Heavy Metal Movies

by Mike McPadden

Wherever heavy metal has gone, heavy metal movies have followed, blazing ferocious new celluloid trails; from concert movies and trippy midnight flicks at the dawn of "heaviosity” through inspirational depictions of ancient times and future apocalypses to the raw hand-held video productions of today. Heavy Metal Movies rounds up, reviews, and canonizes all known incidents of the heavy metal in motion pictures, from performance films, feature documentaries, occult rock 'n' roll horror, and headbanger characters to soundtrack standouts, namesake inspirations, lyrical references, aesthetic archetypes, and more.

As brash, irreverent, and visceral as both the music and the movies themselves, Heavy Metal Movies is the ultimate guidebook to the complete molten musical cinema experience.


Exploding with over 666 (almost two times over) of the most intense movies of all-time, featuring:

Headbanger classics: This Is Spinal Tap, Heavy Metal Parking Lot, Trick or Treat, Black Roses, Black Sabbath, The Decline and Fall of Western Civilization 2: The Metal Years, Rock 'N Roll Nightmare, The Dungeonmaster, River's Edge, Gummo, Lord of the Rings, Over the Edge, RoboCop, Saw, Savage Streets, The Toxic Avenger, Hard Rock Zombies, The Phantom of Paradise, Airheads, Evilspeak, Evil Dead, The Devil’s Rejects, Monster Dog, The Wicker Man...

Disturbing documentaries: Metal: A Headbanger's Journey, Some Kind of Monster, Paradise Lost, Faces of Death…

Bulging barbarians: Conan the Destroyer, Clash of the Titans, The Sword and The Sorcerer…

Satanic shockers: The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, The Devils, House of 1000 Corpses…

Splattery slashers: Maniac, Halloween, My Bloody Valentine, Sleepaway Camp…

Post-nuke dystopias: Mad Max, Blade Runner, The Road Warrior, Megaforce, Zardoz, Land of Doom, Death Race 2000, Planet of the Apes…

Carnivorous chunk-blowers: Cannibal Holocaust, Cannibal Ferox, Bloodsucking Freaks...

Undead gut-munchers: Zombie, Dawn of the Dead, Burial Ground, Dead/Alive…

Midnight mind-benders: Eraserhead, The Holy Mountain, Caligula, The Warriors, Repo: The Genetic Opera…

Concert films and killer cameos by Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Napalm Death, Godflesh, White Zombie, Alice Cooper, Helmet, Cannibal Corpse, Kiss, Powermad, and countless fake hair metal bands who end up getting killed onscreen…

Plus witches, werewolves, bikers, aliens, lesbian vampires, and vengeful vikings galore, over 1300 sin-ematic sensations in all.

Genres: Nonfiction, Music, Film, Media Tie In, Reference, Pop Culture

576 pages, Paperback

First published June 10, 2014

About the author

Brooklyn-born Mike McPadden is the Head Writer of the skinternational online phenomenon Mr. Skin (well-known to fans of Howard Stern and the movie Knocked Up). In addition to years of freelance journalism (Esquire, Black Book, New York Press) and more than a decade as a Hustler editor and correspondent, Mr. McPadden has also been a B-movie screenwriter (Animal Insincts 3) and shock-rock musician (Gays in the Military).

On the book front, Mr. McPadden authored If You Like Metallica… (Backbeat Books), edited Mr. Skin’s Skintastic Video Guide (SK Press) and two volumes of Mr. Skin’s Skincyclopedia (St. Martin’s). He also contributed chapter-length essays to Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth (Feral House), The Heavy Metal Book of Lists (Backbeat Books), and The Sex-Drugs-and-Rock-N-Roll Book of Lists (Soft Skull). Mr. McPadden lives in Chicago with his wife, xoJane.com editor Rachel McPadden.

Reviews

[SHUiZMZ · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a film fanatic and love of all things metal, evil, perverted, and twisted---reading a large book filled with film reviews and tidbits of juicy information on eclectic films, one will eventually come across an entry that....oh wait. What am I doing? I am now going to head over to my website and write the review there and post it later tonight! Sorry, one will head over to shuizmz.com (http://www.shuizmz.com/book-review-he...) to read about what I think of Mike "McBeardo" McPadden's HEAVY METAL MOVIES. \m/

[Bob Ignizio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Admittedly influenced heavily by Michael Weldon's 'Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film', 'Heavy Metal Movies' at times feels more like an alternate version of that classic tome than what its title promises. The problem is, McPadden casts his net a bit too wide with regards to what constitutes a "heavy metal movie", to the point that just about flick featuring gangs, zombies, cannibals, post-apocalyptic mutants, Satanists, or Lovecraftian monsters is fair game for inclusion.

Regardless, McPadden has a highly readable no-nonsense reviewing style that makes reading the book a breeze, even if you sometimes wonder whether a particular film really belongs or not. And when he does deal with the more obviously metal-centric titles, it's clear that McPadden is a true headbanger with a solid grasp of the genre's history and importance. Makes a nice companion volume with Zack Carlson and Bryan Connolly's 'Destroy All Movies! The Complete Guide to Punks on Film'.

[I.D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid collection of cult, obscure, and classic movies with lots of posters and brief write ups about each. Maybe a few stretch the theme but overall you can’t go wrong with this. RIP Mike.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Heavy Metal Movies" aren't just movies that feature heavy metal music, they are movies that somehow instantiate the spirit of heavy metal. McPadden makes this rather amorphous concept crystal clear as you're reading the book, and it's difficult to disagree with his assessment about what is and isn't a really metal film. It's also an immensely engaging read. I quite literally haven't had this much fun in a long time. There's more than a few mistakes in the book (he gets the plot of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" wrong and really, John Saxon isn't a villain in "Enter the Dragon"), but there's (appropriately) 666 films featured here, so a few mistakes aren't really an issue. A new "must have" for fans of genre films.

[Jason Schmidt · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was okay - I was hoping to be introduced to some more films that I did not already know about, but I didn’t quite get that. And, the definition of “Heavy Metal” applied by the author struck me as a bit questionable - but, I do believe that the author accomplished what he intended to do with all of these entries, but I may have just gone in to this in with a slight bias.

[John Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

A heavy metal version of Leonard Maltin's TV Movies, for a generation that grew up reading Rip, Circus, Hit Parader and Fangoria. Placed it on the bookshelf next to the original Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film. That's a recommendation.

[Ianissimo Madonaldissimo · Rating 3 out of 5]

as a chronicling of great horror films, this is unequalled. as a reading book, it's a boring read. punctuated sparingly here and there with gut-bustingly hilarious writing, it's the forced attempts at linking Heavy Metal to the individual films that ultimately detract from this book.