT: A heavy metal fan works his way through the club scene of the late ‘80s.

THE MORGUE

The Killer - A self absorbed man who collects strange objects and likes to kill women

Shauna - A young woman into the hard rock scene.

Lisa - The same, but she also does coke.

We’re just out here dropping lead anvils on people.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! My December tradition of doing a heavy metal massacre movie continues this year, as does my tradition of putting off actually doing Black Roses, with a movie ACTUALLY called, Heavy Metal Massacre! This is the rare movie that breaks my rule of "Only Trisk movies I own" but if I ever find it at a reasonable price, I will get it. This one was too good not to share though.

I mean, it...it's not good. Not…not good at all. Not even close. This is genuinely a potential candidate for the list of worst movies I've seen. But...yeah. Heavy Metal Massacre!

The movie opens with...a slide show. I'm not exaggerating by much. And after seeing this big haired blonde rocker dude just standing there in multiple shots, we then sloooowly pan through what I assume is an apartment or living space of some kind.

We go through like, five minutes of just still shots and panning around walls. If I wanted to watch Skinamarink, I would. I am here to watch some heavy metal and/or massacre-ing! Also, someone got a whole bunch of filters and wipes with their camera, and by gods, they are gonna try them all by the end of this movie.

This movie is another of those triple threat movies, where the writer, director, and star are all the same person. I need to coin a term for these situations. They’re almost never good. And with all these attempts at glamour shots and lovingly showing things off, this is almost as self indulgent as Conjure.

But finally there is arguably actual movie occurring, with a pair of cops lounging about talking about a mysterious serial killer on the loose. Oooh, will there be five murders, of five couples, over five nights?? No wait, we did that already.

From that short lived scene, we then jump over to two women, Shauna and Lisa. Lisa is setting up some lines of coke, and her roomie gives her shit for it, because yeah.

This must be what the brainstorming sessions for this movie looked like.

While the cops and the ladies do play roles in this movie, I'm just gonna say it...they largely fall out of the plot until the final act. The cops drift through every so often to go, "Hey! Another dead body!" but that's about it.

In the meantime, we follow...all right, I'm not calling him The Killer for the whole movie, and since we have no other name but the actor, it shall be Bobbi from this point onwards. Anyways, we go back to Bobbi's apartment, he stares in the camera, and has a woman over, whom he shows how huge his...warehouse is.

Eventually they end up next to a pallet set against the wall, and Bobbi wants to tie her up. Unfortunately, that costs extra. Fortunately, he's gonna murder her in about 20 seconds.

And I just want to say, you can see him pull his 'punch' at the last second, and hit her with the gentlest hammering ever.

Once Bobbi picks up some celebratory coke, we head to the local metal club, the Dungeon to watch people chatting, because the general din drowns out most talking. And the soundtrack takes care of the rest.

Eventually, Bobbi targets his next victim, and brings her back to his lair, where we basically get a repeat of that which has come before. At least he mixes things up by drugging this one.

Although I don't know WHY he drugged her, since she wakes up almost the instant he leaves the room. Or that's my assumption, since time has no meaning in this movie, as we pan around all the clutter in this apartment. Again. I’m more familiar with his art collection than my own.

The girl stumbles around, finds his previous victim, and lemme tell ya, she sobers up REAL FAST at that point.

Bobbi chases her through the murky darkness of his warehouse and the poor VHS transfer, and eventually catches the girl.

He grabs some pliers and pulls...something out of her mouth, but heaven help me if I can ID it. But whatever he does, it kills her I guess.

With his bloodlust not yet sated, Bobbi tracks down a guy who was being a jerk at the club, and...I dunno, shoves him against a wall real hard? There is so much in this movie that happens that you just can't see through the murk.

Well okay, I know what he did HERE but this came after.

And this is about the halfway point and, I gotta ask...just what all has even happened? We've had a few murders, we've had some cops comment on the murders AGES ago, and oh yeah, there's a couple of women whom I am assured will be returning to the plot shortly.

So far, this has been "listen to music and check out my stuff" and not a whole lot of substance besides.

Following a bit more of Walking Around: The Movie, the plot, such as it is, ACTUALLY kicks in, around the 50 minute mark, when Shauna and Lisa wander back into the story.

They make plans to hit the club, and Shauna borrows one of her friend's necklaces. You can kinda guess where this is heading, but actually feeling like there's some direction is a breath of fresh air.

Bobbi picks up Lisa as his next victim, and he lures her away with the promise of some cocaine. He knows the way to that girl’s heart.

Once they're at his apartment, Bobbi keeps saying he can't wait to play a game with her. Oooh, I hope it's Parcheesi!

