‘Deathgasm’ Resurrects The Undead Bond Between Gore Movies And Heavy Metal

Since Alice Cooper dragged a guillotine on stage for mock beheadings, since Gene Simmons of spit blood capsules mid-concert with Kiss, since The Misfits sang about “too much horror business,” since Cannibal Corpse and countless other bands consecrated their album covers with all manner of depraved and disgusting acts of violence, heavy metal and horror movies have gone together like Jack and Coke. Like such antecedents as 1986’s Trick Or Treat or 1997’s Strangeland, produced by Dee Snider of Twisted Sister, the 2015 film Deathgasm – currently available for streaming on Netflix and Shudder – makes the connection explicit as a wolfpack of heavy metal losers hack their way through a horde of demonically possessed zombies they helped spawn with their very own Devil’s music.

Hailing from the same country that brought the world Peter Jackson’s blood-splattered debut Bad Taste, Deathgasm was written and directed by New Zealander Jason Lei Howden, who actually worked with Jackson on The Hobbit movies as a visual effects artist. Like Bad Taste, Deathhgasm mixes micro-genres at will (gore, zombie, supernatural), doesn’t itself too seriously and recognizes the inherent comedy in the most horrific acts of on screen bloodshed, that being that some things are so horrible you just have to laugh at them (I feel it needs to be said that the opposite is true of actual acts of violence and bloodletting in real life).

Deathgasm stars Milo Cawthorne as Brodie, a young metalhead sent off to live with his born-again uncle and jerky jock cousin after his mother goes on an X-rated meth bender. He falls in with a group of misfits and lusts after blonde bombshell Medina, played by Kimberley Crossman. After bonding with fellow metalhead Zakk (James Blake) he starts a metal band of his very own called Deathgasm, hence the film’s name.

Like any proper malcontents, Zakk and Brodie break into the house of hermetic metal icon Rikki Daggers of the legendary band Haxon Sword whose been hiding out from occultists. He gives the boys some medieval sheet music before having his throat slit by one of the occultists. The boys (of course!) learn how to play the music with their band, which (of course!) summons all sorts of dark forces from the netherworlds of Hell which makes the townspeople vomit and poop blood, rip out their own eyes and turn into murderous zombies who are waiting for the return of Aeloth, the King of the Demons. Good stuff.

All these turns of events are the set up for the blood-soaked second half of the movie. The band members and Medina use all sorts of sharp —and some not so sharp— objects to cut a path through the gruesome throng in hopes of playing the convocational music backwards to send Aeloth where he came from – the ultimate backwards masking! Axes, paint guns that shoot Dungeons & Dragons dice, power sanders, and yes, even anal beads and dildos are all employed against the undead. Of particular note is the old Metallica motto “Metal Up Your Ass” being made literal as Zakk goes to town on one of the occultists with a chainsaw. It’s a nice touch.

As someone that actually was a teenager in the 1980s, when heavy metal and gore movies ruled suburban wastelands, it’s unclear to me whether Deathgasm is a tribute to those times or if there really are still kids out there who find solace from the indignities of puberty in loud music and shocking acts of faux-violence. I won’t spoil the movie ending for you but it doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to figure out how things end up. It’s predictable, as are most of the movies plot points but that’s beside the point. This isn’t a Charlie Kaufman movie meant to make you think about our perceptions of reality and the narrative form. It’s a stupid, predictable and unbelievably fun mix of heavy metal fandom, middle-of-the-road gore effects and tasteless humor. In other words, it’s well worth the hour and a half it takes to watch it.

[Watch Deathgasm on Netflix or Shudder]

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician who, full disclosure, didn’t really get into Iron Maiden until he was in his 20s, but man, he loves the Hell of them now. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.