Who Is The Real Sacrifyx?

Finding the fake band in the 1987 horror classic, 'The Gate'

This piece originally ran in Stereogum’s The Black Market on October 2020. This is an annotated version.

It’s finally time to dig into The Gate.¹ The 1987 Canadian/American fantasy horror film, with a key plot point that hinges on a metal band named Sacrifyx and its mysterious album The Dark Book, left a lasting mark on a generation of kids who would eventually elevate The Gate to a cult classic. In fact, in just the last few years, it finally feels like it’s getting its due. At the very least, it’s now ripe to be referenced. For instance, earlier this year, Couch Slut namechecked the flick on “I’m 14,” and did such a good job recounting the storyline with non-spoiler economy, that I’m going to cede the floor to singer Megan O:

I open The Gate
By director Tibor Takács
In which two young friends
Discover an evil dimension

Couch Slut isn’t the only one opening The Gate.² Many YouTube channels have reviewed The Gate. Podcasts aplenty have spotlighted it, like Megaphonic’s A Part Of Our Scare-itage and Toilet Ov Hell’s Toilet Radio, the latter of which features Merzbow aficionado metal.txt. Naturally, as it enters its nostalgic sweet spot, blogs upon blogs have blogged about it. And, within some of those recaps and listicles and retrospectives that recount the story of a kid who finds a demonic gateway in his backyard is a reoccurring item that is of particular interest to a certain kind of metalhead.

Here’s the ninth entry in TVOvermind’s “10 Things You Didn’t Know About ‘The Gate’”:³

9. The Sacrifyx band is not real.
The Dark Book was created by a Canadian thrash metal band called Sacrifice. Obviously they’re not into summoning demons with their music.

And here’s one of the facts found in Arrow In The Head’s 30th anniversary post:⁴

The fictional The Dark Book album that Terry shows to Glen features the logo for (the very real) Canadian thrash metal band Sacrifice.

Those are just two of a few pieces that assert that either Sacrifice was Sacrifyx or Sacrifice was the basis for Sacrifyx. And I’m like, Sacrifice? The Toronto thrash band Sacrifice? That one that was buds with Slaughter? The one that cut the 1987 thrash classic Forward To Termination? The one that recorded “Re-Animation,” the song that would be used as the intro to the Pepsi Power Hour metal video show on Much Music? The one that stayed uncompromisingly thrash well into the groove metal early ‘90s, much to the detriment of the band’s bank account? The one that released the killer Apocalypse Inside in 1993, a criminally underrated album that sounds like a cross between Coroner’s Mental Vortex and Death’s Symbolic? The one that resurfaced, 26 years later in 2009, with The Ones I Condemn, a ripper that is still thrash and still goes just as hard as the early stuff? That Sacrifice?

Yes. That Sacrifice.

But … is it really that Sacrifice? For the past three years, I’ve been trying to figure that out. I can’t say I’m much closer to a definitive answer. However, just simply excavating The Gate’s many connections, from the music nerd six-degrees links to the cinema-dork trivia tidbits, unexpectedly opened up so many other worlds that I never expected to set foot in. Turns out this little movie is a nexus between a ton of other musical dimensions, particularly the alternative side of a vibrant Toronto art scene that was firing on all cylinders in the ‘70s and ‘80s. One that, like this movie, is worthy of reappraisal.

I. And Now Someone Has Opened…

If you’re of a certain age, you might have this hazy memory hanging around in your head: After getting grabbed by the monsters under the bed, you run downstairs, followed closely by your best friend, sister, and her sleepover friends. You open the door and you’re greeted by your parents. Aren’t they out of town? No matter. They’re here now. You feel safe. You run and embrace your dad. He puts his hands around your neck. “YOU’VE BEEN BAD!” he bellows. It’s unlike anything you’ve heard before, a thousand tormented dads yelling all at once.⁵ You touch his face. It melts. You look at your hands, now covered in green dad-gloop. Your mom laughs manically as your dad’s head falls off and splatters across the walkway.

