Gimme Something to Watch: Deathgasm
This ain’t yo’ grandma’s dildo fight!
There’s no point analyzing and getting all academic about what needn’t be analycized and done gotten all academic-like, so we’ll keep this simple. Deathgasm is a comedy about a New Zealand metal band summoning (then fighting) evil. The plot goes something like this: Guy likes metal. Guy moves in with weird religious family. Guy meets other metal guy, starts band. Band obtains Necronomicon-esque sheet music. Demonic hijinks ensue. Also there’s dildos involved, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
An enthusiastic pastiche of movies like Shaun of the Dead, Evil Dead and Dead Alive (a hat trick of movies with “dead” in the title), Deathgasm contains 100% more corpse paint, a targeted soundtrack and an homage to Immortal’s, uh… immortality. And don’t forget about the dildos, which we’ll get to shortly.
While it’s not the most original movie ever made, there’s a lot to like about Deathgasm that makes it worth checking out. The standard tropes of the nerdy D&D-playing friend, the secret crush blonde girl and the “school sucks, metal was my escape” scenes are all here, but the writers/filmmakers have clearly created this out of love for the genre. A brief record store scene in particular perfectly captures the palpable condescension between the serious underground fan and the mainstream fan as they slyly show off their current listening habits. Don’t lie: at some point this exact scene has happened to you.
“Gah.” “Whoah.”
After their band is formed, they take the next logical step and do what every new metal band must do, as inevitable as the ebb and flow of the tides and the rising and setting of the sun: head out into the woods with a video camera and make a shitty video. Again, don’t lie: at some point you probably thought about recreating Call of the Wintermoon, too. We’re all friends here, it’s okay you can admit it. Later on, after realizing they’ve severely fucked up with the whole demonic music thing, they listen to Inno A Satana in the car, which, hey, I’d probably want to revisit too if I was responsible for mass chaos.
That makeup is waaay too clean; suspension of disbelief broken
The latter third of the movie ramps up the Edgar Wright/Sam Raimi influence as the characters fight their way through [redacted for spoilers] with some inventive kills and use of improvised weapons, including (but not limited to) a giant dildo or two. And we’ve arrived at the entire point of the article here:
Deathgasm indeed
There are plenty of movies out there about “we’re gonna be young forever lol” baby boomer bands and “my dad was a rock star but he was never there for me lol” dramas, but the next time you’re in the mood for a movie about a metal band who doesn’t play very well, makes Immortal video ripoffs and slaps demons around with dildos, look no further than Deathgasm.
3.5 out of 5 Toilets Ov Hell
(header via; images taken from DVD release)
