The Movie
High School is hard to deal with. It’s especially difficult when your mom gets locked up in a mental hospital and you have to go live with your ultra-religious relatives and their douchie son. And if you’re a metalhead, well then just forget about it. Deathgasm tells the story of Brodie (Milo Cawthorne) and his new metalhead friend Zakk (James Blake) – as well as their D&D playing nerd friends Dion (Sam Berkley) and Giles (Daniel Cresswell) as they discover a long-lost piece of demonic music, play it, and cause a demonic apocalypse. Along the way Brodie falls in love with high-school dream Medina (Kimberley Crossman), who discovers she’s got a bit of a dark side – and is great with an axe.
Not a guitar. An axe. For real.
Writer/Director Jason Lei Howden channeled his inner 16 year-old, writing the script in nine days (and tightened it up over two weeks) for the last round of competition in the New Zealand Make My Horror Movie competition and won the NZ$200,000 prize. The film is blasphemous, puerile, silly, gory, and filled with bad jokes and cheesy plot twists.
By which I mean it’s AMAZING (and made my Top Ten 2015 Indie Horror Films list just yesterday!).
Deathgasm is a true successor to Peter Jackson’s splatter crown, and since he doesn’t seem interested in doing anything but bloated CG-fests these days, it’s about time somebody took a shot at it. The blood comes at you by the bucket. The heads fly off at an alarming rate. The music is brutal, loud, and fast. The tits and cocks are all over the place.
Wait. What?
Nevermind. You’ll see. Because you will see this film. Even if you have to buy it under the title Heavy Metal Apocalypse at Walmart – where demonic imagery is bad but shotguns are good (I would have preferred Brotherhood of Steel as an alternate title, but nobody listens to me). This is the movie you wanted to see when you were in high school, hated everybody but your friends (and you didn’t like them half the time), and you liked to sit in the woods or a graveyard with your Walkman cranked, pretending you were dead and they would all regret everything they had ever done, the bastards… They’d see. They’d all pay someday… um…
What I mean is…
Er, this would be perfectly at home as a battered and beaten VHS tape that they guy who ran the cool video store would hold for you, knowing you’d want to see it before anybody else.
Shit. I think I’ve just gone so far up my own ass I’ve come out in 1985.
Buy this. Rent this. Stream this.
You won’t have more fun watching a heavy metal splatter comedy from New Zealand this year. And it’s only January.
The Extras
Audio Commentary with Jason Lei Howden: Lots of good stuff in here. Give it a listen.
Brotherhood of Steel: The Cast of Deathgasm: The cast of the film, goofing around, joking, having fun, talking about their characters. Not a lot of detail or insight, really, but Milo Cawthorne is kind of hilarious. Did you know he was a Power Ranger? Ziggy Grover: Green Shark RPM Ranger at your service. Plus he had a bit part in Ash vs Evil Dead as one of the doomed militia-men (that’s not in the featurette – I just know shit).
Goregasm: The FX of Deathgasm: There’s quite a bit of time spent in this featurette talking about and handling rubber cocks. Because there are quite a few cocks in the film, both “real” and of the sex toy nature. Let’s see what Walmart does about those!
Bulletbelt “Deathgasm” Music Video:
Kick ass.