Metalheads

This might not seem like anything much at first, but look closely at the license plate and then Zebub's arm. Zebub, his girlfriend, and Mr. Welfare end up in the woods, where they take more acid and share another trip. Well, really it’s not so much a “trip” as “a bunch of people fresh out of the county health clinic laughing in slow motion for over ten minutes”, but I’m not going to argue the point with a man who thinks “semantics” are something you need a special shampoo to get rid of. After their mid-forest laugh-a-thon (I can only assume they saw something really funny, like people with steady incomes or someone wearing a t-shirt without words on it) they hop in the car and head back towards town. After another short scene of the same elderly woman ass-dancing in front of a camera, we cut back to the car as if nothing has happened.

Maybe the most frustrating thing about this whole ordeal is that Zebub really, honestly fancies himself an artist. He takes his work very seriously and shows it off every chance he gets, which is kind of like listening to classical music while taking a huge dump, then waving your friends in to “come get a whiff of this”. By proxy that means that showing his movie to other people is like taking pride in someone else’s bowel movements. In short, the only “waves” Bill Zebub makes on the underground scene are accompanied by a flushing noise.

But Bill isn’t only a great artist in his own mind, he’s also one of New Jersey’s premiere antipolitical thinkers. Bill Zebub doesn’t need any government or policing. Bill Zebub understands. He knows that the government is just out there to fuck him over at every turn. Get a job? Pay taxes? Abide by basic rules of society? Feh. Bill Zebub is a rogue king, a system-shaking wild child with only one goal in mind: turning the status quo over on its fat, greedy, money-sucking ear. And how’s he going to do that? That’s right, baby, he ain’t pulling no punches – he’s going to compare cops to Nazis in his movies. And if someone asks, he might even say they’re like pigs or fascists. How do you like those anarchist apples, Mr. “I don’t care if you changed clothes and put on a fake mustache, you’re still not getting any more food stamps”?

In all honesty the next scene, which goes pretty much exactly like a real traffic stop except the cop’s wearing a Nazi uniform, doesn’t amount to much until the last five seconds. You see, after driving a satirical dagger into the cold, dead heart of The Evil Empire, Zebub simply didn’t have the energy to film the scene his characters allude to when they say “drive, just drive away”. As such, after Ugly Slut screams this (with all the emotion of an addict about three days away from the needle, mind you), the scene does that awesome “break into blocks and scatter across the screen” thing, and boom, they’re in a bar toasting themselves for their “great escape”. I wasn’t privy to what happened during the police chase but I think it’s fair to assume it involved bad acting and old ladies fainting from the horrible stench emerging from the car as it rolled by.

When the bar visit’s over we’re treated to yet another “nasty old hag dancing and pleasuring herself to music that sounds like a deaf woman being tortured with a curling iron” scene. This time, the skeezebag is wearing a man’s business shirt, a tie, and a pair of glasses, thus proving my theory that ugly women don’t get any prettier when they’re stuffed into mens clothing the director found in a dumpster behind Goodwill. Additionally, I’m said to report her labia actually escape her panties for a brief moment. While I’m not about to go back and get a screencap of it, I can tell you that it was kind of like staring God in the face if God was a shriveled, dying slug creeping over the side of some smoke-yellowed cloth. Actually, come to think of it, that doesn’t really seem like God at all – the bible says we were made in his image, and if that’s the case I know for a fact I don’t look like a canned ham someone spraypainted gray and dropped a bowling ball on.

On the way back from the bar Ugly Slut makes out with Mr. Welfare, which drives Zebub into a rage. After spitting a mostly incomprehensible rant at his ladyfriend he storms across town, where Officer Nazi is picking on the classiest man in the world. Zebub, in all his rage, chucks a plastic trash can lid at the cop, rendering him unconscious. I’m sure this is another one of Zebub’s asinine political statements, something about how cops can’t do their jobs right and metalheads are kind of like a white trash Captain America, but instead of fighting for truth and justice they go without bathing for weeks at a stretch and throw trash cans at one another. Whatever the case Zebub and Mr. Classy hit it off quickly, and they decide to go terrorize a college party to help Zebub get over his grief.

Upon arriving at the shindig Zebub realizes he’s uncomfortable around the college crowd – who’d have thought he’d have trouble relating to intelligent, educated people with plans in life outside of “revive Dimebag Darrell and fellate him” – and decides the best way to ease the tension is to drop a tab of ecstasy. Apparently the FDA has not yet found the main danger presented by MDMA, namely “falling off couches a bunch”, since the next ten minutes are the same shot of Zebub rolling off a loveseat intertwined with scenes of Mr. Classy flailing around the dance floor like a giant retarded meat-mace.