Is this a prepubescent night terror that your brain failed to defragment before entering adulthood? Nope, it’s one of the gnarlier scenes from The Gate.

Directed by future Hallmark movie maker Tibor Takács and written by Michael Nankin (Battlestar Galactica, Hell On Wheels, Van Helsing), The Gate is one of the few movies of the late ‘80s horror boom that was aimed at a younger crowd. That said, even though it features the silver screen debut of a 12-year-old Stephen Dorff (Blade, True Detective, the Limp Bizkit “Rollin’” video)⁶ and is something of a coming of age tale that examines childhood friendships and the relationship divide between pre-teen and teen siblings, it earns every ounce of its PG-13 rating by leaning hard on gooey effects and old school movie magic.

Fresh off of working on The Thing, Ghostbusters, and Fright Night, visual effects genius Randall William Cook packs The Gate with so many memorable moments, a real achievement when you realize that the Toronto-based film was shot for the microscopic budget of $2.5 million CAD. Cook, who’d go on to win Oscars for the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, utilized forced perspective to execute some real stunners, like when Carl Kraines’ zombie workman falls over and reveals he’s actually 15 mini minions. It’s one of the great pre-CGI effects, and it surely ruined the next month of nights for younger kids who either walked in the room or channel surfed to it while it was playing. That’s the lasting mark. Seems like everyone who now loves The Gate has that story.

Cook’s inventive scenes, along with key contributions from makeup wizard Craig Reardon (The Goonies, Weird Science, Poltergeist) and Illusion Arts, powered The Gate to second place during its opening weekend, falling just a few bucks short of an already struggling Ishtar. (As YouTuber Razzle Dazzle points out about that weekend’s slate, “That is remarkable, one of the most notable structures of the ancient world is called the ‘Ishtar Gate.’”) The Gate would eventually rack up $13.5 million USD during its theatrical run, ensuring it was cast in entertainment beat articles as the low-budget David to Ishtar’s legendarily bombing Goliath. That kept it in the public consciousness enough that The Gate would spawn a pretty solid sequel titled Gate 2: The Trespassers in 1990. But Gate 2 failed to match the earnings of its predecessor and, before the internet could connect fans and give name to those hazy memories, mainstream interest eventually dried up as horror and kids-centric films moved in different directions.

While love for The Gate always seemed to simmer, I feel like things really started cooking again when Alex Winter announced a 3D reboot in the late 2000s that had creature designs by, holy crap, H.R. Giger. Bloody Disgusting wrote breathlessly about it in 2009. Although, sadly, Gate 3D appears to be dunzo, interest in the original escalated from there. In 2016, one of the big draws for that year’s Toronto Horror-Rama was GATE-FEST, a tribute curated by obsessive Joe “Vision” Hart. A collector’s series Blu-ray release followed in 2017 that’s actually worth it for the special features, especially the Made In Canada featurette that extracts some charming, decades-old goss from the cast and crew.

So, why does The Gate seem known more now than at any other time during its 30-plus year history? Obviously, the practical effects and makeup have aged incredibly well, looking far better than the primitive CGI that would take over the industry in the ‘90s. (Worth noting: You can debate the period realism, but the casual homophobic insults haven’t aged well at all. Heads up on that.) The model Harryhausen stuff along with the rubber-suited minions have such a classic look that the movie now looks timeless. There’s some cringe, but overall, the effects are too brilliant for the film to remain buried. And, there’s a timelessness to the film’s emotional center.

The Gate nails a certain slice of childhood, that tweener space of being 11 or 12, where the magical thinking and vestigial terrors of adolescence crash head on with the fears and hangups that will envelop the lives of adults. Throughout the beginning of the movie, there’s a tension between the main character Glen (Dorff) and his teenage sister Al (Christa Denton). Glen loves rockets and the old family dog. Al used to love those things, too, but seems to be leaving them behind for high school concerns, much to Glen’s consternation.

