April 18: Heavy Metal Movies: Pick a movie from Mike McPadden’s great book. RIP. List here.

Jason Jones (Robin Askwith from the Confessions Of… movies) is a burned-out would-be rock star on his way to Brittlehurst Manor, a health escape that has also drawn in Judy Peters (Vanessa Shaw), who is looking for her aunt.

It’s no surprise or spoiler that this is really a…Horror Hospital!

Yes, Dr. Christian Storm (Michael Gough), Judy’s aunt (Ellen Pollock) and evil dwarf Frederick (Skip Martin) have been drawing hippies her and either turning them into brainwashed, motorcycle-helmet wearing zombies or outright killing them.

There’s even a band, Mystic, who play the movie’s theme “Mark of Death!” Their members are James IV Boris, Alan “The River” Hudson and Simon Lust. Those are some great stage names! The cross-dresser who is singing for them is co-writer Alan Watson. And Mystic is really the psychedelic group Tangerine Peel, who at one point had songwriter/producer Mike Chapman, who promised Blondie that he would make Parallel Lines into their biggest album. It includes “Heart of Glass” and he said of the album to Rolling Stone, “There’s loads of hits, it’s a great album, but who gives a fuck. It’s easy, you see. When we go into the studio, we go in and make hit records, and it just happens. We don’t think about it. If you’re going to be in the music business, you gotta make hit records. If you can’t make hit records, you should fuck off and go chop meat somewhere.” He also produced albums for The Knack, Suzi Quatro, Toni Basil, Pat Benatar, and more.

Vanessa Shaw is really Phoebe Shaw, who was mainly in commercials and dated Askwith after this. She also dosed the entire cast and crew at the wrap party with the cake she made. Ah, 1973!

This was directed and written by Antony Balch, who in addition to bringing all sorts of incredible movies to England — Don’t Deliver Us from Evil, Supervixens, Truck Stop Women — also directed one of my favorite movies ever, the mummy starring Secrets of Sex AKA Bizarre.

This movie is a total mess. Who cares? I loved it.

In Italy, this was known as Diario proibito di un collegio femminile, which means Forbidden Diary of a Girls’ Boarding School. That’s the type of title that gets you into the theater.

You can watch this on Tubi.