Wastelands Radio Show - Episode 16 – Metalsploitation - Trick or Treat

WASTELANDS - An Australian B-grade, Punk Rock, Street Trash online radio show exploring the vast undiscovered cultural wastelands as a creative pursuit. Hosted by long time partners in slime Adam (085c3n3) Obscene and Mark-O -Mark, pondering punk oddities, trashy treasures, street levelness, life, culture and stuff.

Wastelands Radio Show - Episode 16 – Metalsploitation - Trick or Treat

Episode 16

Metalsploitation - Trick or Treat

In this episode Adam and Mark turn their attention to the 1986 Metalsploitation masterpiece – Trick or Treat. Starring Skippy of Family Ties and featuring special guest appearances by rock superstars Gene Simmons and Ozzy Osbourne and a dynamic heavy metal soundtrack by Fastway. Listen in as they explain why they believe Trick or Treat a metal horror classic.

A semi-outcast high school kid and metal head Eddie Weinbauer (Marc Price - Family Ties -Skippy) is bullied by the popular crowd and is compelled to get revenge. After the death of his heavy metal idol Sammi Curr (Tony Fields- former Solid Gold Dancer) a devastated Eddie, discovers he can enlists the aid of the dead satanic rock star, through the backmasking a demo of Curr's unleased album. But as Hallowe'en night approaches shit gets outta hand and Eddie is the only one that can stop Sammi from making a satanic comeback from beyond the grave. A coming-of-age metalsploitation flick that mixes elements of "Christine" (1983), "Carrie" (1976) and the first Nightmare on elm street movies, but it strangely never attained the popularity of those films, which still doesn’t explains why there was never a sequel.

Trick Or Treat is a fine example of Hollywood jumping on the "backwards messages in metal music" bandwagon that Tipper Gore and her Washington Wives kick-started the satanic panic in the mid-'80.

This is a great movie if viewed in the proper context - It was meant to be a parody of teen-horror-devil-worship movies (and the '80s saw plenty of them) it is a particular stand out in the metalsploitation genre as it has great cameos by Gene Simmons and Ozzy.

Highlights

  • All songs in the movie are performed by the band "Fastway" which was formed by - Motorhead Guitarist "Fast" Eddie Clarke, and bassist Pete Way, formerly of UFO.and current "Flogging Molly" vocalist Dave King.

  • Features - A brief clip with Ozzy Osbourne as Rev. Aaron Gilstrom which he adlibbed also appears after the end credits.

  • Gene Simmons has a cameo as the radio DJ, Nuke. He did so as a way to pay tribute to his idol Wolfman Jack. He actually passed on playing the role of Sammi Curr.

  • The hellhound Skeezix was made by FX guru Kevin Yagher who also worked on Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985) and Chucky in the "Child's Play" films

  • Directed by Charles Martin Smith, most know as an actor in American Graffiti and The Untouchables – but also directed Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Welcome to the Hellmouth (1997) Air Bud (1997)

Links

Trick or Treat trailer-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYw5xKsTpKc

Trick or Treat Full Movie - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs1SoqA4Pq4

Fastway - Trick or Treat music clip - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpNZGVmz5Ds

Trick or Treat soundtrack - Fastway - https://open.spotify.com/album/19EC41PeSa3vVeRfvizIEg

The Solid Gold 5 Day Workout featuring Tony Fields - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnOyf_j6QZA

TrickorTreat

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Wastelands Radio Show - Episode 15 – Metalsploitation - Hard Rock Zombies

WASTELANDS - An Australian B-grade, Punk Rock, Street Trash online radio show exploring the vast undiscovered cultural wastelands as a creative pursuit. Hosted by long time partners in slime Adam (085c3n3) Obscene and Mark-O -Mark, pondering punk oddities, trashy treasures, street levelness, life, culture and stuff.

Episode 15 hardrock zombies.jpg

Episode 15

Metalsploitation - hard Rock Zombies

In this episode Adam and Mark rip through their next Metalsploitation instalment -the video nasty Hard Rock Zombies. This distasteful horror comedy rock musical entry to the sub-genre features hicks, rubes, werewolves, murderous dwarves, sex perverts, and Hitler and that’s all in the first 10 minutes.

In the 80’s, rock music and horror movies went together like acid washed jeans and feathered hair. The trouble is, even though many horror movies had awesome rock soundtracks, the movies that specifically featured rock musician characters as heroes or villains varied wildly in quality. Although the rock horror movie has mostly gone the way of the 80’s, I’m not sure any other type of music will ever have such a successful love affair with horror.

HARD-ROCK-ZOMBIES.jpg

A nameless hard rock band who for some reason have the key broadest from Kraftwerk whose music can raise the dead, travel to that town out of footloose for an auditions with a big record executive, unfortunately Hitler now lives there and they fall prey to his entourage of mutant dwarfs, a flick knife wielding werewolf, a maniac with a wiper sniper and blonde sexy psychopath. They are then resurrected by a 14 year old groupie by who plays one of their songs at their graves the lyrics of which were taken from the Necronomicon and they take undead revenge on their killers 

That takes us to the half way point after which it starts to get weird. Actually it doesn’t get any weirder, that would be impossible. It just becomes less coherent.

The first part is mental but at least it makes sense in the context of the movie- the band arrives in town, gets murdered, is resurrected and takes revenge. That’s a complete story – problem is there is still 45 minutes to go.

So the bad guys now get back up again as undead ghouls and attack the town. While the zombie band go through with their audition. It’s important that the audition is there it kinda ties things up but the rest is hilariously pointless and it really leads to some very very strange places.

HARD-ROCK-ZOMBIES vhs cover.jpg

Highlights / Lowlights

The film starts off promisingly, quickly scoring points for gratuitous use of both nudity and dwarfs,

But rapidly becomes a jaw-dropping bad mish-mash of musical interludes and inept gore (courtesy of FX man John Carl Buechler),

Interspersed with moments of complete insanity: an old man (later to be revealed as Hitler) his wife; the old lady turns into a werewolf;

The hitch-hiker dances by herself for no reason in the desert;

One dwarf eats himself;

The band survives an electrocution while practising; and one guy momentarily avoids being eaten by pretending to be a zombie (beating Shaun of the Dead to the joke by a couple of decades).

Links

Trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUQEQP1uGEE

Aussie Trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUpo_aRnyqw

Hard Rock Zombies Full movie - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6e_vmO7E3Q&t=37s

Cassie – Music Clip - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zstbQZewKts

Shake it up – Music Clip - https://youtu.be/eMeugKnXVAk

Soundtrack playlist -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thzwNRfWnO4&list=OLAK5uy_lvNnQoKEx0WTzvsCsx3O3hzzyPYezF5Ps