But the film also delves deeply into how universal fears are magnified by real-world trauma and how kids learn to cope with the resulting angst. Glen’s best friend Terry (Louis Tripp), is dealing with abandonment issues. His mother is dead, his father is mostly absent. Because he’s likely an only child and there’s no one around to corroborate his existence,⁷ he uses metal as a frame to construct his burgeoning identity, to carve a life out for himself that is bigger than the dominate narrative that has been applied to him: the weird kid whose folks aren’t around. Uh … relatable!

It’s stuff like that makes The Gate one of the best ‘80s heavy metal horror movies. While Black Roses and Trick Or Treat get certain elements of the metalhead experience right, The Gate is, pound for pound, the best piece of cinema, doing a whole lot with its tight 85-minute runtime. It also winks at metal in a way that’s pretty appealing to actual metalheads. Here’s one of my favorite bits of dialogue:

Terrence ‘Terry’ Chandler: We accidentally summoned demons who used to rule the universe to come and take over the world.
Glen: Yeah, we found out about it from, uh, one of Terry’s albums.

Man, doesn’t that sum up my writing career here.

II. It’s The Workman…

There’s a lot of stuff hiding in The Gate, some real “huh!” connections scattered in the CVs of the cast and crew. For instance, Michael Hoenig, who worked on the score with J. Peter Robinson (Cocktail, Wayne’s World), got rolling in Agitation Free and had a cup of coffee with Tangerine Dream. Hoenig is also responsible for one of the great analog sequencer classics of the ‘70s, Departure From The Northern Wasteland.

Hoenig would follow up The Gate with my beloved 1988 remake of The Blob and, no kidding, the RPG classic Baldur’s Gate. That’s just one stop on the IMDB rabbit’s hole, though.

Louis Tripp, who’d reprise his role as Terry in Gate 2 and co-starred alongside a young Pamela Adlon (the voice of Bobby Hill, among other rad things), started making industrial as X.A.O.S in his post-acting career. (He’s also a writer. Dude has had a life.) This month, he popped up in a music/video collaboration with Australian horrorcore artist KidCrusher, another self-professed Gate fanatic.

And that’s not even getting into the neat where-are-they-now minutiae on the film side. Ingrid Veninger, who played the levitation enthusiast, is now an award-winning director. Kelly Rowan, one of the sleepover pals, was Kirsten Cohen on The O.C. The other pal, Jennifer Irwin, was Cassie Powers on Eastbound & Down. It goes on and on.

But, the connections that really stand out to me are the hat tips to legit punk and metal bands throughout the movie, because of course they do. For that, we’ll have to break down one of the classic scenes: Terry jumping on his bed to the righteous riffs of a spooky band named Sacrifyx.

III. The Old Gods!

As the camera moves through Terry’s bedroom, sweeping over a drum set that’s emblazoned with a Cramps’ Bad Music For Bad People sticker, you catch a glimpse of the Sacrifyx jacket propped up against the turntable. (One of the underrated elements of The Gate is how well Takács and cinematographer Thomas Vámos frame shots to set-up the plot and provide wordless exposition.) As a chunky Trouble-esque metal song with solos aplenty spins on the record player, Terry air guitars wildly.

Much like Ragman’s room in Trick Or Treat, Terry’s wall is full of real metal iconography. You can readily see a few Iron Maiden merch items, such as a Trooper flag along with Live After Death and Purgatory posters. There’s also an Ozzy pic in the upper left corner. And, eagle-eyed viewers will be treated to a sign that Terry is getting into heavier stuff. Just above his head is a Live Undead-era Slayer poster. Hey, fits in with the Venom-patched jacket he was sporting earlier in the movie. Yes, about Terry’s wardrobe: Although you can’t see it in this scene, Terry is wearing a battle vest with a full back-patch of Canadian hard rockers Killer Dwarfs.