Shortly after his MDMA incident Bill and Mr. Classy head off to do something else. Presumably they go to a strip club, since one second the scene is a crummy apartment and the next it’s a seedy joint that apparently took its color scheme from an overripe radish. I say “presumably”, however, because we never see Bill or Mr. Classy in the strip club, and there’s never any dialogue that tells us they plan on going there. Really some sort of transitory scene would help – maybe Bill could turn to Mr. Classy and say “you know, I’m tired of attending operas and charity dinners every night, let’s go stare at some titties” – but instead we’re met with more stomach-churning girls doing the same dance to the same “music” (I put quotes there much the same way you would if referring to John Gacy as a “decent guy”). On an interesting note, one of the girls is so into body modification she has opted to replace both her breasts with uppercase J’s, proving once again letters don’t look good on a stripper unless they’re sequenced “C”, “U”, “N”, and “T” and carved into her forehead.

WELCOME TO THE WHORETEX At some point after the party Zebub passes out in a trainyard. The next morning Mr. Classy exits stage left by pulling a guy out of his truck for no reason and driving away. It’s never explained exactly why Mr. Classy felt the urge to steal a truck in broad daylight and ride off into the sunset like a white-trash cowboy, but given Zebub’s penchant for explaining things it was probably an integral part of the plot he totally forgot to film.

After Mr. Classy’s exit the ugliest man in the world ever discovers Zebub sacked out on an old train car. He gives it some thought, realizes the thing in front of him is not a gigantic hairball from a really sick cat, and wakes Zebub up by setting a firecracker off in his mouth. You certainly won’t hear me arguing that Zebub needs fewer explosives set off in or near his head – I just hope that his next stunt like this involves a hand grenade or at least an M-80. I could sit through another Zebub masterpiece if I was promised he’d end the movie missing most of his skull.

Yet another no-explanation-no-transition scene later Zebub and his friend are sitting in the woods with a bag of pot. This is totally disregarding the fact that he vowed to kill the same friend after catching him sucking face with his crimped-hair STD bag, but whatever. Honestly the movie’s almost over at this point and I don’t care about glaring plot holes so much as getting the fuck away from this computer and never thinking about the movie “Metalheads” again. Zebub and his friend are in a quandary – they’re miles away from town, they have a bag of pot, and they’re out of rolling paper. I’ve never been in a situation where I was really bummed out because I didn’t have the means to smoke pot, but then again I’ve never stuck a live explosive in my maw or gone to jail for waggling my finger under a kid’s nose and telling him “this is what your sister’s snatch smells like”.

Anyway, after some talk Zebub’s friend remembers he has a lottery ticket in his pocket. He rolls the pot up in a big lotto joint and they start to smoke it just as Zebub’s girlfriend makes her way up the path. Somehow she knows about the ticket and its numbers and tells them they’ve just won the lottery. Zebub’s friend, wanting to show just how "metal" he is, continues to smoke the joint. The girlfriend, incensed that she missed a chance at easy money that didn’t involve drinking semen out of a hollowed-out deer skull, storms off as fast as her stumpy little legs can carry her.

Bill and his friend finish their million-dollar joint and head to the parking lot. After a brief conversation (almost totally obscured by some “music” that sounds like a braying mule being electrocuted by a guitar), Zebub steps into the street and is run over by a truck. While I enjoy a “main character killed out of the blue for no reason” ending as much as the next guy, I think Zebub’s next stop should be a YMCA summer creative writing course – he could stand to learn a bit from the whiny lesbian chick who constantly writes stories about her own boring life and the fat dude who ends everything with “it was all a dream”. That is, of course, unless Zebub is too proud to let things like education and skill taint his artistic sensibility. Why put effort into your work when you can just talk incessantly about being an artist and trick a few stupid people into believing you?

In the closing minutes of the movie Zebub’s friend is clearly distraught. He staggers around a graveyard in a drunken stupor and cries at Bill’s grave. Well, I assume it’s Bill’s grave – since the movie’s budget wasn’t enough to handle his lice shampoo it sure as shit couldn’t shoulder a mock tombstone, and the cameras stay behind the marker at all times. He chucks a bottle of beer at a statue of the cross, which somehow summons a a large, flaming, upside-down CGI cross to emerge from its center. Before he can react a bunch of red bubbles emerge from the wrist of a crucifixion statue. This, of course, is enough to freak any man’s shit, so he runs, and the movie’s final scene, a CGI scene of a skeleton pestering a nude woman, appears before our very eyes. How this ties in to the rest of the movie I’m not sure: I think Bill’s kidding himself if he thinks he’ll ever see a set of tits that don’t have chest hair on them, even if he becomes an animated skeleton.

Thus ends the saga of “Metalheads”. As the credits roll we’re given access to a number of CGI models that didn’t make the final cut, including a woman and some other people, as well as a frog and some dolphins or something. While I’m sure these images would have added quite a bit to the film, namely if they came to life and castrated Zebub with a really dull knife, there’s only so much you can do when the last hour of the VHS tape you bought has your family reunion on it. To be fair, watching a bunch of drunken white trash shout “git ‘er done” through a mouthful of their cousins’ genitals would have been far more interesting than the stuff we saw in “Metalheads”, but what can we do about it? Bill Zebub is an artist, right?

Yep, he’s an artist and I’m a billionaire playboy. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to stop writing this review. All these supermodels don’t fuck themselves, you know.

– Evan "Pantsfish" Wade