In the 1980s, heavy metal was straight from the mouth of the devil. If you asked any decent upstanding citizen or church-going housewife, they’d tell you that heavy metal music promoted an explicit agenda of Satanism, or of drug addiction or deviancy, or suicide or murder or all of the above. To small-minded wavers of the word of God, heavy metal was a nightmare plague on a lily-white nation.
Thus, the pairing of heavy metal and horror movie was a natural one, and going even further, within the greater pantheon of scary films with screaming soundtracks, there existed the uniquely 1980s subgenre of “metalsploitation.” In these films, metal not only provides the score, but also serves as a major plot point, usually acting as the villain itself. Perhaps the most successful of metalsploitation’s efforts, 1986’s Trick Or Treat, pits Skippy from Family Ties against the re-risen vengeful spirit of recently deceased rocker Sammi Curr. The film itself is mostly terrible, albeit in a kind of brilliant way, with cameos from Gene Simmons as the local DJ and Ozzy Osbourne as a televangelist decrying heavy metal’s influence. (WASP frontman Blackie Lawless was originally slated to play Curr, but regrettably, that didn’t work out.) But better than the movie itself is the music, performed by the decidedly un-demonic Fastway, a dated-but-great slice of silly 80s hard rock that, when compared with the thrash, death, and black metal scenes that were developing underground at the same time, sounds about as threatening now as a Billy Squier record.
Flash-forward to the present: Heavy metal has gained greater acceptance and may no longer be a national soundtrack to moral decay, but the relationship between metal and horror has only strengthened over time. Countless bands have based their sound and style upon that marriage, and among those, only a few are as fun as Detroit’s Acid Witch. Now two full-length albums in, that band has created a gleefully psyche-tinted take on sluggish death/doom, all built upon a framework of classic horror movie tropes. And thus, when Acid Witch announced an EP of 80s horror soundtrack covers, I must admit, my interest was piqued from the start…
Tragically, there are only four tunes on Midnight Movies, each taken from a different metalsploitation film. From Rocktober Blood comes “I’m Back,” originally by LA’s long-forgotten Sorcery (whose website is a truly amazing piece of marketing); from Fastway’s Trick Or Treat comes “After Midnight”; from Black Roses comes “Soldiers Of The Night,” performed in the film by the titular band, and on record by King Kobra; from Return Of The Living Dead, there’s a take on 45 Grave’s “Partytime.” Each is prefaced with a snippet of dialogue from its respective film, so yes, that’s the dulcet tones of Gene Simmons you hear introducing this remake of the final recording by Sammi Curr…
Whereas earlier Acid Witch records have a certain thick-toned heft, these four tracks are more fast and loose, more akin to a Midnight album than to Witchtanic Hellucinations or Stoned. Still, that spirited and ramshackle nature adds to the effect, and the whole of Midnight Movies’ twenty minutes is as fun as your average Acid Witch, if not quite as killer. The vocals alternate between a devilish growl and the soaring high-pitched wails of the originals, anchoring the whole thing in both worlds, both Acid Witch’s pitch-black cauldron of camp and the 80s’ falsetto-and-flashy-guitar pot of cheese.
While it doesn’t pack the punch of Witchtanic or Stoned, Midnight Movies is a nice little sidestep for Acid Witch – it’s a tribute to a very specific set of films in a very specific time. It’s fun for fans of the band, and it’s especially interesting for those (like me) who love the gloriously goofy 80s horror movies, particularly those represented here. It’s barely death, and not at all doom, and in truth, it’s not gonna shock you ‘til the sparks fly, but nevertheless, it’s still Acid Witch, and it’s worth a listen.
And when you’re done, you’ve got some movies to watch, too…
