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Excerpt from My Very Metal Essay from Horror Addicts Guide to Life 2
HorrorAddicts.net recently launched HORROR ADDICTS GUIDE TO LIFE 2, which contains my essay 25 of the Most Metal Movies (That Aren't About Metal). The essay was originally written as a blogpost to promote my black metal-themed short story REQUIEM IN FROST.
It was originally written in 2019, so any movies released since then could not be considered. (THE NORTHMAN and THE SPINE OF NIGHT would be shoe-ins for a revised list.) I'd also like to clarify that some of the films listed aren't ones I particularly enjoy, even if I felt obliged to include them. (For example, I find Conan the Barbarian quite dated.) Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy the list and are encourage to seek out the entries you've never heard of.
Here's an excerpt:
25 of the Most Metal Movies
(That Aren’t About Metal)
by Jonathan Fortin
Black Sabbath, one of the world’s first heavy metal bands, took their name from Mario Bava’s
classic 1963 Horror film of the same name. In the years since, Horror and metal have continued
to have an ongoing conversation, from Horror-themed metal bands such as Cradle of Filth, The
Great Old Ones, or Carach Angren to metal-themed Horror films.
My short story Requiem in Frost continues this tradition, telling the story of a Norwegian girl
who moves into a house haunted by the ghost of a black metal musician. In honor of its release,
I’ve decided to make a list of movies that, to me, feel “metal.” However, I’m not going to limit
this list to Horror, and I’m going to avoid films that are specifically about metal. This is because
every other list of “Most Metal Films of All Time” takes it literally, and focuses exclusively on
the same ten or so movies that have explicit references to the genre. The internet can only
withstand so many posts containing Deathgasm, The Gate, The Devil’s Candy, and Lords of
Chaos. So instead, I’m going to focus on movies that feel like they capture the essence of metal.
Here’s my criteria: Do the images in the movie feel like they could be metal album covers?
Could you put metal on the soundtrack and have it feel right? Does the story feel like it could
also be that of a metal concept album? And finally, does it feel powerful and meticulously
constructed in the way that good metal must? As the metal genre means different things to
different people, I cannot speak for the entire metal community, and I am sure that other people
may have different choices. Nonetheless, here are my selections, organized by year:
BLACK SABBATH (1963): Let’s just get this shoo-in out of the way. Black Sabbath is a Horror
anthology with three segments, one which is focused on a vampire. It isn’t as explosively metal as some of the other entries on this list, but given that one of the first metal bands took its name
from this film, you can’t really not include it.
WIZARDS (1977): Ralph Bakshi’s animated feature establishes a world in which, following a
nuclear apocalypse, humans have all died or mutated into fantasy races. An evil wizard uses Nazi
propaganda footage to inspire his troops, a robot finds redemption, and fairy tits jiggle. It’s a
strange, over-ambitious film, but the subject matter and imagery would feel right at home in a
strange, over-ambitious metal concept album.
HEAVY METAL (1981): A token inclusion, this adult animated anthology feature contains
aliens on drugs, women with big swords, and copious amounts of sex and violence. It’s very
dated, particularly in the treatment of its female characters, but there’s no denying it is as metal
as its name.
CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982): Look, the poster for Conan the Barbarian looks just like a
Manowar album. It opens with the forging of a sword. It’s full of Vikings. It has to be on this list.
To read more, go to: https:/www.amazon.com/dp/B09YNF5QM3
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