Rocktober
Blood (1/2
star)
review by Jon
Waterman
Billy “Eye” Harper, the lead singer of this awesome
hair metal band, goes crazy one night in the studio and begins
to kill everyone he can find, especially his producers. The
only one left standing at the end of the night is his former
girlfriend Lynn Starling. She was able to escape his attacks,
but just barely. Thanks to Lynn, Billy gets executed for his
crimes and she goes on to become one of the biggest metal singers
around. Years later, while preparing to embark on a massive
tour called Rocktober Blood, Billy returns for revenge and
finish the business he started. But is he real, or is Lynn
slowly going insane?
It’s pretty easy to tell how horribly bad this movie
is going to be from the opening credits (as if you couldn’t
tell from the title alone). This is a film by “The Sebastian’s.” The
Sebastian’s what? What of theirs made this movie? And
more importantly, why? I could go on, but focusing on such
petty grammatical errors (of which I’m sure I’m
prone to as well) would take valuable time away from getting
to the blood and guts of this extremely important review.
Beverly Sebastian (“’Gator Bait”) directed
and co-wrote [with Ferd Sebastian (short for Ferdinand, “Flash
and the Firecat”)] this low-budget B-movie failure. I’m
all in favor of bad movies, and this one certainly had its
moments, but there was a lot wrong with it, even considering
what it is. For one, it’s directed like a stage play.
All the action happens front and center. So, the camera never
gets close enough to help along any tenseness or paranoia they’re
trying to get across. After a while, it just gets boring.
Most of the legitimate action happens within the first ten
minutes, after a five minute, lens-flare filled song by “Eyes” himself
(played horribly by Tray Loren in his film debut). After the
opening, no one gets killed for a very long time. What’s
the point of that? People want to see blood and guts and gore
and killings and so on. Give it to us. At least show us a little
bit of the trial and definitely show us the execution. That
could have been a great scene…if it existed.
Real rock band Sorcery provides the music for the band, fronted
by Lynn (played by Donna Scoggins in her only on-screen appearance).
Even though the music isn’t great, it certainly wasn’t
as laughable as you would hope it to be. What makes it really
bad is the terrible lip-synching and over-the-top acting during
the songs. The movie, like the songs, could have been worse,
in a good way. But for the most part, it’s still a wretchedly
bad throw-away horror flick that should be good for some laughs
amongst friends. If only they went the extra mile and really
piled on some killings within that hour in the middle….
Overall, there was just not enough blood, not enough rock and
way too much tober.
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