Death to Metal: Vengeful, Mutated Killer Priest a Refreshing Change from Evil Nuns

By Thom Ernst

Rating: B-

Here's something from the clergy-gone-wild sub-genre of horror: Death to Metal, a slasher that is faithful to the formula.

Milton Kilborn (Andrew Jessop), a devout but dangerously unstable priest, is suspended from the pulpit after terrifying his parishioners with hate-mongering prophesies. Kilborn (as in born to kill) retaliates by vandalizing the church and then killing its caretaker. He follows up that nasty altar-cation with a drunken car ride straight into the local creek.

Barely alive, he emerges from the wreck, unaware that the creek is the same creek a couple of local head-bangers dumped barrels of toxic waste into. Kilborn is soon melting into a bubbling mess of boils and lesions. But what doesn't kill you can only make you stronger, and as anyone who's seen a Troma Film knows, there is nothing more transformative, nor as loaded with adverse healing powers, as toxic waste.

Jessop plays the pre-mutated Kilborn with the poise of a fire-and-brimstone fanatic on a hell-bound quest for moral purification. But rising from the creek like a newly baptized avenging angel is the mutated Kilborn (now played by Trent Johnson).

Before you can make any quips about perishing parishioners, Kilborn dons a vintage Jesuit frock and begins a murderous rampage against the town's leading purveyors of filth and sin; mainly the heavy metal freaks and geeks, not unlike the kids who harassed and urinated on the schoolbooks of a young bespeckled Kilborn (Gavin Vondra).

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

The ordeal—and we might assume the urinating incident was just one of many—left an indelible stain on his psyche. It's a disturbing conceit to believe that horrific childhood trauma can lead to a career in the priesthood but not entirely unreasonable.

Director Tim Connery might have kept Death to Metal as Kilborn's story, and to some extent, it is. Still, the tale sidesteps its way towards Zane (Alex Stein), one of the most non-threatening musicians since David Cassidy went solo. {Fantastic line, Thom! – Ed.}

Zane is a good-guy metalhead—there are a few others, namely metal club booker Ryan Rammer (Charlie Lind) and his young head-banger-in-training son. But Zane's good-guy image isn't working for him. Not only does the metal-band Zane fronts ditch him hours before a potentially game-changing performance, but he is also dumped by his girlfriend (Gwen Werner).

But Zane's day is about to get even worse as Kilborn bludgeons, poisons, strangles, and maims his way through the metal community towards the concert. It all builds towards an explosive, slaughter-filled house of horrors, with biting bits of satire and unexpected nuances of charm.

Death to Metal is something of a fresh breath of stale air. In a genre long familiar with demonizing nuns, having an evil priest is a nice change of habit. And while nuns tend to be the vessel of evil—ghostly or possessed figures stalking the hallways of Catholic-run orphanages—the priest here is the sole judge and executioner (there is no need for a jury).

Death to Metal. Directed by Tim Connery. Starring Alex Stein, Gwen Werner, Trent Johnson, Andrew Jessop, and Charlie Lind. Available on digital platforms December 7.