Unfortunately, it's more a game of "Hey, help me take off all my armbands" so I am disappointed on multiple levels.

I am posing like a completely normal human being.

The next game he plays is "blindfold and lead you down to my murder lair" which is somehow a step up from his previous games.

Once he has her down there, instead of doing a pallet kill yet again, he instead ties her to a chair, and covers her in a sheet. Which I will admit, is a clever-ish way to swap out a body so you don't sledgehammer a real person.

The movie drags out painfully slow motion from its box of tricks, and if everything wasn't so painfully difficult to actually see, this might mean something. But here we are, watching a hammer slowly travel through murky sludge.

Unfortunately, he’s kidnapped the Black Widow.

And if that wasn't bad enough! The movie does a CURTAIN WIPE to go to the next scene. The visual pun, plus the cheap effect, is just...wow. Someone just died, and a cheap curtain effect comes down the screen.

Shauna goes to the cops, but there's not much they can do but stand around, since she's not been missing for very long.

Meanwhile, Bobbi gets more drugs, and uses the pendant as a down payment for more coke. When Shauna hits the guy up to see if he's seen Lisa, she sees the pendant, and thinks he was somehow involved.

The men might have bigger hair than the women in this movie.

She calls the cops, and stalls to keep Ace from leaving as long as she can. But, he gets bored and wanders off into the night.

The cops and Shauna assume this is all over, and now all Bobbi has to do is not kill anyone else, and he will get away with all the murders, scott free

Before the movie wraps up, the cops are going through Ace's file, and one of them actually says "I knew he was capable of HIGHNESS killings." Instead of heinous. I...at this point, whatever.

And we jump back to the club, after an unspecified amount of time, and sit through a long music track, before Shauna meets a hot blonde rocker type, and goes off to....OH GODDAMNIT.

So the whole necklace plot, ultimately amounts to NOTHING. This was just a plot designed to have the killer get away with it. He’s being played as the protagonist you’re supposed to root for.

Also, because her look is so generic with no real signiature to single her out, and because we don't spend much time with her, the only reason I know that was even Shauna, is because the movie puts her credit over an image from the end of the movie.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: Bleargh. One of the worst entries in this category. Everything is at least vaguely visible, keeping it out of THE worst spot, but yeah, this cheap VHS transfer leaves a lot to be desired.

Audio: On the wrong side of passable. Most of the dialogue is fine, but it’s almost as murky as the visuals at times. And sometimes the movie focuses more on the music than the dialogue. This is almost a showcase for the band who does the soundtrack than anything else.

Body Count: Ehhh.

1 - 20 minutes in, and random girl gets hammered.

2 - Girl dies from pliers to the lip?

3 - Random dude in alley gets chainsawed.

4 - Lisa gets hammered under a sheet.

5 - Ace gets run over by a car.

Best Corpse: The highlight of your movie shouldn’t be the random dude taken out with a chainsaw, outside of the normal course of events.

Blood Type - D+: It is shocking how bloodless this movie is? There’s a few splotches, with the main point being the chainsaw wound.

Sex Appeal: Bobbi gets more undressed than anyone else in this movie

Drink Up! Every time there is a needless visual effect.

Movie Review: Well, I’ll give the movie this much, it at least is more coherent than some other movies I’ve seen. But it’s all so much forgettable fluff. The acting is wooden and bare minimum, at best. This is clearly a vanity project for Bobbi Young to showcase himself, since he casts himself as the killer, and the movie focuses squarely on him, instead of the victims. Swapping that around would have helped, but instead we wander around with Bobbi not doing much, when they could be making a plot and character elsewhere. The movie is directed and shot about bare minimum of well enough, but the reliance on the visual effects and filters become too distracting and take away from the experience. It’s such a messy movie that is too much of nothing. If you started the story around where the 50 minute mark is, make Lisa the first kill we see, and then build up the plot and the hunt from there, with Shauna and Bobbi circling each other towards inevitability, it might have worked. There is just not a lot here. Two out of five arm bands.

Entertainment Value: This definitely falls in the realm of “Is this really happening??” entertainment, but even there, the ‘gag’ wears thin, as you realise, oh, yes, this is really happening. And it keeps happening exactly as it has been. The key to movies like this transcending their badness, is to at least be notable, or mix things up. It’s not very bloody, so there’s nothing there. It’s not even very sleazy, which something this cheap, and this cheesy, often is. The women undress, but never go nude. It wants to be lurid, but you never feel that dirty, voyeuristic vibe other movies of this level can give you. It’s got a few highlights, but way more many lowlights. Two out of five bat pendants.