Aug 21, 2017
Shock ‘Em Dead (1991)
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from China
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Venezuela
seen from United States
seen from Brazil
seen from Russia
seen from Australia
seen from Algeria
seen from Sweden
seen from China
seen from Nigeria
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
Shock ‘Em Dead (1991)
Shock 'Em Dead (1991)
On January 31, 19991, Shock 'Em Dead was released on VHS in the United States.
On November 17, 2015, Shock 'Em Dead was released on DVD by Olive Films.
Movie Review | Shock ‘Em Dead (Freed, 1991)
I remember years ago when I first watched and became obsessed with the great Canadian classic Rock’n’Roll Nightmare, I found a list of heavy metal horror movies online as I was searching for recommendations in this genre that I was certain was uniformly amazing and had no bad movies. I remember seeing this ranked right at the top, over the other movie and some better known ones, and assumed it had to be even wilder and crazier. Having finally seen it now after all those years, this shit is not better than Rock’n’Roll Nightmare. In fact, it’s kind of terrible.
Honestly, the big problem here is that the main character, even before he makes his Faustian bargain with a voodoo priestess to become a great hair metal guitarist, is never likeable. When we first meet, he’s not just cartoonishly dorky, which is not a crime by any means, but we see him creeping on his coworker as she changes. After his transformation, instead of living it up with his three super foxy girlfriends, he decides to go harass his old coworkers, despite the fact that they’re working a late shift and probably for minimum wage. And when he’s making it with one of his girlfriends, he starts acting like a little bitch when he sees her true nature (burn marks) in the mirror. One, they don’t look that bad. Two, if he’s that grossed out, can’t he just take down the mirrors? So yeah, hard to root for this guy. Also, this was 1991. A Faustian bargain for hair metal success seems like a bad deal, especially as Nevermind was released that year and grunge was now in.
Other than that, aside from one sequence that looks credibly like a hair metal music video, most of this movie is in an ugly, televisual style, like a bad sitcom. The music is pretty lame too, largely covers of non-hair-metal songs, although some of the more exaggerated noodling on the guitar looks pretty funny. And because the main character’s weakness is apparently food (which the voodoo priestess tells another character and then tries to trick him into a bargain as well, which is a pretty poor sales tactic as she already told him what he needed to know), we get an extremely lame climax where a guy runs around trying to kill the baddies with food paste.
If I can find some nice things to say about this, it’s that Karen Russell as one of the girlfriends is probably the best character here. She proves pretty handy with a switchblade, is pretty forthcoming about the conditions of their voodoo curse, and I found it a little poignant the extent to which she’s made peace with her present realities. A better movie would have done her character more justice in this regard. There’s also Laurel Wiley as another one of the girlfriends, who gets some good puns about her need to feast on souls. And Traci Lords plays the most overtly sympathetic character, and wears a cute hat in her first scene. And while a lot of this is extremely lame, there is one very funny scene where the main character takes over the band in the middle of a show by kicking the lead singer off the stage and then vomits on an audience member at the end of a song.