The History of Metal and Horror

I stumbled upon this 2022 documentary by random chance. And since I am a big fan of both metal and horror, and have been so for about 37 years, then of course I had to sit down and watch this, no doubt about it.

Writer and director Mike Schiff does deliver a rather entertaining and enjoyable documentary here, with some nice insights into both metal and horror, and why one compliments the other. Sure, "The History of Metal and Horror" didn't exactly dish out things that I didn't already know, but there were some really nice appearances by icons from both the metal scene and the horror movie scene. And they were giving good interviews.

The documentary is also laced with imagery from various horror movies and music performances, which definitely added a nice layer to the overall presentation of the documentary.

If you are a fan of horror films and metal music, then I definitely recommend you sit down and watch "The History of Metal and Horror".

My rating of "The History of Metal and Horror" lands on a six out of ten stars.

The title alone is corny and cheesy and at first you'd think it might be terrible to watch. But then you give it a shot, and it's surprisingly dynamic with how they go from one speaker to the next and manage to pull out a solid two hours or so of what is just basically thoughts over the metal and horror themes, as well as their connection.

They do a good enough job revisiting the crypts of old school horror without making it feel too academic and rigid, and the commentary can be thought-provoking thus avoiding scholarly reciting of the boring old clichés. A few speakers might catch you off guard with some of their remarks.

This is more like a hangout with the experts on the genre, which is what everybody wants to see really. It's like a sit-down with all the various horror/metal genre directors, protagonists... and it's interesting to see them talk about the overlap between the two fields. If anything, one could feel they'd wish they heard more from these individuals, and at times the commentary gets particularly interesting but for the sake of pace the documentary then switches to the next speaker, which is understandable.

Good stuff.

I would consider myself a bigger metal fan than a horror fan. This documentary would have been interesting enough even if I had not done a giant fan of either, however.

"The History of Metal and Horror" is primarily focused on the horror genre of movies and metal genre of music, I found it to be full of insights into the broader subject of Art in general.

The interviews were really well done. I would be really interested in getting a Blu-ray (or whatever medium) of this documentary if it included unedited and/or much longer interviews with some are all of the interviewees.

I've already watched this one more than once, and expect that I will go back to it repeatedly in the future.