These 20 Heavy Metal Horror Movies Will Make You Bang Your Head With Fright This Halloween

In the realm of heavy metal, every day is Halloween. Just consider the costumes, the make-up, the shrieking, the zombie mascots, the haunted house stage decor, and the omnipresence of horned demons and hungry gargoyles set loose in tribute to the forces of darkness. And what back stage rider is complete without a gluttonous array of sweets and candies(no brown M&M’s please)?

Another way of looking at it, though, is that for one day each year, the whole rest of the world goes heavy metal. Either way, come late October, Halloween and heavy metal are as intertwined as the words “trick” and “treat.” The unholy wellspring from which each draws its greatest inspiration is the hairy, scary visual and cultural vocabulary of horror movies.

The band Black Sabbath is in fact named after Black Sabbath, a 1963 fright flick directed by Italian terror maestro Mario Bava and starring the man who made Frankenstein’s flat head and stomping boots famous, Boris Karloff. In some manner, then, a horror movie gave rise to the entire genre of heavy metal itself. Similarly, good times and great scares on Halloween almost always begin with somebody turning on a spooky movie to set a properly ghoulish mood.

The hair-raising, head-banging films that follow explicitly blend horror and heavy metal into a varyingly intense, intriguing, and oftentimes just awesomely insane witch’s brews of fear and fun. Grab your candy, throw your horns, and rock out to the 20 greatest heavy metal horror movies for Halloween.