Heavy Metal Massacre

Heavy Metal Massacre

1989
David DeFalco

"I will sit through anything." is my movie viewing philosophy. Any movie, no matter how dull, poorly made, or misguided has the potential to surprise and delight at any given moment. Film that is disregarded or critically panned often has an even greater chance to unearth something wonderful, even if it’s just for a fleeting moment. I’ve been rewarded time and time again by adhering to this ideal.

More often, I'm just savagely bit in the ass. Case in point: Heavy Metal Massacre.

The cleverly named, “The Killer” (Bobbi Young, aka the director, David DeFalco) is a murderous hair metal reject and coke addict who hangs around a basement/neighbor’s garage/night club called, “The Dungeon.” The Killer spends most of his time leaning against the wall and making pouty faces. Occasionally he breaks his day up by luring women back to his warehouse apartment, where he unconvincingly murders them in slow motion.  There are some dumb cops who investigate (Nick Hasomeris and John Thayer) along with a boyfriend of one of the unfortunate victims.  It’s a slasher movie, so no one ends up too happy by the end.

Imagine a movie that is so terrible that it surpasses ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ filmmaking and manages to lap itself all the back to just being plain terrible. Perhaps buoyed by the surprisingly high entertainment value of Sledgehammer (1983) and Boarding House (1982), I was expecting another shot-on-video hidden gem. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The threadbare plot is stretched well beyond the breaking point with endless scenes of Bobbi Young trying to look sexy by a wall, as annoying video effects distort the screen, couple this with tedious slow motion murders that only serve to highlight cheap effects and you have one hell of an awful mess.

I would comment on the acting if there was any. Perhaps it’s the low quality video equipment making it difficult to understand what anyone is saying, but on the occasions when you can hear someone, you realize the bad sound mixing is a blessing in a disguise.

For a film called Heavy Metal Massacre, you would at least think you would be getting some heavy metal music to enjoy with your murders, but once again the whole thing fails to impress by delivering some wishy-washy music that fades into the background when it isn’t actively annoying you. The music is from 'The Electric Afterburner Band' and is almost certainly the product of DeFalco as well, so he’s pretty much to blame all around.

I realize this review might tempt some people to seek out this film and try to enjoy it as a trashy mess, but honestly don’t waste your time. There much more rewarding trashy messes out there. If you find a copy of Heavy Metal Massacre, take a rubbery sledgehammer and smash it in slow motion.