Spoiler alert: the protagonist of Deathgasm uses a dildo to kill a demon possessed human zombie thing. He will swing this giant cock like a sword, stabbing and slapping that demon face in epic slow motion as though he’s the Joan of Arc of Dildo Fighting. Brodie is his name, and he is working to save the world from an onslaught of demons one dildo-wielding confrontation at a time.
Sure, any exploitation horror comedy can use a dildo to kill a demon. Deathgasm is not just any exploitation horror comedy. Deathgasm is the kind of movie that shoots it from the POV of the dildo. That’s just the kind of movie Deathgasm is. Going where no POV has gone before.
Deathgasm is the latest entry in the the kiwi gore-splatter comedy niche to make its way to the States. Written and Directed by Jason Lei Howden, the movie follows a high-school metal band-Deathgasm is their name-on their blood-saturated metal-musical adventure against demons.
Howden has talked about the effect Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste had on him as a young man, and Deathgasm does its best to emulate that sentiment. Howden’s movie is shamelessly disgusting and raunchy, and I mean that as a compliment. There is a story-involving mystical sheet music that raises the dead or some such thing-but I never really knew what the hell was going on. And it doesn’t really matter, frankly.
What matters in a movie like Deathgasm is: are you having fun. Are the filmmakers pushing you to a place no splatter-comedy has pushed you before? That is always the question asked by exploitation. Deathgasm asks it like this:
- Do you enjoy the raucousness of beheadings and liters of blood splattering the faces and walls and everything around you?
- Do you fantasize about seeing boobs?
- Do you wish the world was populated by possessed demon-people rather than parents and teachers?
- Do you think a hot blonde with an axe splitting skulls to an hilarious over-bearing soundtrack is funny?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, then Deathgasm is probably for you.
Keeping that humor level up at all times is crucial. Because when you slip out of that high, what you’re left with is a movie about a lonely white suburban kid who turns his isolation into violent revenge against the world that rejected him. That’s what Howden’s movie is about the; wilderness of the suburbs, and the anxiety of isolation for those who don’t fit in to their surroundings.
Metal has always been a community for just such individuals. The heavy metal world is a positive good for many young men and women who find in it an imaginative space to foster creativity, free of judgment and full of ridiculous good fun.
But in the US, the frame of such a story is just not as funny in 2015 as it was twenty years ago, when isolated white suburban kids were not actually taking up guns on such a regular basis. This reality doesn’t have anything to do with Deathgasm or the isolating effect of suburbs. But this is the world that Deathgasm enters, and it has to reckon with that reality.
Lucky for us, the way it reckons with it is dildo fights and double-demon head chops. With loud music, gore a’plenty, and non-stop chainsaw choppy-chop. Deathgasm proves that with the right attitude, the demonic murder-spree soul stealing nightmare zone that is the suburbs might not be so bad afterall.
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