Fame is a bitch, and in Steve Flavin’s horror short, Wrathbone, it can literally cost you your soul.
It’s the ’80s, and Nigel Wrathbone (Steve Flavin) is a hair metal god on his way up—or, as many believe, on his way down. Minutes before a music video shoot, he’s in the green room doing lines of coke, with a specter looming over him. But this isn’t one of those interviews where a rock star brags about how great his band is and how fast they’re climbing the charts. It’s about a specific moment in the band’s history.
For a while, the hits keep coming. Then the band puts out the Hellhound record, and overnight it becomes their first failure. Was it the music, or the industry’s shift to an even smarmier Rick Astley techno-pop sound? Nigel grows increasingly unreliable, and his bandmates can see the writing on the wall. Just as the band finishes the tracks for their next big album, his bandmates die in a plane crash, and Nigel is left alone with survivor’s guilt. He had everything once, but the rock-and-roll life is about to send him somewhere much hotter than the top of the charts, and maybe the devil has a deal up his sleeve.
Nigel Wrathbone sits beside Grim in a smoke-filled waiting room in Wrathbone.
“It’s the ’80s, and Nigel Wrathbone is a hair metal god on his way up—or, as many believe, on his way down.”
I love Wrathbone for its horror-inspired morality tale and kick-ass hair-metal soundtrack. Speaking of the soundtrack, the film is probably 40% music and 60% story. The songs are original, including the film’s anthem, “Balls to the Wall,” written by Steve Flavin and Nathan Meckel, along with “Vertigo,” “Hell Hounds,” “Life’s a Bitch,” and the smarmy “Dreaming.” The mix also includes full-fledged music videos paying homage to MTV’s Headbangers Ball. Clearly, filmmaker Flavin is combining his love of horror and ’80s hair band music videos into one package.
As someone who grew up in the evangelical ’80s, I remember the satanic debate between metal bands and religious leaders. Stryper was my jam as the “alternative” to the devil’s music. I love how Flavin integrates this debate into his story of selling your soul to the devil for fame and the never-ending desire for the next high that comes with sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Get that big-hair wig and jam with Wrathbone.
For screening information, visit the Wrathbone official website.
"…Get that big-hair wig and jam with Wrathbone."
