The Metal Files

Fall of 1986.  Rob Saunders and I were out running around town on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon and saw that Trick or Treat was playing at the Suffolk Plaza Theater in downtown Suffolk.  We got there just in time to see the previews and such before the movie started.  I knew the guy who was the weekend manager and he gave us free popcorn and drinks which was very cool.

The only thing I really knew about this movie was that it was a horror flick and that it had a heavy metal soundtrack.  That was enough for me to want to see it.  So the movie starts and I see Skippy Handelman from Family Ties as “the metalhead”.  OK, not very fitting but whatever.  I was tripping out in the movie because of the various posters and albums he had.  Great stuff!  Lizzy Borden!

Gene Simmons played a good role as a DJ who gets killed by Sammi Curr.  Ozzy played a TV preacher and gets killed too.  I really do love this movie.  The guy who played Sammi Curr, Tony Fields, died on my birthday in 1995.  Up until recently most websites said it was complications due to AIDS, but now I see on the IMDB site that it’s listed as “cancer secondary to the AIDS virus”.  The dude was a Solid Gold dancer before doing this movie.  Apparently he was in the Thriller video and Lionel Richie’s Running With The Night.  So yeah, AIDS most likely.  Whatever, he did a fine job in this movie.

Sure, the acting is pretty bad but the story line always hit home for me a little bit.  Being practically the only metalhead in my school for a few years, I suffered some of the same silly taunting from the jocks and preppies like Eddie Weinbauer (Skippy!) did in the movie.  Unfortunately I didn’t have a dead rock star to conjure up and reak my revenge during a school dance.  hahahaha…lucky bastards!

Oh…the soundtrack.  Fastway.   Not their greatest effort but listenable just the same.

I bought it on DVD a few years back but it is not a quality version.  I’ll have to check to see if a better version was ever put out.  One can only hope.  I think I’ll watch this movie again tonight.  It’s been about a year or so.