As the song fades out, Terry hops off his bed to mime the dramatic voice-over about the Lovecraftian “old gods.” With a blanket pulled over his head that transforms him into a rainbow Sunn O))) member, Terry goes full Orson “Dark Avenger” Welles. Then, a spark of recognition flashes across his face. He reaches for the Sacrifyx album titled The Dark Book, pausing to take stock of the cover: a demon, with claws extended, pulling itself out of a hole burrowed into a tome.

Terry flips through the expansive insert that’s full of ancient texts and woodcut prints. When he gets to the page with the relief of a wormy demon, the voice-over hits its high point: “A gate, behind which the demons wait, for the chance to take back what is theirs!” A King Diamond cackle cues Terry to examines the back cover to compare those symbols with ones he’s recently seen. Above the hieroglyphic-y shapes is a picture of the band. One member is levitating, seemingly comatose. The other members stand above him menacingly. Terry makes the connection. On the stereo, a backmasked message plays on a stuck groove. Cut.

Louis Tripp acts the heck out of this scene, moving seamlessly from charged-up, out-of-body escapism to realizing something real and sinister is at play. Pretty nuanced stuff for a child actor. I also love how Tripp delivers Sacrifyx’s bio later in the movie, in the same did-you-know voice that any Encyclopaedia Metallum crawler knows all too well: “They’re called Sacrifyx. My dad brought it from Europe.” Adding: “And here’s the creepy part. This is their only album. And after they made it, they all died in a plane crash.” Ah yes, the drummer-fell-off-a-mountain approach to metal cred. Also, Ben Cauley is not amused.

So, who is Sacrifyx for real? What band appears on the album cover? And who did the song? Curiously, it doesn’t appear in The Gate’s credits. It also isn’t collected in fan-made soundtracks that have popped up on YouTube. “What is the name of the song [when] Terry jumps on the bed?” YouTube user Max Smoller asks on one such upload. “For more than 5 years, looking for [it].”

Well, I’ve got some good and bad news, Max.

IV. Love Will Find A Way

“It’s interesting,” Vince Carlucci wrote to me an email, “in that almost every year since around 1990, I get requests and or questions about The Gate around Halloween.”

I found Carlucci and Mark Krawczynski through Coming Soon’s 2009 interview with Tibor Takács. In the Q&A, Takács ID’d Carlucci’s band Station Twang as doing the “heavy metal stuff” and Krawczynski as the brain behind the album’s design. Here’s the thing: Like how Michael Hoenig and Louis Tripp have done so much more than their IMDB listings, seeing Carlucci and Krawczynski’s name on the page answered a few questions, but didn’t hint at their rich history. After all, one of the reasons The Gate endures, especially in this crash-bang-wallop blockbuster era that tends to eschew character building, is that it takes the time to set up its players.

All three go way back to the early days of Toronto punk and new-wave, though let’s examine Carlucci and Takács first. From my vantage point, Takács’s early exploits paint him as a multihyphenate, one of those ambitious people that alternative scenes produce that seem to have their hands in everything (Takács didn’t respond to interview requests).⁸ Along with working on theater productions, Takács was managing and producing the Viletones, one of the more notorious outfits in a bustling scene that included bands like The Diodes, The Ugly, and Teenage Head. You can spy Takacs’s name on the jacket for the Viletones’ first single:

In addition to being an important scene documentarian, snapping pics of local bands and the iconic acts that came through Toronto like Blondie, Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Iggy Pop, the Ramones, and more, Carlucci was in a band called Cardboard Brains that was fronted by musician/actor John Paul Young.

Young was a high school friend of Takács and worked on some of his plays. That gave the band an in. According to Carlucci, the Brains “loved the production of” the Viletones record. “Clean but sloppy and mean and tight. So, we thought it would be cool to get Teebs to produce our first single…and what an education as far as studio techniques.” Seems as though Takács’s future directorial sensibilities also translated to the studio. The productive sessions produced The White EP. It includes a bugged out cover of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart’s “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone,” which made it to wax before a lot of other punk covers. It’s now the only thing streaming by the band on YouTube.

