The 66.6 Most Metal Movie Scenes of All Time: #49 through #40
On June 9th, independent heavy metal book publisher Bazillion Points will release Heavy Metal Movies, the ultimate guidebook to the complete molten musical cinema experience that features lavish illustrations and more than 666 of the most metallic movie moments of all time.
To celebrate, we’ve partnered with the book’s author, Mike “McBeardo” McPadden, to count down the 66.6 most metal movie scenes of all time right here on MetalSucks! Every other day through the book’s release on June 9th we’ll be revealing Mike’s picks along with brief write-ups penned by the author himself.
Monday we got started with #66.6 through #60, Wednesday we covered #59 through #50 and today we finish off the week with #49 through #40.
49. Calendar Girls (2003)
• Helen Mirren and a posse of elderly nude models meet Anthrax’s Scott Ian, John Bush, and Frank Bello.
NYC thrash-masters Anthrax exude movie connections: they put Poltergeist II’s creepy preacher on the cover of Among the Living, they sampled Taylor Negron from Easy Money in their rap-bash “I’m the Man,” they performed the theme to the 1996 Tales From the Crypt movie, Bordello of Blood, and frontman Joey Belladonna starred in the 1990 slasher curiosity Pledge Night. Alas, the group’s big on-screen career highlights occurs as a cameo in this gently spicy, fact-based British comedy about old ladies who strip for charity.
48. Immoral Tales (1974)
• Countess Bathory luxuriates in an all-girl bloodbath.
The rumored crimes of real-life Hungarian noblewoman Countess Elizabeth Bathory (1560-1614) have creatively generated countless heavy metal musical tributes, from the name of black metal foundation-layers Bathory to the 1998 Cradle of Filth concept album Cruelty and the Beast to Sun O)))’s 2009 track, “Báthory Erzsébet”. The Blood Countess, so called for a reputed beauty regimen that entailed her bathing in the fresh blood of female virgins, has proven similarly inspirational to horror cinema as well. Countess Dracula (1970), Daughters of Darkness (1971), Hostel: Part II (2007), and The Countess (2009) provide bold takes on the lurid legend, but none are nearly as spectacular as Polish eroticist Walerian Borowczyk’s Bathory installment in the lyrical weird sex anthology Immoral Tales. The Countess is played by Paloma Picasso.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGaXFc6mM_E#t=123
47. Hardbodies (1983)
• Vixen rocks the beach house.
Raunchier and funnier than many other ’80s teen sex comedies, the Playboy-produced Hardbodies curiously also serves as a big-screen delivery system for female hair-metal quartet Vixen, here playing a band called Diaper Rash. After jamming on the song “Computer Madness” at practice, Diaper Rash pummel partygoers at a beach-house bash with the hard rocker “Runnin’.” An entire half-decade later, which is like fifty in goofy movie metal band years, Vixen nailed a big MTV hit with “Edge of a Broken Heart.”
46. Anvil: The Story of Anvil (2008)
• Japanvil.
The acclaimed documentary Anvil: The Story of Anvil tracks the down-and-out ’80s metal veterans through a worldwide series of mishaps and hard times, only to close with the band humbly agreeing to play the first, mid-morning slot of a three-day rock festival in Japan. Fearing the worst, Anvil takes the stage and a cheering sea of joyful fans blows the band away.
45. Fantasia (1940)
• “Night on Bald Mountain.”
The hallucinogenic animation-set-to-classical-music masterwork Fantasia closes with “Night on Bald Mountain”, a Samhain rapture set to Modest Mussorgsky’s thrilling symphonic movement. Ghosts rise from graveyards, witches on broomsticks fill the skies, fire maidens dance, skeletons walk and the bald mountain itself spreads a pair of mammoth black wings to reveal its true identity as the bull-horned demon Chernobog. Nobody does hell-breaking-loose demonic like Disney.
44. Caligula (1979)
• Off with their heads and pass the tomatoes!
For all the unspeakable atrocities on parade in Penthouse magazine’s legendarily debauched motion picture celebration of Rome’s most metal emperor (among them: incest, freak orgies, wine-bloated penis removal, and wedding night fist-rape of bride and groom alike) perhaps nothing more conveys the decadent pleasures of proto-stadium metal than when Caligula amuses himself in the Coliseum with a mass-decapitation machine. Not only are victims baying in terror as they’re buried up to their neck with the head-removal device approaching, but the rascally ruler has to further humiliate by pelting their screaming faces with pulpy tomatoes.
43. Back to the Future (1985)
• Marty McFly fries his dad’s mind with a Van Halen cassette.
In order to mind-fuck his arch-’50s nerd teenage dad (Crispin Clover), Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) dons a hazmat suit, assumes the persona of “Darth Vader from the Planet Vulcan”, sneaks Walkman headphones into the sleeping dork’s ears, and cranks the VH.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jtp7pGZLL4
42. Lone Wolf (1988)
• Lycanthropic metal frontman turns a school dance into a splatter shower.
More fun than its late vintage and low budget imply, Lone Wolf chronicles college area attacks by some monstrous animal from the point of view of the big metal band on campus. When the group plays a semester-ending soiree, the werewolf’s identity is revealed by way of plasma and overturned punch bowls spraying the screen red.
41. Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985)
• Mr. P.W. Herman crashes a Twisted Sister shoot
Pee-Wee’s climactic chase through Warner Brothers’ studio back lot takes an unexpectedly metal turn when our hero pilots his beloved bicycle smack into Twisted Sister as they’re filming a music video for “Burn in Hell.” He meant to do that!
40. Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)
• The Wyld Stallyns frontmen beat Death at his own games—Battleship and Twister.
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) introduced the enormously lovable high-school headbanger twosome played by Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves and their theoretical stadium-packing metal ensemble Wyld Stallyns by way of a time-travel romp. The sequel, originally titled Bill and Ted Go to Hell, actually surpasses it in terms of one perfectly metal sequence. During a parody of the chess game in Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 existential arthouse classic The Seventh Seal, Bill and Ted kick ass against the Grim Reaper in a series of popular ’80s boardgames — as well as Coleco electronic football.
