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| Images Courtesy of Olive Films |
Angel Martin (Stephen Quadros), a dorky young guitarist
working part-time as a pizza delivery guy, tries his hand at auditioning for a
local rock band which goes south. Earning
a tongue lashing from the lead singer before losing his job, Angel is approached
by a mysterious voodoo woman (Tyger Sodipe) who offers a unique proposition: sell
his soul in exchange for being transformed into a major heavy-metal rock star
with all the fame, fortune, sex and drugs with it at his disposal. The tradeoff is he must murder other humans
and eat their souls in order to survive.
Meanwhile as he ascends the ranks of superstardom, he begins a fling
with the band’s manager Lindsay (Traci Lords) and soon the bodies inexplicably start
to fall as Angel continues to transform into a mere shadow of his former self.
Starting off as a riff on The Toxic Avenger with a
geek that soon doles out the punishment himself, this corny, ridiculous and
sometimes inept trashterpiece is somewhat unique in how it sends up the heavy-metal
horror subgenre while giving porn actress Traci Lords a chance to shine in a
different light. Reportedly around the
time of production the AIDS virus was on the rise and considering Lords’ role
in porn, the cast and crew kept their distance from her during the shoot. Much of the film is trained on Stephen
Quadros, ordinarily a martial artist who served as a choreographer on several
films, who donning long hair occasionally spitting up green bile with poorly
rendered opticals of glowing eyes comes across as a goofy spin on Faust and
his dealings with the devil. Also worth
nothing this was the final film of Old Hollywood screen legend Aldo Ray in a
thankless role as a domineering pizzeria manager.
Ultra low-budget (reportedly around $100,000), shot on 35mm
film by recurring Troma cinematographer Ron Chapman before being transferred to
video (Slasher Video’s blu-ray disc is sourced from a standard-definition tape),
Shock ‘Em Dead right away looks and sounds like a Troma movie. Closest to The Toxic Avenger for its
character transformation and cornball stereotypical villains, there’s a kind of
do-it-yourself quality to this straight-to-video heavy-metal horror flick and
many of the set pieces have a student film feel. The metal-oriented score by Robert Decker is
aside from Pool Party Massacre his only known compositional work and it’s
a serviceably cheap soundtrack mostly aided by metal music. The film’s real secret star is guitarist
Michael Angelo Batio’s participation, doubling for the guitar shots in the film
as well as the demon in Angel’s dream sequences who does some amazing work on
film which reportedly wasn’t sped up for hyperkinetic effect.
While clearly not very good in terms of quality filmmaking,
as a direct-to-video small screen effort aimed at both channeling and parodying
the heavy-metal horror tropes Shock ‘Em Dead does what it sets out to do
in terms of being a tongue-in-cheek goof while also showing off some cool
guitar moves. Fans of heavy-metal horror
as well as “bad” exploitation-horror gurus will find much to chew on here
though indeed some of the gags and punch-lines aimed at the band’s former lead
singer have aged poorly. Still as a
beer-and-pizza movie night this will tick off all the checkboxes fans look for
with these sorts of films and despite the standard-definition source, the folks
at Olive Films and Slasher Video have put together a nice edition of the film
on blu-ray disc for those who get a kick out of nutty off-the-beaten-path home
video movies with a bit of an edge to them.
Not “good” but definitely a fun time under the right circumstances.
--Andrew Kotwicki
