Review
"Your Netflix queue just got way more devil-horned with this handy compendium of 666 horror movies, grind-house sci-fi flicks, tawdry thrillers, and extra-loud docs. Now you’ll know which Dario Argento bleeder or Rob Zombie creeper will provide the most headbanging fun."Entertainment Weekly
"Ties together the many shared bonds between extreme music and extreme cinema with as much authority as a Slayer riff and more eye-popping graphics than a stack of Iron Maiden LPs." VH1
"McPadden’s exhaustive and highly entertaining book revels in the blood, boobs, and beasts of the most lurid flicks in the history of forever."VICE/Noisey
Heavy metal is a genre about attitude, riffs and style. This book has all that and more.”The Seattle Times
Crosses the line from informative,’ tramples well past definitive,’ and hammers happily into the realm that we shall dub leviathan
’ an homage to the golden era of film books, when it was basically impossible to see these features, and so lovingly curated tomes like this were maps to a foreign land.”The Austin Chronicle
Even the most extreme movie enthusiast will find something in this book to learn from, and more importantly, a cultural definition of the heavy metal movie’ has been permanently hatched from the bowels of hell
this is the last word on its subject, and will remain so.”Fangoria (3.5/4 review)
With Heavy Metal Movies, an encyclopedic, irreverent and hugely entertaining compendium of guitar barbarians, mutant bimbos and cult zombies amok in the 666 most ear and eye-ripping big-scream films ever!’, [Bazillion Points] have hit the bullseye once more.”Classic Rock
Entertaining
A book for metal heads and film buffs alike.”Joel McIver, Record Collector Magazine (4/5 review)
"Pure poetry."Decibel
"Fantastic fun"Terrorizer
"Relentlessly entertaining."Music Connection
""Just kick back and enjoy."Goldmine Magazine
"Heavy Metal Movies will forever be the final word in its field."Metal Injection
"Crucially, the reader doesn't even have to be into metal to get a kick out of McPadden's love of heart-in-mouth, tongue-in-cheek and guts-on-the-wall gems
this is exactly what you should be doing with your time."RTÉ (5/5 review)
"Despite the alpha-numeric organization of McPadden’s book, a story emerges. There’s a hunger in his writing, and reading each entry is like following a trail of breadcrumbs, all of it leading toward something weirder, wilder, and more fun than what came before. If metal is music’s loudest voice against oppression, then surely McPadden is the loudest for obsession."Popmatters (9/10 review)
"Both groundbreaking and energetically written, it is one of the most important publications on the reciprocity between popular culture and cinema written in recent years, and inarguably solidifies as McPadden as the authority on the subject."Film International
"All of the big, obvious choices are covered here but where the book really wins is in its reviews of relative obscurities. McPadden includes a wealth of under-seen exploitation and concert flicks, stretching from forgotten, foreign sci-fi films of the VHS era to recent low-budget indies that flew under the radar. McPadden writes about these films not only with a sense of humor but with authority, almost ensuring that you’ll come away from reading his entries on cannibal features and lesbian vampire flicks having learned something."Under the Radar
"Outta sight! My eyes are still ringing. The coolest. What a rockin' guide for seeking out new movies, and to rediscover old favorites. This book is a culture vulture's dream. Essential reading for every fan of movies, heavy metal, and pop culture. After poring over every page from A to Z, I'm sorry there aren't more letters in the alphabet."Jeff Krulik, director, Heavy Metal Parking Lot
"McPadden has struck gold with Heavy Metal Movies! Putting film reviews through a hard rock filter, he brings to the fore how genre film and metal are so tightly bound and interwovenand in ways that might not even be immediately obvious. A must-read!"Robin Bougie, Cinema Sewer/Graphic Thrills
Heavy metal and movies go together perfectlyit’s about damn time somebody dedicated a book to the two! Thank you, Mike McPadden, for answering our headbanging, metal horns-raising, VHS-watching, prayers!”Richard Christy, Death/Howard Stern/Decibel
A mammoth work of vein-bulging devotion to power, rage, darkness, sweat, and M E T A L on screen!”
