The 66.6 Most Metal Movie Scenes of All Time: #19 through #15
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.
We get closer and closer to the top of our countdown, as today we look at the 19th through 15th most metal movie scenes of all time!
19. Demons (1985)
• Motorcycle sword movie theater massacre to “Fast as a Shark” by Accept
Italy’s 1980s heavy-splatter horror tsunami hit a raucous meta-and-metal high with Demons, the saga of a movie theater audience alternately besieged by and converted into blood-famished monstrosities. As the zombies munch the moviegoers, one still-human hero mounts a motorcycle, grabs a sword, and slaughters the undead to the pile-driving thrust of German speedsters Accept. It’s both fast as a shark and balls to the wall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYA0s48ICPo
18. Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America (2007)
• Behold: history’s first black metal church burning, circa 1007 A.D.
Perhaps the goddamndest curiosity to actually play movie theaters in the twenty-first century, Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America is mad genius minimalist black metal filmmaking regarding Vikings in the New World. Our two Nordic heroes walk, defecate, kill chickens, contend with Native Americans, walk a bunch more, and then come across a pair of Irish monks. Not only does their makeshift house of worship get torched, unrepentant church burner Varg Vikernes blazes beneath the fire footage on the soundtrack.
17. Rocktober Blood
• Back-from-the-dead bad boy metal singer Billy “Eye” Harper gets sent back to the dead — by way of an electric guitar.
Beloved cheapo metalsploitation outburst Rocktober Blood chronicles the wrongdoings of homicidal rocker Billy “Eye” Harper on both sides of the life-and-death divide. His final performance climaxes with onstage go-go vixen decapitation and amped-up axe execution bolstered by Billy’s skyrocketing power-metal death wails.
16. The Wicker Man (1973)
SPOILER ALERT!
• Edward Woodward feels the heat as the sacrificial meat within the titular structure that pagans set ablaze.
Christian martyrs have always made top-notch heavy metal song subjects, whether their deaths are being celebrated as triumphs against the armies of Christ or for the sheer gnarliness of their grotesque suffering.
The lyrical exercise in “British folk horror” The Wicker Man subjects a devout, middle-aged, virgin teetotaler (Edward Woodward) to every delightful torment enjoyed by the all-pagan population of Summerisle — Naked maidens! Maypoles! Naked maidens! Beer! Naked maidens! More beer! Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle! Seriously: naked maidens! — until resisting those delights leads to his literally flaming doom.
Iron Maiden pays formal tribute with their 2000 song “The Wicker Man.”
15. Rock ‘N’ Roll Nightmare (1987)
• Jon Mikl Thor masterfully battles foam-rubber cycloptic octopi tossed at him by Satan.
As front-beast of Canadian power-metal powerhouse Thor, blonde muscle-maven Jon Mikl Thor has spent decades bending solid steel bars with his bare hands and inflating hot water bottles to the point of explosion with his bare breath in between belting out headbanger anthems. In 1986, Thor tried (cheapie) movies on for size in the metal-enough Z-flick Zombie Nightmare and then followed up with the hyper-metal blowout Rock ‘N’ Roll Nightmare.
When Thor discovers that the remote farmhouse where his band is recording a new album is a gateway to Hell, the virile vocalist boldly battles each and every demon that pours forth. Most of them are supremely goofy hand puppets (one of which even smokes a cigarette), but when the Prince of Darkness himself emerges, Thor transforms into his strapping barbarian stage persona and dukes it out with the devil, one rubber handful of awkwardly flung homemade homunculi at a time.
Catch up on the rest of the countdown here:
#66.6 through #60
#59 through #50
#49 through #40
#39 through #30
#29 through #20
