Our favorite holiday? Easy: Halloween. We're eagerly checking off the days till All Hallows Eve, and Cradle of Filth frontman and fright-flick enthusiast Dani Filth has joined us in the countdown. The corpse-painted Brit shrieker loves his metal with a side of horror and his horror with a side of metal, so we asked him for his top picks for metal horror movies. "My favorite three metal horror movies are as follows," he says, "though I do change my mind like I change my native country soil bedding. At least once a century."
Trick or Treat
A cheesy time-honored Eighties metal classic featuring none other than Ozzy, role-reversed as a fire-and-brimstone preacher, and Gene Simmons as a rock DJ who is intending to play Satanic rock star Sammi Curr's — brother of Wayne Curr? — latest "meisterwerk" backwards at midnight on Halloween — who hasn't done this? — after the star suddenly dies in a hotel fire. Having made a duplicate, he gives his friend Eddie, a put-upon metal geek teen — with proper Eighties hair — the original due to his mega-infatuation with the deceased singer. Eddie soon learns that the record can summon Sammi Curr back from the dead and that he seeks to wreak revenge on all who betrayed him in life, yadda-yadda ... I love this movie as, when I was young, it highlighted the plight of all us isolated metalheads growing up in rural suburbia. Plus, it had a killer soundtrack courtesy of Fast Eddie Clarke, Christopher Young and Fastway, and lots of cool bands at the time were name-dropped via posters and albums — a copy of the banned Rise of the Mutants by Impaler is pulled out of Eddie's record rack at one point, an EP that I still own to this day, plus classic releases from such luminaries as Megadeth, Exciter and Savatage. The film is satirical, poignant, black-humored and has it's fork-tongue lodged firmly in cheek most of the time ... and it still rocks! Inspirational for the would-be metal cult killer in all of us.
My Sweet Satan
My second offering unto thee would have to be Jim Van Bebber's cult underground short, low-budget horror film, My Sweet Satan. Based on true events, it centers around a group of bored, directionless, metal, drug-taking teenagers who take a friend out into the woods, get him high as a kite on LSD and then accuse him of stealing, whereupon they torture and violently kill him after forcing him to, "Say you love Satan." The director plays the main antagonist Ricky in this 19-minute nasty little number, which culminates in a brutal face-stomping via flashbacks of events that degenerate to this particularly sallow point. Oh, and be warned, heavy-metal music abounds therein. Also inspirational for the would-be metal cult killer all of us.
Cradle of Fear
Well, it was either this or KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park! And you know what "park" spells backwards don't you? Anyhoo, this is in here partly due to my involvement in said picture — I play the killer who links all four portmanteau-style stories together in a violent homage to the films of Amicus and Hammer, but with added grit, gore and girlies — and mainly due to the participation of other Cradle of Filth members who all take cameo roles throughout the film. I must add that this certainly isn't a Martin Scorsese flick, but that's not to say that it isn't any good, despite the relatively low budget. Actors and actresses, film and technical crews were all nabbed from time off between working on major shoots and one part of the segmented story even galvanized one Eli Roth to "borrow" the plot for his Hostel movies. Allegedly. The story also carries quite a twist. Amputees, dwarfs, mutant babies, buxom wenches, strippers, zombies, serial killers and flummoxed police officers abound. And that very Great British treasure — that of deep Black Pythonic humor — is rife, despite the severity of some of the subjects and scenes. So, another inspiration for the would-be metal cult killer in all of us, with the soundtrack offering up some pretty heavy shit, too.
