Attitude For Destruction

Just as there’s a fine line between clever and stupid, an equally narrow margin between campy and ludicrous exists. While feature-length horror rock film Attitude For Destruction strives for the former on both accounts, you can guess where it falls — way behind the line, at that. Following the tale of hair metal-ish band Hollywood Roses, the quintet are offered a recording contract on the stipulation that they "axe” their front-man Drake. Apparently he’s not good enough to play cheap Ratt rip-offs. The band abide and when a fight ensues with the singer, he is inadvertently killed. The remaining members struggle to cover up their folly and maintain with the onset of rock stardom. Drake’s Satan-worshipping girlfriend knows of the fray though, invoking the powers of her master to reanimate the scraggly-haired Axl Rose wannabe and exact revenge. Yeah, it’s pretty stupid. However, any low budget B-movie with the worst of plots can succeed if some basic tools are in place. Too bad the only ones Attitude For Destruction has are in front of the camera. The fault here isn’t with structure, goofy bargain-bin props or even the sub-par acting, it’s the crummy editing, which has scenes dragging on for way too long, leaves gaping plot holes (who is the sacrificed woman at the beginning of the movie or the band performing at her murder, for that matter?) and finds actors sounding like they’re either stammering, or forgetting, lines. A few closer shaves on the negative would have taken care of such glaring errors but then again, if Austin cut out the dead weight Attitude For Destruction would probably last a whopping five minutes. Austin earns kudos for establishing the hair metal horror genre but shame on him for trying to scrape it under the discerning radar. Then again, isn’t that what hair metal was all about anyway?