The com­pli­cat­ed lega­cy of heavy met­al in cinema

Unlike most forms of pop­u­lar music, heavy met­al has a defin­i­tive ori­gin sto­ry that both fans and schol­ars can agree on: in the begin­ning, there was Black Sab­bath. Of course, heavy rock had already start­ed to hard­en in the back half of the 1960s (Cream, Hen­drix, Iron But­ter­fly et al) but Sabbath’s for­ma­tion in 1968 still stands as metal’s defin­i­tive cre­ation myth – a bru­tal new form of rock ​‘n’ roll forged in the fires of England’s indus­tri­al North. But there was a prob­lem – they weren’t called Black Sab­bath. Not yet anyway.

Ini­tial­ly the Birm­ing­ham fourpiece went by Earth – much too hip­py-dip­py. Stuck for a suit­able replace­ment, inspi­ra­tion would sud­den­ly strike bassist Geezer But­ler when he spot­ted peo­ple queu­ing for a revival screen­ing of Mario Bava’s 1963 Black Sab­bath across the road from a rehearsal room. This new­ly adopt­ed moniker would push the group’s song­writ­ing in a dark­er direc­tion – ​“We want­ed to cre­ate the vibe you get off hor­ror films,” gui­tarist Tony Iom­mi would lat­er say. From its very incep­tion, heavy met­al has owed a debt to cinema.

In the 1970s, met­al was still in its pri­mor­dial form, and what had already emerged was either too scan­dalous or too under­ground (or both) to be acknowl­edged in main­stream cin­e­ma. Drac­u­la A.D. 1972 and Bri­an De Palma’s Phan­tom of the Par­adise did both acknowl­edge an emerg­ing asso­ci­a­tion between rock music and ​“satanism”, but nei­ther film had an espe­cial­ly heavy soundtrack.

An ear­ly exam­ple of an inar­guably Met­al Movie is Stunt Rock, a 1978 grind­house curio from Ozploita­tion auteur Bri­an Tren­chard-Smith. The film fol­lows the fic­tion­alised exploits of Aus­tralian stunt­man Grant Page (play­ing him­self, wood­en­ly) as he arrives in Hol­ly­wood for a TV gig. Page’s cousin just so hap­pens to be part of a pro­to-met­al band called Sor­cery (who also actu­al­ly exist­ed), whose live act fea­tures two magi­cians, one dressed as Satan, the oth­er as Mer­lin, locked in a pyrotech­nic wiz­ards’ duel.

___STEADY_PAYWALL___
The famil­ial con­nec­tion between Page and Sor­cery was, of course, a fab­ri­ca­tion – it serves as the flim­sy con­nec­tive tis­sue between the two exploitable ele­ments: stunts and rock (you get a lot of both). It’s a delight­ful­ly bone-head­ed con­coc­tion, one that was clear­ly machine-tooled for teenage headbangers.

As met­al edged ever clos­er to the main­stream, there was a def­i­nite upturn in cin­e­mat­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion at the out­set of the 1980s, though only in dis­rep­utable gen­res. Heavy Met­al, a 1981 adult ani­ma­tion anthol­o­gy film based on a pop­u­lar com­ic of the same name fea­tures bar­bar­ians, breasts and blood­shed across sev­er­al shab­bi­ly ani­mat­ed vignettes. The star-stud­ded sound­track album boasts Black Sab­bath, Sam­my Hagar, Blue Öys­ter Cult and, bizarrely, DEVO. Heavy met­al and horror’s rec­i­p­ro­cal rela­tion­ship also con­tin­ued – while count­less met­al bands were draw­ing lyri­cal inspi­ra­tion from slash­ers and shock­ers, Fred­dy Krueger was rock­ing out to Dokken’s movie tie-in hit Dream War­riors on MTV.

When it came to pair­ing heavy met­al and hor­ror, Italy was lead­ing the way. Lam­ber­to Bava (son of Mario) made pulse-pound­ing use of Sax­on and Accept’s light­ning fast licks in his deliri­ous­ly sil­ly 1985 film Demons, and as Dario Argento’s work became lean­er and mean­er in the 1980s, he too began shift­ing his son­ic palette from prog rock to metal.

Argento’s first implan­ta­tion of the genre, in 1985’s Phe­nom­e­na, is slight­ly clum­sy – Iron Maiden’s rol­lick­ing Flash of the Blade (a song about fenc­ing) is an incon­gru­ous choice for Jen­nifer Con­nel­ly wan­der­ing around a spooky board­ing school – but it showed some promise. His fol­low-up, Opera, deliv­ers on that promise. Here Argen­to sound­tracks arguably his most bru­tal mur­der sequences with speedy, sleazy met­al cuts that height­en the film’s sense of per­verse cru­el­ty – wil­ful­ly ugly music for wil­ful­ly ugly images. A match made in Hell.

