This List of the Best Goofy-Great Fake Metal Bands From Movies and TV Goes to Eleven

Photo via Moviestore Collection/Rex

“Death to false metal!” That phrase is as intertwined with headbanger culture as drop-tuned guitars, devil-horn finger salutes, and debates as to what actually constitutes “true” and “false” metal in the first place. Still, some false metal artists—false in the literal sense, that is, in that they’re fake—don’t just get a pass on the traditional death-wishing, they’re admired, honored, and even cherished for the truths they bring to the metal universe by virtue of their illuminating bogusness.

From a distance, heavy metal can come off as utterly dire and humorless. It’s no accident, then, that the most beloved fake metal artists are either straight up comedy-based or they so seriously embody headbanger stereotypes that they become funny. Either way, the best fake metal serves to prove that the melting of faces and banging of heads are in no way antithetical to the tickling of ribs and the busting of guts. And that’s the truth.

Spinal Tap This Is Spinal Tap

From the richness, exactitude, and deep understanding inherent those details, the movie pumps out nonstop classic moments that one metal band after another swears was taken from their own backstories. Such “how did they know?” nuggets include Spinal Tap getting lost on the way to the stage, essential props spectacularly misfiring at the exact wrong moment, infighting between the singer and the guitar player when one’s girlfriend wants to contribute creative ideas, and so on, right on up to the series of mysteriously, sometimes explosively, vanishing drummers.

This Is Spinal Tap Steel Dragon Rock Star Rock Star

A box office bomb upon initial release (opening four days before the 9/11 attacks certainly didn’t help it), Rock Star has since developed a cult following and is generally well liked and affectionately quoted in heavy metal circles. One significant voice of descent (and what a voice it is) belongs to none other than Rob Halford. When asked about the movie on The Metal Show, Halford put in no uncertain terms: “I think it sucks!”

Wyld Stallyns Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey Bill and Ted Go to Hell)

At various points in their celestial plane-hopping, Bill and Ted’s Wyld Stallyns ruled the universe, even delivering them, in Bogus Journey, to the steps of the Stairway to Heaven itself. Through it all, the duo’s signature Wyld Stallyns salute remained unchanged: one quick air guitar noodle, accompanied by a shred on the soundtrack, always gets greeted by another.

Deacon Dark The Love Boat The Lone Rangers Airheads Golden Girls Airheads Airheads Spew Bones Bones Bones Wyckyd Sceptre Mr. Show Black Roses Black Roses Black Rose Moloch The Love Boat Happy Days CHiPs Sammi Curr

The 1986 Halloween hair-raiser Trick or Treat is a calculated commercial combination of the heavy metal and horror movie crazes of its era. Fortunately, it pays off in a manner as heaping and grand as the mousse-imbued hair-do of its hard-rock anti-hero, Sammi Curr (Tony Fields). Marc Price (Skippy Henderson from the sitcom Family Ties) portrays Eddie Weinbauer, a nerdy headbanger who idolized Curr up until the singer’s dying day. In mourning, Eddie visits late-night rock DJ Nuke, played by Gene Simmons of KISS. Nuke gives Eddie a Sammi Curr rarities cassette that, once played, unleashes the vocalist’s unholy ghost to bombard terror down over all within earshot. Earning its metal cred where it can, Trick or Treat features Ozzy Osbourne in a cameo as a televangelist, and Fastway, a supergroup featuring by “Fast” Eddie Clarke of Motörhead and bassist Pete Way of UFO, provides the soundtrack. Blackie Lawless of W.A.S.P. had negotiated to play Sammi Curr, but that went the way of Chris Holmes’ dignity in The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years. Gene Simmons also passed on the part. Producers then, somehow, turned to Solid Gold dancer Tony Fields. He does well in the role and, like the entirety of Trick or Treat itself, Sammi Curr is stupid, Sammi Curr is awesome, and Sammi Curr is stupidly awesome.

Mike McPadden is trick-or-treating on Twitter.