Rocktober Blood is a 1984 horror film, directed by Beverly Sebastian and starring Tray Loren, Donna Scoggins and Cana Cockrell. It features the band Sorcery, as well as musician Nigel Benjamim, as actors and on the soundtrack.[1][2] The film was written by the late Ferd Sebastian, who died in March 2022.[3]
The film opens in a recording studio, where singer Billy "Eye" Harper is in a session working on a few tracks with his band and his girlfriend Lynn Starling, also a backup singer. After he finishes the recording, Billy and the rest of the band leave. Despite trying to record her own vocal tracks, Lynn is left to go to the jacuzzi upstairs, after refusing Kevin the recording engineer's offer to join her.
Meanwhile, Billy returns to the studio, where he finds only Kevin and Mary, Kevin's assistant. In an enigmatic move, Billy kills Kevin by slitting his throat and impales Mary on a wall-mounted coat peg. When Lynn returns, she finds Billy smoking some drugs at the recording studio's control panel. Lynn is unaware that Billy has just killed both Kevin and Mary while she was gone. Once Lynn finds out, she is saved by some security guards.
After a brief intermission, it is two years later, where it is revealed that Billy was captured, tried and executed. It is now the "Rocktober Blood Tour Press Party", and Lynn and the remaining band members are touring as "Headmistress". A VJ who interviews Lynn, asks several questions about the band's tour, as well as Billy's fall from grace, to which Lynn responds by stating that identifying Billy was "the hardest thing she ever had to do." A mysterious figure then appears in a Halloween "death" mask, and tells Lynn to meet with Chris, the band's manager, in the office. When she arrives in the office, she is cornered by Billy, in the same death mask, who leaves her curled up, and crying on the floor. After that, Billy persistently stalks Lynn, killing people involved with her along the way, but hiding their bodies, to make others think she is crazy by claiming that Billy is after her.
Eventually Honey convinces Lynn to dig up Billy's grave. They find out that Billy is dead, and Lynn assumes that she is hallucinating. The next night, Lynn and the band are getting ready for the show, when Billy reappears and tells Lynn that he is really Billy's twin brother, John Harper, and that she identified the wrong man. John tells Lynn that the people he killed valued Billy more than him, even though he wrote the renowned songs himself. Then John chloroforms Lynn, and the show begins. A prop coffin pops up on the stage, and Lynn is revealed inside. John tells her that his plan is to kill her as the show's grand finale. When John removes his mask, however security rushes in, attacking him with an electric guitar.
John manages to scream out the final lyrics to "I'm Back" before the credits roll.[4]
Reissue
On August 2, 2023, the movie review YouTube channel, Planet CHH, announced an official hard media blu-ray restoration by the film preservation and distribution shingle, Terror Vision. The previous, controversial, troubled hard media release of Rocktober Blood in 2016 was reported on June 8, 2016, by the YouTube channel, The Analog Archivist. As of February 2025, no additional information on the Terror Vision reissue is available.
The songs "Killer on the Loose," "I'm Back," "Rainbow Eyes" and "Watching You" on the soundtrack were recorded by the Los Angeles-based band Sorcery, who also play the part of the Headmistress band in the film.
On the tracks written and performed by Sorcery, Nigel Benjamin, formerly with the British rock band, Mott, and the L.A glam-rock band, London with Nikki Sixx, sang three songs: "Killer on the Loose," "I'm Back" and "Watching You."
Susie Rose Major sang lead on "Rainbow Eyes"; her group, Facedown, did "Touch Me," "High School Boys," "Watch Me Rock" and "Can't Kill Rock 'n Roll." Later in her career, Major provided guest-lead vocals to Quint. Fronted by ex-actor Robbie Rist, best know as “Cousin Oliver” from the early-1970s American TV-comedy series The Brady Bunch, Major's Quint songs appeared in the SyFy Channel’s Sharknado film series.
Sorcery also appeared in and preformed music for the 1978 action film, Stunt Rock.
"Soul Searcher" was performed by Eyes. Eyes formed out of the ashes of Satyr with bassist Chuck Wright (ex-Rough Cutt, Quiet Riot, Greg Guiffria’s House of Lords); Satyr without Wright became Eyes.[5]
Riba Meryl, who co-wrote “Rainbow Eyes” with Sorcery’s Richard Taylor, became an actress and portrayed “Janis Joplin” in the speculative 1984 rock ’n’ roll conspiracy flick Down on Us. She later co-wrote “Brand New Start” to a 1987 crime drama, The Jigsaw Murders.[6]
The soundtrack was re-released in September 2015 by Lunaris Records.[7]
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