You can say this about John Carpenter: he makes silence and stillness feel loud as Hell. Get ready for some age-restricted YouTube embeds! Here are the 20 movies that made metalheads the monsters they are today. So in honor of Halloween, we decided to list the 20 horror films that most influenced heavy metal music. Whether due to their visual style, their tone, or their all-out gore, these movies forever altered the path down which metal music would innocently wander before being stabbed to death. If it bleeds, it leads.īut while horror as a whole has always inspired metal, there are a handful of films that undeniably shaped heavy metal culture. That the first heavy metal band ever got their name from a Boris Karloff film advertised on a nearby theater marquee only validates the important relationship between cinematic terror and sonic extremity. The sinister darkness, emotional weight, and ugly honesty of horror film helped shape the minds of those twisted individuals who made heavy metal the cultural institution it is (a fucking mental institution). Without horror movies, heavy metal would not exist.