Zack Carlson, author, Destroy All Movies: The Complete Guide to Punks on Film
Times Square to Big Hair, from one who was there. McBeardo knows his movies and his metal. Adroit, exhaustive and very entertaining.”Jimmy McDonough, author, The Ghastly One, Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen and Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography
"An essential reference guide to metal movies, written with equal doses of smart assed-ness and pop-cultural acuity. McPadden plumbs deeper than fashion and stereotypes to excavate the power of heavy metal in both its purest and most metaphoric forms."-Kier-La Janisse, author, House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films
"This entertaining book makes me want to see ALL of these movies -- and I'm not even a Metal fan!"Peter Bagge, cartoonist, Hate/Apocalypse Nerd
Heavy Metal Movies is the head banging-est, ear bleeding-est tribute to the world’s two finest inventions: heavy metal and the movies!”John Fasano, director, Zombie Nightmare/Black Roses/Rock N Roll Nightmare
"An encyclopedic compendium of all things filmic and rocking that will be equally useful for settling bar bets and starting bar fights."Allan MacDonell, author, Prisoner of X: Twenty Years in the Hole at Hustler Magazine
"Heavy Metal Movies is very funny, legitimately weird, occasionally disturbing and oftentimes breathtaking, a lot like heavy metal itself. When a film guide sends you scrambling to watch a movie every five to ten pages, it is a very, very good film guide. Heavy Metal Movies did that for me on almost every other page. This is the Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film for all movies heavy metal and metal in spirit. It should have a permanent place on your bookshelf."Dan Budnik, co-author, Bleeding Skull!: A 1980s Trash Horror Odyssey
"Mike McPadden is like Pauline Kael with a dick, Roger Ebert with a jaw, and James Agee with a mohawkall rolled in one."Josh Alan Friedman, author, Tales of Times Square; I, Goldstein; and Black Cracker
"The only way this book could be any more hard hitting, is if I took it and slapped you in the face with it. This divine sacrifice is carved up for your enjoyment as tribute to the rock 'n roll filmmakers that inspired it."BJ Colangelo, Day of the Woman/Icons of Fright
"McPadden's scope and intellect in HMM is part Rhodes Scholar, part cinema nerd, and full on metalhead. The care and passion put into each entry shows an abiding love of the subject matter. If only there was a word that trumps 'definitive,' this book is most certainly that!" -Kristy Jett, HorrorHound Magazine
"Oh Lord and Master SATAN! Tonight we sacrifice this baby in your name to thank you for bringing us Mike McPadden's Heavy Metal Movies! For it is a mighty beacon of darkness in a weak and pathetic cinematic world filled with repugnant rom-coms and loathsome feel-good-movies and PG-13 phony horror remakes. Hail Satan, and hail Mike McPadden!"-Johnny Ryan, Prison Pit
From the Back Cover
Heavy metal and high-thrill cinema have been joined together like mutant twins since before the band Black Sabbath adopted the name of a chilling Italian horror film. The unadulterated journey of Heavy Metal Movies spans concert movies and trippy midnight flicks, inspirational depictions of ancient times and future apocalypses, and raw handheld digital video obsessions. As brash, irreverent, and visceral as both the music and the movies themselves, Heavy Metal Movies is the ultimate guidebook to the complete molten musical cinema experience.
Exploding with way over 666 true headbanger classicsraging with disturbing documentaries, bulging barbarians, Satanic shockers, spluttery slashers, post-nuke dystopias, carnivorous chunk-blowers, undead gut-munchers, midnight mind-benders, concert films, killer cameosplus witches, werewolves, bikers, aliens, lesbian vampires, and vengeful vikings galore...the heaviest sin-ematic sensations of all time!
About the Author
Brooklyn-born powerhouse Mike McBeardo” McPadden has written prolifically about high art and low culture for the likes of Esquire, Black Book, and New York Press. He worked for more than a decade as head writer for the online phenomenon Mr. Skin, and has also done time as a B-movie screenwriter. McPadden lives in Chicago with his wife, xoJane.com editor Rachel McPadden.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974)
(Dir. Tobe Hooper; w/Gunnar Hansen, Marilyn Burns, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow)
Only two films in my experience tap into prehuman” intensities of fear. The first is Night of the Living Dead (1968) and the other is the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Both were directorial debuts, made on the fly by amateurs, and both exploded across global consciousness like nuke-backed napalm. Viewer by viewer, Night and Massacre leveled previous conceptions of the ability of art to terrify an audience. These milestones ran nonstop for more than a decade each in neighborhood theaters, drive-ins and art houses and at midnight screenings before reaching untold new numbers on home video. All who witnessed them sustained unprecedented psychological and emotional damage.
Night and Massacre expelled crowds back out into the living world cathartically cleansed and inwardly shattered. Having survived, viewers were newly equipped to confront the real horrors of life, large and small, with imaginations savagely torn open. In comparative terms, one often hears about the line-in-the-sand experiences of a metal fan discovering heavy music: I heard [Sabbath/Priest/Slayer/Pantera/Carcass] and that was it. I changed and I could never go back.” Night melds ’50s EC horror comics with gothic graveyard spookery and apocalyptic dread, punctuated by a surreal coda. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, however, incorporates those all those elements, but it also anticipates and lays out multiple forms of psychotic blood-splattered carnage.
Five teens pilot a van through the desert roads of the Lone Star State. They’re college-age, long-haired, bell-bottomed stoner types, hugely typical of the time, with the exception of fat, nasty, wheelchair-bound Franklin (Paul A. Partain). Already, the metal spirit is evident in the rock and roll youth atmosphere and the violation of a taboo: we hate the handicapped guy. As you’d expect, the kids pull over for a hitchhiker (Edwin Neal). Their new passenger’s grimy appearance and spastic vocal mannerisms evoke Charles Manson. First it’s uncomfortable, and then it’s appalling. The Hitchhiker produces a straight razor, slashes his own hand, and then turns the blade on Franklin. The kids kick him out onto the blacktop. Then the freak-out starts.