As the ​‘Satan­ic Pan­ic’ began grip­ping Reagan’s Amer­i­ca and else­where in the mid-1980s, reac­tionary fear­mon­ger­ing around the rapid­ly expand­ing met­al sub­cul­ture flour­ished. Per­haps in response to this grow­ing cul­tur­al anx­i­ety, met­al became the sub­ject of ridicule in big-screen come­dies, most famous­ly in pio­neer­ing 1984 mock­u­men­tary This is Spinal Tap – a mean-spir­it­ed film whose com­men­tary on the genre amounts to lit­tle more than ​‘stu­pid music made by stu­pid peo­ple, for stu­pid people’.

Come­dies with a focus on met­al fans – Bill & Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture, Wayne’s World – were per­haps more affec­tion­ate, but no less patro­n­is­ing. By the 1990s met­al was such a part of the Hol­ly­wood com­e­dy lex­i­con that an act as extreme as Can­ni­bal Corpse could appear in a film as sil­ly as Ace Ven­tu­ra: Pet Detective.

It must have been sur­pris­ing then to see David Lynch tap­ping into the pow­er of met­al in 1990 with Wild at Heart, which fol­lows two rock­a­bil­ly lovers on the run who are also, cru­cial­ly, met­al­heads. At the film’s out­set, we see Sailor (Nico­las Cage) and Lula (Lau­ra Dern) attend a strobe-lit thrash met­al con­cert, lost in head­bang­ing eupho­ria. Sailor then informs the band (Pow­er­mad, lit­tle-remem­bered but very good) that they ​“have the same pow­er E had” before join­ing them on stage to sing an impromp­tu, and com­plete­ly improb­a­ble, ren­di­tion of Elvis Presley’s ​‘Love Me’. In this moment of mag­ic real­ism, Lynch reaf­firms metal’s lin­eage with ear­li­er forms of rock ​‘n’ roll, weav­ing it seam­less­ly into his tapes­try of off-kil­ter Americana.

Lynch’s thought­ful imple­men­ta­tion of met­al in Wild at Heart and Lost High­way sure­ly helped to make the genre a more per­mis­si­ble choice for art­house films in the 1990s and beyond. Har­mo­ny Korine’s 1997 debut fea­ture Gum­mo is deeply entrenched in met­al cul­ture, sound­track­ing its hyper­re­al vision of rur­al Amer­i­can rot with a potent mix­ture of doom, black and death met­al, as well as dress­ing its pro­ces­sion of geek show char­ac­ters in Dio and Krokus tees. Olivi­er Assayas used Nor­we­gian black met­al to chill­ing effect in his 2002 thriller Demonlover, and the bad vibes of Sunn O))) under­scored Jim Jarmusch’s 2009 Lim­its of Control.

At the dawn of the new mil­len­ni­um, rock­star-turned-film­mak­er Rob Zom­bie cement­ed him­self as the pre­em­i­nent heavy met­al auteur, import­ing the sen­si­bil­i­ty he had honed in his music and music videos – hot-rods, mon­sters, scant­i­ly-clad ladies – to the big screen in films such as 2005’s The Devil’s Rejects and 2012’s The Lords of Salem, though his work is typ­i­cal­ly more met­al in affect than in son­ic tex­ture or sub­ject matter.

Panos Cos­matos’ lyser­gic 2018 indie hit Mandy told the affect­ing, albeit bru­tal, sto­ry of a met­al­head (Andrea Rise­bor­ough) and a lum­ber­jack (Nico­las Cage again) whose Eden-like exis­tence is destroyed by a venge­ful Chris­t­ian cult – the film’s 1980s set­ting makes its evo­ca­tion of the ​‘Satan­ic Pan­ic’ unmis­tak­able. Cos­matos him­self is a dyed-in-the-wool met­al fan and Mandy’s gate­fold LP aes­thet­ic betrays a life­long love affair with the genre and its subculture.

Met­al has much to offer a film­mak­er. It has scale, dra­ma, vivid imagery – it’s innate­ly cin­e­mat­ic. How­ev­er, it’s still rare to see film­mak­ers go all in on met­al, to take it seri­ous­ly. Even recent films tar­get­ed at heavy met­al fans such as 2018’s Heavy Trip and last year’s Met­al Lords are often, iron­i­cal­ly, rather light­weight. Jonas Åkerlund’s Lords of Chaos from 2018 and Dar­ius Marder’s 2019 debut fea­ture Sound of Met­al both tack­led the sub­cul­ture to vary­ing degrees of crit­i­cal suc­cess, but per­haps only by tak­ing a dim view of the music and its consequences.

Met­al­heads – and indeed cinephiles – deserve bet­ter. Still, a hand­ful of great direc­tors have seen metal’s cin­e­mat­ic poten­tial, embraced its extrem­i­ty and emerged with some­thing pow­er­ful. Film­mak­ers like Lynch, Korine and Cos­matos all under­stood some­thing fun­da­men­tal about this music: it does not deaf­en its fans, it moves them. Hail Satan!