HAIR METAL MOVIE MADNESS presents “Ode to Slashers!” Music from Jason, Freddy and Michael! by DARK SIDE

Posted on October 23rd, 2009

Does anyone remember that bizarre pop song that Alice Cooper did for the Friday the 13th movie franchise? Yeah, I didn’t either until a friend reminded me that it existed. FT13 Part 6 was poised to resurrect (literally) the flailing franchise who already saw the demise of it’s main character, Jason, in IV and replaced him with a temporary impostor in V. Nobody liked that, so what was their solution for 6? Death to Arnold Horshack from Welcome Back, Kotter. Just kidding, but not really. That guy is actually the first victim to get killed in Part 6. But here’s the real contribution of 6 to the series…

Zombie Jason.

It was a stroke of genius that not only shocked new life (literally) into the corpse of the film series, but it introduced an element of humor into a genre that was quickly losing its ability to scare. 6 also added another element: The relatively new trend of metal bands endorsing a movie franchise by writing and performing a song that plays at the beginning/end of the film + an MTV music video to help market the movie.

Ah, it was a golden age for horror movie songs and Alice Cooper jumped on board with possibly his strangest song yet. “Man Behind the Mask” is anything but a metal song from the venerable rocker. It sounds more like a pop track from Roxette or Winger, but heavier on the keyboards and synth. I barely remember even seeing this video or hearing this song, which vouches for it’s relative obscurity and flash-in-the-pan exposure.

Nevertheless, it’s really the only memorable song linked with the Friday the 13th franchise. And it’s actually kinda catchy. Check it out…

Now for Freddy. We all know the most famous song from the Nightmare of Elm Street movies is Dokken’s “Dream Warriors,” but I already covered that in the first installment of Hair Metal Movie Madness.

Elm Street 4: The Dream Master featured a song from a most unlikely horror icon: Sinead O’Connor. Yep, ripping up the Pope’s picture on Saturday Night live and calling him an ”enemy” to a shocked audience can make you a boogey man/woman faster than a machete to the skull. No wonder O’Connor’s song “Put Your Hands On Me” somehow made it into the closing credits of a Freddy movie.

Adding insult to injury, somebody got the bright idea to put female rapper M C Lyte into the middle of the weird Irish pseudo-rap song to add some “flava.” It also made it kind of hilarious. The final result: One of the most weird and awkward songs to ever endorse a mainstream horror movie. The only thing even more awkward is the video which doesn’t feature anything from the movie (probably because it was made BEFORE the movie) and needs no dream demon to project a sense of psychedelic terror…

And lest we forget…

Finally we have the Halloween franchise which pre-dates the other two by a few years. Considered a bit more high-brow than Friday or Nightmare, Michael Myers was slower to jump on the metal/music franchise endorsement.

Strike that… It NEVER jumped on the music endorsement trend. Not until Rob Zombie, that is.

It may have had a heavy metal song somewhere there in the background or maybe in 6, 7 or 8… but nobody counts those stinkers. Plus you got “Mr. Sandman” used to creepy effect in part 2, but that’s hardly an intended endorsement.

No, Halloween is only known for one type of music: The creepy keyboard tune that director John Carpenter created back in 1978. Here’s the greatest of the H’ween intros in the original Part II with the awesome skull hidden in the pumpkin. It begins with the end of Part I and transitions to the title sequence at 4 mins…

The Dark Side Critic… Slashin’ since 1978!