Texas isn’t just weird. It’s also scary. And it will kill you in horrible, creative ways. Scary Texas metal bands like deadhorse and Agony Column proved this, as did Butthole Surfers and broken-brained local casualty Roky Erickson.
The longhairs stop at a gas station, where the Old Man (Jim Siedow) in charge says he’s waiting for a fuel delivery to fill his pumps. The kids decide to stay. Some look for a swimming hole. Kirk (William Vail) and Pam (Teri McMinn) approach a farmhouse to use a phone. They step inside and knock on a giant steel door, which slams open. There’s Leatherface. This behemoth slob in a bloody butcher smock and a mask made of human skin slams in Kirk’s skull instantly with a sledgehammer. The young jock collapses and spasms uncontrollably. Pam stares in dead-eyed horror. Leatherface pounds Kirk’s head repeatedly until the shaking stops. He then drags the body into the other room, glares at Pam, and slams the massive door shut. Silence follows.
Viewers are right there with Pamfrozen, choked, and reeling with fear. The introduction of Leatherface immediately establishes the type of antihero that would become the crucial figure in horror and heavy metal. His appearance recalls Alice Cooper explaining that he was tired of hearing about rock and roll heroes” and thus created himself as the first rock and roll villain.” Leatherface is the embodiment of all things frightening and repulsive, as well as everything that’s appealing about what’s frightening and repulsive. In large part, that’s about power. He looks like a monster, and, noticeably, he’s decked out in skins. Rock and roll villainsfrom Gene Simmons to GG Allin to Marilyn Manson to corpse-painted hordes the world overhave been following his lead ever since.
Attempting to flee, Pam sees that the farmhouse is inundated with thousands upon thousands of human bones, and skin, too, and meat. Most remains are piled in nauseating heaps, but some are fashioned into grotesque furniture, like a homicidal caveman’s take on an H. R. Giger (Alien) design. A live chicken clucks maniacally in a cramped, suspended cage. Like Sally, the bird is trapped. We are too. The sight of the Chain Saw living room is as disturbing as movies get. There is terrible logic to the arrangement of bones and splattered organs. The sheer volume reveals that countless humans have been slaughtered here, and that it’s been going on for years and years and years and years.
Pam turns to run from the house, but Leatherface grabs her and carries her off, wailing and flailing, to his kill room. Horribly, he impales Pam alive on a meat hook. Here, we witness the birth of an entire new level of horrora quickening and increasing of the heaviness, as Pam squeals and reels on that hook. Chainsaw then chronicles the pursuit and extermination of the young travelers. The film is gritty, merciless, and shot almost documentary style, with bare-bones barbarism. Eventually, only Sally (Marilyn Burns) survives. There is a dreadful moment when she reaches the Old Man at the gas station for help, feels a glimmer of relief, and then realizes that he, too, is part of the cannibal clan.
Back at the house, Chain Saw climaxes with the motherfucker of all death metal milieus. The Hitchhiker, the Old Man, and Leatherfacewho’s now dressed as the mom of the bunchtie Sally to a chair at their family table to serve her dinner. Director Hooper achieves a Hitchcock-level triumph of suspense he cuts from the tormentors to the ghastly menu items to searing close-ups of Sally’s frantic darting eyeballs as she takes in the horror. Enter Grandpa (John Dugan). This cadaverous, barely breathing ancient will kill their dinner guest. Sally’s head is held over a bucket as Grandpa hits her with a hammerbut his blow is too soft, and he drops the tool. And so, over and over again, Grandpa slams Sally’s head and drops the hammer. She screams and bleeds and the assembled psychos laugh and cheer, and Grandpa gives it another go. And then another. The movie theater has never heard so much screaming, as this process is excruciatingly hard to watch. With some distance, this scene is the height of Chain Saw’s black comedy. Grandpa forces the death metal ingredients to their brutal limitand then he keeps going.
Sally manages to break free and jumps through an upstairs glass window. A final dance of doom ensues. Leatherface and the Hitchhiker pursue their prey onto a highway. An eighteen-wheeler trucker flattens the Hitchhiker spectacularly. Leatherface slices his own leg in the melee, and Sally manages to hop in the back of passing pickup. She laughs like a lunatic, her mind snapped, as Leatherface swings his chainsaw by the roadside, dancing and squealing while the sun rises behind him.
Jarringly, it’s over. After the dawn, there is only more darkness. Deeper and bleaker. Hurling ever downward into forever. If a more heavy metal experience is to exist in the annals of horror films, you, reader, are going to have to make it. Look for inspiration to Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and Leatherface” songs by Blood, Last House on the Left, Burnt Offering, Lääz Rockit, Legion of Death, Revenge, Skitzo, and other miscreants.
