Shocking Heavy Metal

A dumb, by the numbers slasher film in which a rock band called Easy Action and some models go to a mountain cabin where they film a music video. Unknown to this carefree and free-living group, a homicidal mother and her like-minded offspring are out to kill whoever happens to cross their path. Starring real life rockers including Shotgun Messiah's Zinny Zan, and Europe guitarist Kee Marcello, and featuring sex, nudity and gore. Blood Tracks is very cheesy, cheap and silly, and best watched under the influence of whatever your particular vice may be. It was directed by Mats Helge and Derek Ford from a screenplay co-written with Anna Wolf. The movie is set in Colorado but was filmed in Sweden. Co-director and British exploitation filmmaker Derek Ford (Corruption; Don't Open Till Christmas; Attack of the Killer Computer) has a brief cameo role.

Ah, the 1980s, when everyone with a camera and a barely coherent script was lensing slashers. With all this groundswell, it was only natural that this mania would extend to Europe, which is why we have this Swedish sausage product--I AM CURIOUS it ain't. As others have noted, it's pretty standard stuff: a group of folks (Swedish Hair Metal band and their groupies/video tramps, along with a retinue of stylists/makeup people/cameramen) descend on a location (a cabin in a snowy mountain region, adjacent to a condemned factory) ostensibly to film a music video. The trouble starts when the director wants to use the factory as a backdrop for said video. A fortuitous avalanche strands the group at the location. A feral, homicidal family resides in the factory. It isn't long before various members of the party wander into said factory at met their various, grisly demises.

BLOOD TRACKS is not the worst I've seen in slashers from this era (the second golden era--1984-just before SCREAM debuted), but it does have some flaws that lessen its impact. The nonsensical prologue in which we are given the origins of the murderous family doesn't make sense and could have been left off altogether. Clearly, this trope borrowed from THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE/THE HILLS HAVE EYES and should have followed those films leads of just presenting the family cold, with no explanations. Another problem with the film is that, once we get inside the factory, it's so bloody dark you can barely see what's happening. This could just be the way the film was shot, so there may not be any way of correcting, such as remastering, high def, etc. If this could be remedied, it should be. The cast seems to be either British or American, or the film makers may be resorting to the Italian trick of giving native actors prosaic American-sounding names. The acting is OK, but these are not characters given to thoughtful, analytic discourse, so it works. A real rock group, Easy Action, was hired to portray the band, but they appear in the film mostly as a pretext, and the members don't get much dialogue. No real reason is given for the family's feral state (the prologue doesn't shed any clues to this) so they just are the way they are. There are a few PG-13 sex scenes, but the nudity is minimal. The action, once it gets started, is self-propelled and doesn't let up, which makes the less than 90-minute runtime bearable.

If you've seen all the slashers from this era and are looking for a forgotten entry, this one will do the trick.

This is the first Swedish horror movie I have seen and if I see any more I hope they are better than this. A rock group who are filming a video clip are destroyed by a group of animalistic hermits who have heretofore lived undisturbed in an abandoned factory. A "Structure Condemned Do Not Enter" sign is on the outside of the building so naturally they ignore it and barge in. This belongs in the subgenre of horror films that centre around rock groups - other titles include Song of the Succubus, Terror on Tour, Rocktober Blood, Trick or Treat, Monster Dog, Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare and Black Roses. The songs are by a group I've never heard of called Easy Action.

In the snowy hinterlands of what is presumably the U. S. Rocky Mountains (but is in reality Sweden), a drunken father bullishly intimidates and threatens his wife and children. The wife retaliates by knifing and leaving him with the kids in tow. Many years later, a film crew looking for an atmospheric location stumbles upon an abandoned factory, which is the hidden home for the wife and children, now living like wild animals, with scabby, yellow faces and bug eyes.

The film crew includes a real-life heavy metal rock band, Easy Action, brought on location with a group of models to shoot a music video. When an avalanche isolates the crew from civilization, the scary-looking family in the factory goes on the hunt.

For a simple stalk-'n-slash type gore movie, BLOOD TRACKS is pretty good. In 1985, it probably stood out amid the FRIDAY THE 13TH clones that proliferated. Though BLOOD TRACKS resembles THE HILLS HAVE EYES and DEATHLINE, in this case the social-outcast mutants are not cannibalistic but kill only to keep knowledge of their existence a secret. At least that's how it seems at first.

The makers of BLOOD TRACKS tried to make each successive murder sequence more elaborate and horrible than the last, so in the end whatever sympathy one has for the outcast family is long gone. The film crew members are not just killed, they are dismembered or burned alive in sophisticated traps. The murderous family acts so witless and undisciplined, though, these spectacles seem far beyond their abilities.

Despite the large number of inconsistencies and coincidences that pile up by the movie's end, BLOOD TRACKS is diverting enough to deserve a slightly dismembered thumbs-up.

BLOOD TRACKS opens with a flashback to 1945 with a violent family confrontation resulting in death. Forty years later, a heavy metal band is in "town" -more like a wasteland- to film a music video. Grisly horror ensues.

Or, something like that.

Indeed, the people from 1945 are still around, looking pretty much the same. That is, except for bad makeup and mangy wigs.

Enter the supermodels, running around half dressed through the snow. Not even their towering hairdos can save them!

The filming of the music video is hilarious. It's reminiscent of those moldy old MTV vids of bands like QUIET RIOT or POISON. Will the video be finished before everyone is annihilated? A true gut-buster!

Unfortunately, when people aren't busy dying, the movie bogs down in tedious non-dialogue by the non-actors. Hell, even the avalanche is dull!...