Shock Em Dead (1991)

continued...

... not funny looking back twenty years later. And this film perfectly encapsulates the hair metal look and music almost dead on.

Anyway, once the geek gets his gifts for his soul, he has to go and try out again for that band that turned him to the Devil. He not only makes it into the band, but he takes the band over and manages to drive out the singer, who had really been the one guy in the band who went out of his way to humiliate our nerd protagonist. Besides the previously mentioned trio of Metal groupies, our protagonist also decides to pick up Tracy Lords, who manages the band, and is dating the Bass player. I guess there is no conflict of interest. And no, she does not get naked. You would think so, but apparently this was when she was trying to earn respect as an actress. On the plus side, she is wearing eighties style Hair-Metal clothing ala Kelly Bundy, so there is still some appeal there. Needless to say, our anti-hero also wants to add her to his collection, all while looking for extra ‘food sources' for him and his harem. And all this while getting a record contract. Of course, the bass player starts picking up some strange vibes, to say nothing of the fact the new member of the band appears to be trying to steal his girlfriend. So it's up to our 4 string warrior to defeat the satanic guitarist, and hopefully gain his woman back.

So is this film any good? Not really. It's pretty easy to figure out the plot arc, it's formulaic, it doesn't have great acting: basically it's a whole lot of clichés jammed in one film. But it's still a great look back at the late eighties, and it's not so painful that you want to immediately shut the film off. And if you want to see why those of us who remember those days were nearly fervent over Nirvana, which relegated those hair bands to obscurity almost over night, this film should give you a real good idea what we were clamoring against.

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