Well into the future, Fucked Up would add its cosign by covering the The White EP’s first track, “I Want To Be A Yank.” Though its arty and experimental approach never quite caught on, the Brains would cut one more Takács-assisted studio record, The Black EP, in 1979. Here’s Carlucci and Takács doing a quick rundown on the band’s backstory and its “post-punk before there was punk” oddball style for the excellent documentary The Last Pogo Jumps Again. The snippet is bookended by, I kid you not, a very enthusiastic Nardwuar.⁹

Rappers, remember this. Turn the tables and ask Nardwuar about Cardboard Brains. Doot doo to you, sir.

Anyway, Takács booked the Cardboard Brains as an opener for the Viletones at places like Club David’s, where he previously shot scenes for his debut feature Metal Messiah, in which John Paul Young had a role. Gotta say, the Club David’s story, as told in this piece originally published in the Grid, is a heck of a read. It features Takács and Carlucci as interview subjects and includes Carlucci’s photographs, some of which he’d show during a 2010 exhibit titled Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell.

When Takács came calling for incidental music for his new movie filming in 1986, Carlucci had moved on to Station Twang. Twang’s debut, Secret Sides, had just been released in 1985. (Stanley A. Viezner, who plays on the record, also worked on John Paul Young’s solo record, The Life Of Ermie Scub.) “Everybody’s Running,” one of the three tracks on the A-side that a Discogs user recently reviewed as “masterpiece[s],” would eventually make it into The Gate. Station Twang aren’t the only ex-Brains in the movie, actually. The immortal “you’ve been bad” line? That’s Young.

The most famous Twang track, though, was one that Takács picked off of a cassette Carlucci was working on. “[Takács] did like a tune by the Cult which he wanted for the party scene, however the licensing was some astronomical amount in the tens of thousands or some such,” Carlucci wrote. “Science Has A Way” became the pinch hit hero, although it would need some light retooling. “Tibor loved the tune but clearly the lyrics did not fit the scene, hence we rewrote the lyrics to compliment a sort of ‘love’ aspect, which is also a main premise of the flick, in that ‘love or light conquers evil,’ etc.” The re-titled “Love Will Find A Way” has its own cult following now that people can dig up the couple isolated versions that have made it to YouTube. “Can’t believe someone found this OMG best song ever!!” comments CAPCEL. “I watched this movie now just to hear this song at the party scene so RAD!!!”

The original ended up on Twang’s 1994 album as a more guitar-centric banger. You can find most of Carlucci’s music on Discogs.

And then there’s “Dark Book.”

“We did the Sacrifyx ‘Dark Book’ tune in the studio,” Carlucci recalled, “as in it was written in the studio and recorded live off the floor (but for the vocals) to get that sort of ‘grunge garage metal’ feeling.” Carlucci is the one doing the rhythm guitar juns. The leads were played by a gentleman named Mark who was also moonlighting in Pink Floyd tribute bands. The track is also not a complete song, more of a standalone outro. What you hear in the scene is pretty much everything they recorded.

I asked Carlucci if Takács played any reference material during the genesis of the track. “As far as ‘Dark Book’,” he wrote, “there was no reference but for something that sounds like a heavy metal band. We looked at some rushes with the dudes jumping around. It was a similar sort of thing where I had stuff I was working with and played some riffs, chords on my guitar and we took it from there. It was great writing on the spot without having to worry about studio costs.” And that’s kind of how it went: chords, tempo, leads, lyrics, vocals. Boom, boom, boom. “Dark Book” was finished in an afternoon. According to Takács, Carl Krains would end up cutting the voiceover part.

So, because an official soundtrack has never been released, Carlucci has high quality rips of these songs and can upload them to put an end to Max’s suffering, right? Ehhhhhhh, it’s complicated. “I come to find I do not own the TAPES. Alliance Atlantis own the tapes,” Carlucci lamented. “I own the music ON the tapes. Weird, I know.” Yeahhhhh … that’s the industry for you.

