ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book draws on the possible areas of interaction between film studies and heavy metal research, focusing on asking how the audio-visual medium of film relates to, builds on and shapes metal culture. It provides a first and far-reaching orientation to how metal films and films about metal engage with metal culture. The book discusses how cinematic metal bodies reach out to their viewers through means of violent encounters, subversive sexual identity formations or self-referential engagements with the very dynamic of the visual star persona. It explores the way in which ideals of gender and sexuality have been subverted in the heavy metal documentary. The book also discusses C. M. Smith’s Trick or Treat, one of the most iconic metal films. In this film, a social misfit summons Sammi Curr, a demonic metal singer, to get back at his bullies in high school.
