Happy Halloweeeeeeen

As a festive [trick or] treat, VeVo gives you THREE awesome* reviews throughout the day. Let us start with the imitable 1984 metalsploitation flick, Rocktober Blood…

*

ROCKTOBER BLOOD

  1984/88m

“He’s back from the dead with a message from hell!”

Director/Writer: Beverly Sebastian / Writer: Fred Sebastian / Cast: Tray Loren, Donna Scoggins, Nigel Benjamin, Renee Hubbard, Cara Cockrell, Ben Sebastian.

Body Count: 8

Laughter Lines: “I want your hot, steaming pussy blood all over my face.” Eww.

Necessary spoilers await thee…

Conceptually, Rocktober Blood should, well, rock: Billy Eye, squealy vocalist of the titular band, flips one night at the recording studio and murders a couple of employees before trying to kill on-off girlfriend and backing singer, Lynn.

Two years later, we’re informed that Lynn’s testimony sent Billy to the execution chamber and she’s just about ready to tour with the band, now renamed Headmistress. The same manager is on side, she’s got gal pals, and all manner of dodgy hair-metal wigs. What could go wrong?

Well, Billy could somehow return from the grave and torment her for one… Made up in the same sub-Kiss style, Billy appears at the studio, at a random lake house she goes to, telling her he’s back for revenge.

Now, most plot summaries of Rocktober Blood will tell you that undead rockstar picks off the members of his old band one by one. This is not so, undead rockstar limits his prey to Lynn’s female friends – one is drowned in the hot tub, the other has her throat slashed with an iron (!?) – and random dancers at the climactic concert, where the audience think it’s all part of the show, but he impales two of the chicks and cuts the head of a third and lobs it at the crowd!

The so-called twist is nothing but the sad old Evil Twin gag – it’s not Billy, Billy is well and truly dead. They even dig up his corpse to prove it to Lynn, but find the world’s fakest looking skeleton instead.

No, the killer is the secret identical twin John, who is jealous Billy got all the credit for his songs and so just, y’know, kills people. At the end, he captures and drugs Lynn and places her in a casket on the stage, getting the dose just right so that she’s fit to belt out her number when released, which she just does. Consummate professional I guess, but the killer is there on stage with her!?

Very little actually happens in Rocktober Blood. There’s overlong metal performances (though ‘Rainbow Eyes’ was quite the jam), Lynn is chased about five times, has several baths, which enable her to be shown totally starkers as she very slowly towels herself dry.

But with three of the seven murders committed in the space of the penultimate song, two others at the start, the main body of the film just lags with the three girls at the lake house doing high energy aerobics in Olivia Newton-John-esque leotards.

A strange film, really quite boring unless you happen to be a fan of ‘metalsploitation’, with a woefully unfrightening killer, too few characters, actors who murmur their lines, and no real sense of cohesion or creativity. About as terrifying as a Michael Bublé concert. Actually, no it’s not.