And yet, maybe you should still keep an eye out for it. I think I might’ve summoned something. Carlucci and some former Brains/Twang members are still playing, now operating under the name Elvis Cooper. “I’m going to have a listen to the ‘Dark Book’ tune off the DVD and perhaps extrapolate it into a full tune, as the version in the movie is a 30-40-second piece,” he wrote. “We never had a beginning or body, only what sounds like the last 30 seconds of a tune (which never existed). So maybe I’ll get the fellas to do a full version and see if we can get a decent recording and do the upload as you suggest.”

V. The Dark Book

In 1986, Mark Krawczynski and his brother Mike were moving into a new house. “Originally, Tibor was suggesting that we do the music,” Krawczynski told me over Zoom.¹⁰ “At the time, I really would have loved to have done it, except that I had just moved into a house my brother and I bought. We wanted to set up a studio, but I had to do all of this [renovation] stuff.”

Feeling the homeowner crunch and lacking a studio for Mark and Mike’s band Space Phlegm to record in, the opportunity to work on Takács new movie seemed like something they’d have to turn down. But then, as Krawczynski recalls, Takács had another idea. “He said, ‘Do you want to do the album cover?’ I said sure. Because I had done album covers for other bands.”

Krawczynski, who worked on Takács’s two previous films, Metal Messiah and The Tomorrow Man (later retitled 984: Prisoner of the Future), and was another high school chum, has a knack for clean designs. Spoons’ 1982 album Arias And Symphonies is one of his, done in collaboration with Peter Nobel. “We won the YouKnow award (CFNY radio’s answer to the Juno awards) for best album cover of the year,” Krawczynski emailed to me during a later follow-up.

(Incidentally, Phlegm’s first drummer, Patrick Harbron, also has some notable album photography under his belt, particularly in the metal space: Anvil, Black Sabbath, an all-timer on the first Piledriver, and, coincidentally, Sacrifice’s Forward To Termination.)¹¹

Given Krawczynski’s experience and artistic inclinations, perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that what he produced for The Gate is so genuine looking. It passes the smell test. It doesn’t look like a prop, it looks like an actual album, with all of the elements you’d expect in an elaborate gatefold. (Krawczynski is also responsible for The Dark Book insert and most of the illustrations, though, per the 2017 blu-ray commentary with Takács, Michael Nankin, and Randall William Cook, the latter did a couple of the woodcut prints. Krawczynski would return as the bookmaker for Gate 2.) And the front cover just pops, especially the way the demon is poised to leap out of the hole, flashing its slender phalanges. You have to wonder if Infernäl Mäjesty’s None Shall Defy would’ve made more of an impact if it had The Dark Book’s cover instead.

Although Krawczynski’s original Dark Book probably met the same fate that it did in the movie, in that it was consumed by hellish flames, his art continues to live on inspiring fans anew. In 2017, DeviantArt user TerrysEatsnDawgs posted a high-res recreation of the jacket with some wear-and-tear as a tribute. Popular Etsy store Monsters Outside also offers a Sacrifyx shirt, complete with band pic, done up to look like Bathory.

Right! The band pic: That’s a portrait of the artist and Phlegm. “When you read the script, one of the band members is floating, and the rest of us are looking like we’re going to sacrifice him,” Krawczynski said. “So we set that up in the basement and got all dressed up. I set up a camera and took several shots until we found one that Tibor liked.”

CREDIT: Mark Krawczynski

Space Phlegm was a frequent presence at Mike’s Record Peddler, a notable Toronto record store he co-owned that played an important role in fostering the nascent punk, hardcore, and metal scenes. (It’s in that capacity that you’ll hear from Mark and Mike again in a future column.) In 1989, Phlegm pressed a 7” of dubby, psychedelic-tinged rock. It’s still active. And Krawczynski is still making art, showcasing his prolific and varied work on his website that includes evocative abstract pieces and furniture.

