Like a fool, I’d been saving watching this movie for Halloween. Rocktober = October = Halloween, right? Well. Instead of my fun holiday romp, it turns out that Rocktober Blood has nothing to do with All Hallows’ Eve and everything to do with heavy metal, evil twins and poor attempts at being Phantom of the Paradise.

Most of the cast in the film was made up of the band Sorcery. While not the main cast, they do hang around quite a bit. Though it is difficult to tell seeing as the movie was light with about three lightbulbs.

Billy “Eye” Harper is the lead singer for a successful metal band. During a late-night recording session, he and the rest of the band leave. Only girlfriend and backup singer Lynn remains behind to do further recording with the engineer Kevin and another assistant.

Lynn leaves to go into the jacuzzi. While she’s away Kevin and the assistant are both murdered by Billy. Or are they???

Lynn is confronted by who she assumes is Billy, who attempts to kill her. A security guard manages to intervene. But two years later, Billy is dead, having been executed for the crimes. He maintained his innocence up until his death, confusing Lynn, who was certain she’d been threatened by him.

With Billy out of the way, Lynn becomes the lead singer of the band, who rebrands themselves as Headmistress. As their “Rocktober Blood” tour looms, Lynn is certain that she is being haunted by Billy. Unsurprisingly, no one believes her.

Her friends even go so far as to help her dig up Billy’s coffin. Inside, they find his decomposing corpse. But Lynn maintains that he is alive as she gets continually harrassed by who she thinks is Billy.

On the night of the tour’s first show, it’s revealed that Lynn has been wrong all along. Billy is dead. Silly woman. It’s not Billy harassing her, but Billy’s EVIL TWIN BROTHER! John Harper is the talent of the twins, having written all the music that Billy took credit for. How better to exact revenge than to kill literally everyone. (No, this does not make sense to me.)

The last scene of the film is quite clearly an attempt at an homage to the Beef and the Undeads concert scene in Phantom. But, you know, done on a budget of about $50. There are fake deaths, electrocution by guitar and glam rock-inspired makeup. John appears on stage, which should be a pretty big reveal. I mean, even if you didn’t know about this evil twin business, it looks like a dead guy is parading around on stage. Somehow the band seems pretty unphased by this, even when Lynn is getting manhandled and handcuffed by him. Everyone keeps playing!

And poor John ends up dead. Or is he?

I love metal music. Particularly hair metal. It’s the white trash Wisconsinite in me. If Poison comes on, I must worship. Though I have to admit, I had never heard of Sorcery before. They seem like a pretty great band, as the soundtrack is probably the best part of the film.

Lynn’s voice was provided by Susie Rose Major, who has a set of great pipes. It would have probably been more impactful, though, if we had heard “Rainbow Eyes” only at the end and not constantly (and I mean constantly) throughout.

Rocktober Blood is a low-budget affair that’s pretty rough around the edges when it comes to production value. It’s also padded up to high heaven and has nothing to do with Halloween OR October. But all that said, can you really resist a movie that combines 80s metal music, evil twins, and homages to one of the greatest movies ever made? Well, maybe. Maybe just watch Phantom of the Paradise instead.