Rocktober Blood (1984) — Triskaidekafiles

ROCKTOBER BLOOD

WRITERS: Ferd and Beverly Sebastian

DIRECTOR: Beverly Sebastian

STARRING: Tray Loren as Billy Eye Harper

Donna Scoggins as Lynn Starling

Cana Cockrell as Honey Bear

Rene Hubbard as Donna Lewis

Ben Sebastian as Head of Security

Nigel Benjamin as Chris Keane

QUICK CUT: A rock star lives down to their reputation by trashing the place and all the relationships around him.

THE MORGUE

Billy Eye - A hard living rocker with an attitude, too many women, and always willing to make sure he takes the credit, even if it’s not deserved.

Lynn - One of Billy’s girlfriends, and backup singer in his band. She’s been promised many things, and is looking forward to when they come due.

Chris - The band’s manager, who will do almost anything to get the music out there.

We’re gonna rock around the tober tonight

Welcome back, Triskelions! It's mid December, and time for our weird little ritual, the rock and roll horror movie! We've had some good, some bad, some *awful* movies, and now we come to an odd one - although not as odd as Intercessor, but I digress - called Rocktober Blood. YES I know it's Rockcember, not Rocktober, but like I said, tradition. Let's just get into this. Ready? Get set, go!

The movie opens up with rocker Billy Eye Harper laying down vocals for his next big hit, and it's actually not a bad song, and plays well with the movie itself.

Once that's done, Billy heads out on a hot date, but his girlfriend takes issue with that. She was his last little conquest, lured in by promises of fame and fortune, and a song he wrote for her.

But it is quickly established that Billy is a jerk, and he'll be singing lead on their song, and he will take all the credit.

While Lynn heads into the jacuzzi, Billy returns very quickly, finds sound designer Kevin, and slits his throat.

Billy finds another woman, a roadie or sound engineer or something, and before she can react too much, she gets dragged off and pinned to the wall.

That's when Lynn finds Billy in the sound studio, backmasking his last track, acting calm as a cucumber.

Lynn can tell Billy's acting weird, even for a musician, and goes to find Mary. Billy is right there, laughing and admitting to the murder, and threatens Lynn at knife point to sing her song.

Fortunately, that's when a security guard shows up. Well, fortunate for Lynn, not so much for the guard.

Billy hates being interrupted, and chases off the guard, leaving Mary to recover. Before we can find out what happens next, we jump two years into the future, to a press party for the Rocktober Blood tour.

There's a reporter for Legally Distinct From MTV News there, covering the event because it was a year ago that Billy Eye was executed for murdering 25!! people, after Lynn gave the key testimony.

Now, the band is still going, under a new name, and with Lynn as the lead singer. So everything's coming up Lynn!

Well at least he didn't do any of that walking against the wind shit.

While the music continues, one of the band comes over in a mask to pull Lynn away for a minute. She heads backstage to catch up with him.

The person she believes is Frankie corners her though, acting all scary, and when he pulls off his mask, it is Billy Eye, back from the dead, to have his revenge!

Chris finds her a few moments later, alone, and curled up in the corner sobbing, trying to explain what she saw. But of course, no one believes her.

After Chris finds the real Frankie and punches him so hard his mask comes off, he sends Lynn off to the lakehouse to get herself together and relax.

She wanders around the forest for a bit, taking photos, and she starts to hear Billy's voice coming from the forest.

Before you can say, the trees are talking to me and the rocks are laughing at me, Lynn hears the backwards version of Billy's song, and scurries back to the safety of the house.

Ah, I was wondering when we’d get the requisite 80s aerobics scene.

Once again, she tries to explain to her friends what happened, and once again they pat her on the head and tell her she better be careful, or they'll send her back to the shrink.

That's when the phone rings, and Billy tells Lynn he *ahem* "wants her hot, steamy pussy blood all over his face". Eww. Dude, that is so not sanitary. And VERY concerning amidst the 80s when the AIDS crisis was in full swing.

Later that night, one of Lynn's friends makes her way to the hot tub, and Billy lunges out grabbing her, pulling her in, and knocking her out. Dude can hold his breath.

Our heroine returns and starts wandering around the house, inching ever closer to getting into a bath. There's some good tension being set up here, but it goes on way too long as she just wanders and gets ever so closer to the tub.

We see Billy's PoV as she bathes, and he stands right over her for a second, and it's just a whole lotta nothin'.

Just paint your face, the shadows smiled.

It's almost eight minutes before Billy finally comes out of the closet to chase Lynn outside, then back inside. The guy playing Billy does a wonderful job though, playing cat and mouse, and being very creepy. He brings some good presence and menace to the role

Lynn locks him out, but Billy turns the power off, plunging the house, and the movie, into darkness. So it's no surprise when she accidentally stabs Chris when he shows up to check on her. Things are so dark, you would think it was AvP Requiem up in here.

While they're setting up the concert the next day, it's more of the same trying to convince people and no one believing her.

This prompts Lynn to take things into her own hands to go and dig up Billy's body and prove that he's walking around.

