Rocktober Blood Review (1984)

Rocktober Blood
Vestron Home Video

There’s a special corner of my black little heart for movies that mix Horror and Rock N’ Roll and “Rocktober Blood” is practically a scratch-n-sniff sticker for that world. It’s the kind of VHS fever dream you rented once in 1988 from a video store with a beaded curtain and a cat, then spent the next forty odd years trying to describe to friends: “No seriously, there’s a glam rocker guy who maybe dies, maybe doesn’t, and then everyone gets menaced while the band rehearses power chords and feelings and I’m pretty sure, the band The Lurking Corpses stole the costumes from the set!”

Is it good? Not in any traditional sense. Is it fun? Oh yeah, loudly, stupidly, gloriously.

Beverly and Ferd Sebastian shoot this like a tour diary that wandered into a slasher movie set, and it lives on the fumes of its own soundtrack. When the band “Sorcery” kicks in and the leather starts squeaking, the movie suddenly knows exactly what it is: a stitched-together excuse for fog machines, mirror shades, and a demonically catchy hook. “I’m Back” and “Rainbow Eyes” could carry a lesser cult film; here they pretty much ARE the movie, and I’m not mad about it. The music on the Soundtrack has ties to the “real” music scene of the time, with three tracks featuring legendary vocalist Nigel Benjamin from Mott (yes, the band that was reformed from the ashes of “The Hoople”) and the infamous Hollywood staple London (which then featured a pre-Motley Crue Nikki Sixx), as well as Susie Rose Major who fronted (Cousin Oliver from The Brady Bunch) Robbie Rist’s band Quint, who notoriously provided songs for the built to sting “Sharknado” movie. The soundtrack also features a song from (Quiet Riot, Rough Cutt, House of Lords bassist) Chuck Wright’s band Eyes.

The kills? Front-loaded and sporadic, like a setlist that blows all the hits in the first fifteen minutes and then expects you to vibe on deep cuts. The gore’s surprisingly tame for an ’80s slasher, think more stage spectacle than back-alley splatter, but the film keeps tossing in deliciously boneheaded moments: a killer breath-holding ambush in a hot tub, and a scene where someone sustains a note while being electrocuted like they’re auditioning for “America’s Got Talented Corpses”. That’s either your poison or your potion; for me, it’s the exact flavor of camp I pour over popcorn.

Acting ranges from “we paid you in drink tickets, right?” to “this person has definitely fired a pyrotechnic indoors.” The dialog is a spray-painted alley of one-liners and shouted exposition. But if you grew up on rock band mythology, the diva drama, the bad decisions, the way music can feel like armor and a weapon, there’s an honesty to the cheese. It’s rock-’n-roll cosplay that sometimes stumbles into rock-’n-roll truth.

Grade? For civilians: a wobbly D- minus. For horror-rock lifers like us: a midnight-movie B+ in Vibes, B- in Riffs, D+ in Arterial Spray, and an S-rank for the final show’s trash-glam catharsis. Put it on loud, dim the lights, and let the eyeliner do the acting.

If “Trick or Treat” and a crate of Sunset Strip flyers had a gremlin baby, it’d be “Rocktober Blood. Not essential cinema, but absolutely essential ambiance and one of the coolest video tape cover photos in the history of Rock N’ Roll Horror.