VI. Demons Aren’t Gonna Ring The Doorbell

I asked both Carlucci and Krawczynski about Sacrifice. Neither remembered the band specifically being part of the conversation, though they didn’t rule it out. From my perspective, when the production came their ways, I assume they were given a greenlight to put their own spin on things. “Tibor gave us lots of leeway with the tune and words,” Carlucci wrote.

Krawczynski, though, did remember that there was possibly an issue around the name. “When I was making the album I was like, ‘So, what’s the name of the band?’ And I think they mentioned Sacrifice, or something like that, and it was a name that was already taken so eventually they settled on Sacrifyx.”

He clarified: “There might’ve been an issue about something being too anti-religious about some of the names that they came up with. So, Sacrifyx was the compromise. You know, there’s a lot of kids in the film and they didn’t want to go way over the top and call it Jesus Christ Upside Down On A Cross or anything like that.”

A future Hells Headbangers band just googled Jesus Christ Upside Down On A Cross hard. Kidding!¹²

(I reached out to Sacrifice’s manager to set up an interview with the band. I also got in touch with Killer Dwarfs, the band that Terry rocks on his battle vest. I was unable to connect with either before deadline. If these interviews take place, I’ll add an addendum to a future intro.)¹³

So, yeah. While I didn’t accomplish what I set out to do, which feels like a running theme of these intros, I’m still blown away by The Gate’s relationship to music that goes far beyond Terry’s on-screen metal fixation. And perhaps it’s right that some mystery about The Gate remains, that the hole to another dimension is still wide open.

Updates:

This appeared in the December 2020 edition of the column.

I have an update on The Gate, the 1987 horror movie for kids that I went deep on in October. I traded emails with Darrell “DWaRf” Millar of Killer Dwarfs. So, how did the band’s logo end up on Terry’s battlevest? “How it happened was, the movie producer saw our name and logo in the Toronto Sun newspaper,” Millar wrote. “We were playing the Gasworks on Yonge Street. He contacted our manager Wiggy and asked if they could use our logo for the movie. No funds were offered. More of an exposure deal. There was no mention of using any of our music in the movie. Just the name.”

Millar remembered that he didn’t think much would come out of an exposure bucks pact with a low budget horror flick. And then, he bought a ticket. “I went to the theater to see it first hand in Winnipeg, still not knowing what it was about for us. When the kid walked out and bent down and the whole back patch was on the big screen, I freaked. I was blown away. Loved it. And I heard all these whispers in the theater. ‘The DWaRfS. Cool.’ No one knew I was in the theater.”

And yep, the Dwarfs are still doing it. The quartet signed to EMP Label Group run by Megadeth’s David Ellefson in 2018. They’re working on their eighth full-length. The band will turn 40 in the fall of 2021.

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1. “Open The Gate” might’ve worked better here. Anyway, if you didn’t know, I used to write about movies with a link to metal every October. You can read the entry for Black Roses below.

2. Ah. There it is. Never one to shy away from a title pun.

3. The genesis of this piece was reading through this half-true trivia dumps and seeing Sacrifice named over and over again when it’s clearly not Sacrifice in the movie. I even reached out to some people who wrote these explainers to correct the record after this story was published. I don’t know if anyone changed theirs, but at least I tried.

4. Kind of incredible that Arrow in the Head, and the larger JoBlo empire, persists.

5. Also what would happen if Wilco broke up.

6. Will The Gate beat the allegations? I don’t think so.

7. I can’t believe I worked this in there. As a fellow only child without much family around, I think about this a lot. Who are you if no one is around to remember you?

8. Yeah, this bums me out. Perhaps he’ll appear on an episode of It’s Christmastown.

9. This is one of my proudest research unearthings. You’re Nardwuar. We have to know.

10. As I remember it, this was a two-hour interview where we talked a lot about life and little about the story.

11. I’d interview Harbron down the line.

12. Hello, band that Googled their way here.

13. See below!