Wicked, not really. But bloody as all get out? No question, as we see throughout the brief running time of this shot-on-video massacre that may fulfill the fond desires of anyone who’s wished violent death to be visited upon Simple Plan, the Used and any of the other pop-punk types who’ve called The Warped Tour their home for the last nine summers. In a nutshell, that’s what you get with Punk Rock Holocaust – a one-note joke about a masked killer butchering the lineup of bands on the 2003 Warped Tour. Intrepid tour reporter Heather Ventress (playing some version of herself) and tour founder Kevin Lyman attempt to get to the bottom of the mysterious murders, but their investigation seems limited mostly to expositional statements like the one quoted above (and delivered in a slightly embarrassed monotone). Meanwhile, the killer works his way through the tour roster, starting with lukewarm psychobillies Horrorpops and eventually claiming Bert McCracken of the Used (hacked to bits, amusingly enough, during a multiple makeout session), Me First and the Gimme Gimmes (poisoned), Simple Plan (electrocution, exploding hi-hat, impalement on guitar neck), one of the Fuse VJs, Bowling for Soup, Less than Jake, Big D and the Kids Table, Mest, and all 72 members of Andrew W.K.’s touring party. Oh, and the Kids of Widney High, who are incredibly good sports, get theirs from laced YooHoo.

Could the killer be a minion of evil record label head Belial (Troma honcho Lloyd Kaufman, chewing scenery by the fistful)? Or is it the leader of a disgraced glam band booted from the Tour years before? Do you honestly care? Probably not, ‘cause there’s not much of a story happening here – PRH is like a long-ass version of those Super-8 gore movies you and your friends made in your parents’ backyard, only here, it’s Lars Frederiksen getting the Karo syrup poured on his face and not your cousin Louie. I guess it’s kinda funny, especially if you love any of the twenty-three bands featured in the film, and there’s a certain gleeful anarchy to the wholesale slaughter (PRH’s producers, Backseat Conceptions, claim that the movie has the highest onscreen body count to date, and I’m not about to doubt them—at one point, it appears that the entire audience has been killed). And really, the whole thing was done as a sort of promotional goof, so who am I to piss in their soup? That would not be, well, very punk of me (or would it)?