No one is about to help her, so Lynn heads to the cemetery to do the job herself, and does manage to drag one friend along to keep watch.

This leads to another long drawn out scene of digging, as someone, revealed to be Chris showing up late with Starbucks, as they dig up the grave in real time.

Whatever you do, don't stab the corpse with a wrought iron pole in the middle of a thunderstorm.

And when they finally open the coffin, Billy is...inside! There is a brief moment of Lynn seeing him speak, but that at least is a delusion.

But it is at last the night of the big concert to kick off the final act, and Billy is lurking around the catwalks plotting revenge. Ahh, memories to my days in theatre.

His first victim of the night is Honey, whom he takes an iron to her neck and burns her to death.

After more wandering around and preparing, Lynn finally comes across Billy, so we at least get some chasing padding out the final act. It’s still a bit much, but at least it’s got stuff going on.

This is when we get the big reveal that this guy is not really Billy, but his twin brother John, and he's the one who did all the killing. And because no one ever heard of him, they all just assumed it was Billy, no matter how loudly he protested, and sentenced him to death for his brother's crimes.

You would think at some point during the trial, Billy would have gone "Whoa whoa whoa, you think someone who looks exactly like me murdered almos 30 people? Have you asked John? Here's his birth records."

Oh, and John is also the brains behind the band, writing all the music, so that tracks nicely with Billy's taking credit earlier. I genuinely like that bit of…does that count as foreshadowing? At least having Billy being consistent.

It is a bit of a bummer to drop THAT big a bombshell on us when there's still 25 minutes to go, and most of that is chasing. I feel like we coulda built to that crescendo a bit more and really had a big reveal at the end, after “Billy” has returned to the stage.

At this point, the movie really does just devolve into singing at the concert, and chasing, with a few deaths sprinkled in, all culminating in "Billy" revealing himself on stage, and bookending the movie with his big song we saw the real Billy recording at the start. This would have been the right place for the reveal, I think.

John is at least smart enough to have Lynn handcuffed to him, to deter any would be heroes. Except SOMEhow she is just suddenly...NOT handcuffed to him, giving Chris an opportunity to bash John over the head with an electric guitar and shocking him into the end credits.

Yeah, the movie just kinda...stops.

Well, except for ten minutes with the Sebastians, the writers and director of the movie, discussing what they’ve been up to over the last 20 years, why they’re finally releasing it, and such. It is a WEIRD addition, talking about their work with greyhounds, and their faith, and how they sat on this because of their religion and the movies having sex and vioience, but Christ gave his okay as long as they included these tags, discussing their faith, and using them to spread the good word. Like I said, odd.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: Oh it clearly is just a VHS rip. It doesn’t look great, and it makes the dark scenes even worse. I’ve seen worse, but this ain’t nothing to cheer about.

Audio: Just the right side of okay. It could be much better, but it’s mostly clear, and the music comes through all right, which is what you want.

Body Count: For a movie that feels very padded, it does have a fairly all right body count.

1 - Eight minutes in and Kevin gets his neck slashed

2 - Mary is then dragged off and pinned to the wall

3 - Girl drowned in a hot tub and knocked out then hacked up

4 - Honey gets an iron to the neck

5 - Girl on stage gets gutted and hacked up.

6 - And a second one?

7 - John gets electrocuted with a guitar.

Best Corpse: Hmm. There’s no real huge stand outs, but the random hacking up of the corpse does stick with me.

Blood Type - C+: Not a huge amount of blood, but you do get quite a bit, and the effects are used sparingly, but done well enough.

Sex Appeal: A few moments of nudity when people go for the water.

Drink Up! Every time someone doesn’t believe Lynn

Movie Review: So it’s my understanding this movie is unfinished, and I kiiinda see that, but most of the work seems to be there. Maybe some polish, maybe a bit more in the middle, and something after the conclusion, but having Billy nee John bookend the movie and end it with the song feels right at the same time. I enjoyed this more than I probably should. The acting is serviceable, the story is actually its strongest asset. The idea is rock solid. I love that it plays with the idea of, is it supernatural? How is he back? Is Lynn losing her mind? And the answer works for the most part, even if it’s poorly built up, comes out of nowhere, and lacks some necessary logic. The basic idea of evil twin seeking revenge, and makes his target thinks they’re the original back from the dead? Great idea there. It’s also not shot too badlty, the directing is good enough. For an unfinished product, that is admittedly rough, and could be better, it’s doing the right things at its heart. Three out of five devil masks.

Entertainment Value: I definitely found myself grooving to the music more than I should. It’s not GREAT music, but it’s pretty all right. As I said in the review, Trey brings some great presence and menace to the role, and you can tell he is having fun chewing the scenery. The scenes that go on too long, and take too long to deliver the tension, which I do give credit for trying at least, do drag down and you want the movie to get on with it, but the tension IS there. Stuff IS going on, it’s just a bit much at times. Still, I enjoyed the ride, it’s a bit of a unique movie to see, and worth catching as a curiosity. Three out of five electric guitars.