The 66.6 Most Metal Movie Scenes of All Time: #39 through #30
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. Today we look at #39 through #30.
39. The Incubus (1982)
• Samson’s biceps grace the boob tube.
The Incubus is an odd modern film noir about a demonic serial rapist, but what turns the movie permanently metal is an unexplained appearance on a TV screen by Samson, a kick-ass New Wave of British Heavy Metal combo led by pre-Iron Maiden front-lungs Bruce Dickinson. The clip comes from Julien Temple’s never completed Samson movie, Biceps of Steel. Chalk that one up to one of heavy metal cinema’s great “What If?” pondering opportunities.
38. The Omen (1976)
• Damien’s fifth birthday party goes all 666.
As the adopted son of the wealthy and power U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, little Damien’s birthday bash is a great time with cake, balloons, backyard rides, and happy kids running about. As the true son of Satan and the Antichrist getting ready for kindergarten, little Damien’s birthday culminates with his nanny stepping out on an upstairs balcony, announcing “It’s all for you, Damien! … ALL FOR YOU!” and then hanging herself and dangling in front of the revelers. Only the birthday boy finds it amusing.
37. Stunt Rock (1980)
• Sorcery pits Merlin versus Satan, rock-and-roll spectacle wins
Australian auteur Brian Trenchard Smith’s Stunt Rock is a bizarre notion made giddily affable cinematic curiosity. As the director put it: “Famous stuntman meets famous rock group. Much stunt, much rock. The kids will go bananas.” What is bananas are the stage shows we see of “famous rock group” Sorcery, late-’70s L.A. metal also-rans who mounted huge performances involving actors, props, complicated visual effects and, very much, stunts and rock.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y66F1771tU
36. Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park (1978)
• Kiss rocks and rolls all nite in flying bumper cars.
Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park (since ridiculously retitled Kiss in Attack of the Phantoms) debuted as a two-hour NBC Halloween special produced by cartoon studio Hanna-Barbera. To the band, it’s always been an embarrassment. To the preteen battalions of the Kiss Army, it will always be a monumental memory—tuning in that October evening, hearing the opening drum beats of “Rock and Roll All Nite,” and then witnessing our commanders blown up to King Kong proportions and stomping around roller-coasters and Ferris wheels at a night-lit amusement park. For the anthem’s second half, the band members swoop and zoom all over the rides and attractions in flying bumper cars — Gene and Paul in one, Ace and Peter in the other. Later on, they show off their talismanic super-powers and fist-fight their evil robot doppelgangers. It was (and remains) enough to make you jealous of lucky European audiences who got to pay to see the movie in theaters. [We couldn’t find the clip in question online, but this one is pretty good, too! -Ed.]
35. Terror on Tour (1980)
• Doomed topless groupie declares: “That cocaine made me really horny!”
The first proper ’80s metalsploitation slasher out of the (hell)gate, Terror on Tour follows face-painted, afro-wigged, spandex-suited hard rockers The Clowns (played by real-life Rockford, Illinois almost-made-its, the Names). It’s all clowning around until somebody in Clown makeup takes to knocking off female admirers backstage, beginning with one narcotic-enthusiast nymphette and escalating (with fantastic dumbness) from there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8wf8EB_srk#t=1483
34. I Drink Your Blood (1970)
• Opening black mass: “Satan is an acid-head!”
Longhaired hippie freak Horace Bones (Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury) leads his ragtag cult of longhaired hippie freak followers in an occult incantation that begins, “Let it be known, brothers and sisters, that Satan was an acid-head! Drink from his cup! Pledge yourselves! And we can all freak out together!”
The Manson-esque gaggle of bikers and bad girls do just as Horace instructs and all that freaking out together goes their way until they’re fed a heap of rabies-infected meat pies. Then it’s every freak out for his-and-herself.
33. Faces of Death (1978)
• Live monkey brains, served fresh.
The ultimate banned “video nasty” and the overwhelmingly bogus shockumentary Faces of Death is best remembered as the universal ’80s headbangers’ home video rite-of-passage, and no one segment caused a bigger bang than a trip to a restaurant where customers dine on monkey brains — plucked directly from the open skull of a screaming primate locked in the center of their table that they just bludgeoned to death with cute little mallets. Six official sequels and innumerable direct-to-tape rip-offs followed.
32. Night of the Demons 2 (1994)
• Devil Girl bewitches the school dance to Morbid Angel’s “Rapture.”
After the 1988 original film proved to be a surprise hit that developed a further cult on home video, Night of the Demons 2 picked up the saga of damned teen Angela (Amelia Kincade) who returns from Hell itself, summoned at her Catholic school’s auditorium mixer by the roaring thunder of “Rapture” by Morbid Angel.
31. Zombie (1979)
• Zombie vs. shark. Underwater.
Italian gore guru Lucio Fulci set out to make a ghoul epic that would out-gross (in every sense) the flesh-shredding, organ-devouring, gut-plunging intensity of George Romero’s 1978 masterpiece Dawn of Dead, which played the country of the pope (and Fulci) under the title Zombi.
So calculated was exploitation vet Fulci that he even released his undead splatter bash at home as Zombi 2 to confuse audiences into thinking it was an official sequel (elsewhere, the movie was just Zombie). What could never be confused is Fulci’s absurd ambition to always up the insanity, as perfectly crystalized by Zombie’s walking cadaver going tooth-to-tooth against a live shark underwater.
Similarly indelible is the Zombie poster, a close-up of a rotting corpse head that seems to smile as worms pour out of one of its eye-sockets, directly over the power-jolt tagline: “WE ARE GOING TO EAT YOU!” Few movie-related images have been more prolifically emblazoned on heavy metal album artwork, battle vests, show flyers, and t-shirts that get torn off in mosh pits.
30. Phantom of the Paradise (1974)
• The Undead usher Beef back to “Life at Last!”
Director Brian De Palma’s mad, frantic ’70s rock-and-roll “phantasia” explodes metal from its steel-beaked phantom terrorizing the rock club of the title, Paul Williams as Satan-backed impresario of Death Records, and the movie’s ecstatic musical apex. That’s when the Kiss-like Undead singing “Somebody Super Like You” to summon the coffin-bursting entrance of the Alice Cooper-like “Beef” who wails the rocker “Life at Last” — until the Phantom cancels the encore with a literal heavy metal lightning bolt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1PvQ8py9Bc
Catch up on the rest of the countdown here:
