Deathgasm

Four teenage boys unwittingly summon an ancient evil entity known as The Blind One by delving into black magic while trying to escape their mundane lives.

One part "Dead Alive", one part "Evil Dead 2", and a heaping scoop of "Todd and the Book of Pure Evil"... you have "Deathgasm", a movie that is both dark and hilarious, with over-the-top gore and some questionable sexual references (but never offensive, just uproarious).

New Zealand has really taken off as far as their film industry goes. I don't know if Peter Jackson injected them somehow or just got more people to notice the great things happening there... but whichever, there are some films from the last few years that are among the best in the horror genre.

After his meth-addict mum is sent to a mental asylum, teenage metal-head Brodie (Milo Cawthorne) moves to the suburban town of Greypoint to live with his bible-bashing Uncle Albert (Colin Moy), Aunt Mary (Jodie Rimmer), and obnoxious cousin David (Nick Hoskins-Smith). There he befriends role playing game-nerds Dion and Giles (Sam Berkley and Daniel Cresswell) and wild rocker Zakk (James Blake), with whom he forms a band, Deathgasm.

When the guys chance upon and perform a song written by Satanic metal star Ricky Daggers (Stephen Ure), they unwittingly unleash a plague of demons that possess the locals and kill the living in order to pave the way for the coming of an ancient evil known as Aeloth, The Blind One. With the help of axe-wielding blonde hottie Medina (Kimberley Crossman), the metal-heads try to find a way to prevent Hell on Earth.

Is there anything more sublime in this world than a heavy metal horror movie? The world's foremost form of music fused with the greatest genre of film known to man to create an exquisite elysian experience for connoisseurs of peerless audio visual entertainment. If I'm brutally honest, the script for Deathgasm is a bit of a mess, the action lurching awkwardly from one scene to the next, but its combination of metal mayhem and outrageous splatter is so irresistible that a completely coherent narrative is of little consequence. The riffs are heavy and the gore is very gory (with the graphic dismemberment achieved through the use of practical effects), which is what matters most with this type of flick.

Directed by Jason Lei Howden, who clearly knows his music and his horror, Deathgasm owes a lot to the splatter classics of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson, his film possessing a similarly energetic and madcap style. When the demons attack, anything and everything becomes a weapon: an angle grinder, an engine block, a chainsaw, an axe, a weed whacker, a big, black, double-ended dildo, some love beads, and a pair of vibrators. That's right… Deathgasm features a fight scene in which the heroes are armed with sex toys, which should give you some idea of just how demented the film really is.

7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb.

Even more than zombies or maniacal killers, it's DEMONS that provide crazy horror directors with the most opportunities to go tremendously over-the-top in the gore and splatter department! Lamberto Bava knew it when he made "Demons" in 1985, Sam Raimi knew it when he accomplished his legendary "The Evil Dead" movies and apparently some pleasantly deranged New Zealander by the name of Jason Lei Howden knows it too, judging by the humongous gore- factor in his flick "Deathgasm". This recommendable little flick offers nothing new or even remotely original to the genre, but it definitely qualifies as pure and undemanding horror entertainment containing all the essential ingredients such as fast pacing, tongue-in-cheek dialogs, cute references towards movie/music classics and literally gallons of blood & pus! The basic plot concept cleverly plays with the ancient cliché that metal heads are Satan-worshipers and that the lyrics of their songs are aimed at summoning demons and other nasty creatures. In the sleepy little town of Greypoint, the social outcast Brodie coincidentally gets his geeky metal hands on music and lyrics called "the black hymn". When he and his amateur band called Deathgasm rehearse it in his uncle's garage, the universe's most evil force descends to earth and turns all villagers into bloodthirsty demons. Among all victims, Satan is scouting for the most evil human soul to possess and this just might be Brodie's metal buddy Zakk. "Deathgasm" is a fun movie, but certainly nothing more than that, and I wouldn't go as far as some of my fellow reviewers around here that label it as one of the best genre outing of the last years. The gore and make-up effects are well-handled but often too absurd and especially too tasteless for my liking. The best example to illustrate this is an extended sequence in which a supposedly normal middle-class and religious couple are beaten to death by the the sex-toys (like a gigantic black dildo and anal beads…) that are hidden in their bedroom. The funniest thing about New Zealand movies is that pretty much all cast and crew members previously worked on most of the Lord of the Ring movies, either as extras or as visual effects people. There are also a couple of cute references and tributes towards Peter Jackson's earliest splatter movies "Bad Taste" and "Braindead". Ideal stuff to watch late at night with a bunch of friends or – like I did – at a festival in the company of 200 gore-crazed horror freaks.

In the intro we are told that all the gruesome stuff metal bands sing about is actually true.

Some geeky metalhead named Brodie ends up living with his uncle who is Christian. His cousin is a bully and gives him a hard time. He's good at drawing gruesome stuff. One day at a record store he runs into an older and truer metalhead, the kind that chain smokes, chain drinks and doesn't care. This guy, Zakk, plays bass, Brodie plays guitar and he gets two other geeky friends to play keyboard (?) and drums. They end up calling the band Deathgasm.

One day Zakk takes Brodie along and they break into a house. Turns out it's the home of some metal legend of decades ago. They find the guy clutching some album. Suddenly some guy in a suit arrives and attacks them. The metal legend throws to album to the kids who escape. It's a crappy album but also inside the cover are a bunch of papers in Latin with some musical tabs.

Brodie translates the stuff, which reads something like 'summoning such and such a demon to get power and fortune.' They start playing the tune and everyone in the small town turns into demons without eyes who go after them.

Brodie also met the most gorgeous girl in school, Medina, who likes him even though she's his cousin's girlfriend. But Zakk is a backstabbing jerk and through deception hooks up with her.

Now the kids sort of join forces to defeat the demons and to find out how to reverse the situation. We also learn that some rich evil guy wants to take hold of the pages in Latin so he can control this demon.

Extreme metal and horror movies make a good pair, not that Hollywood would understand or care. So it's up to low budget independent producers to work on this, and the guys from Brain Damage have released some movies. Now comes Deathgasm from New Zealand, a very gory movie, although some of the gore is repetitive. But because Deathgasm also aims to be a teen comedy it's unnecessarily juvenile and gross. There is some nudity but not enough. While it has the horror part covered, and it could have gone even darker had it focused more on the occult stuff and the evil cabal, it surprisingly fails when it comes to metal. They get the band posters right, the CDs right, the occasional metal-related dialogue is right, Brodie's guitar, a BC Rich Warlock, is right, but the music is off. A movie called "Deathgasm" should have settled for straightforward death metal, instead we get some really lousy stuff. The music the band plays is terrible and so is most of the soundtrack.

As most movies from New Zealand this one too maintains some of the charming Kiwi innocence. You do empathize a bit with our heroes but not enough. Zakk is well cast and goodness is Kimberley Crossman gorgeous, but our lead is missing something. It appears they were going more for looks, someone to remind us of Death's Chuck Schuldiner. Overall a good effort in a much neglected potential subgenre.

It started great, nice little introduction into characters and their persona. Comedy felt great for the atmosphere and i was drawn into it. It's all going perfect and i cant believe it, then comes the love scene, this is OK, but it was too typical teen movie problem but i can get over it. After about 45mins comedy starts feeling childish and dumb, d**ks, s**t and dil**s. It slowly loses it's comedy charm it had at the beginning after 10 jokes that feel the same. There is a hand scene (I wont spoil it) that feels like it was undone but I feel Evil Dead fans will love the reference. Also the ending was too fast and it made no sense. I love that some characters die just like that, but after an hour and a half of not showing them I can't feel sympathy for them. All in all good movie, I liked it, I know people here say "so-so movie" and give it 7/10. I thought it was OK metal fun and I rate it 6/10