Though you might think the U.S. had the market cornered on hair metal horror movies in the '80s, the Swedish-British oddity Blood Tracks enthusiastically threw down the hairsprayed gauntlet early on against more familiar titles like Trick or Treat and Blood Roses. Here the now long-retired but once very prolific Swedish filmmaker Mats Helge Olsson (Animal Protector, The Ninja Mission) brings together an oddball international cast for a project designed around Swedish rock band Easy Band, with a plot obviously inspired by The Hills Have Eyes and a bit of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The result tends to get classified as a slasher film due to its gory booby traps and body count structure, so if you're a big slick-and-dice fan, consider this essential viewing.

In a lengthy prologue, a protective mother is wounded by survives while standing up to her abusive husband and eventually killing him. She grabs her kids and takes off into the night to an abandoned power station, and years later, the area is targeted by a band called Solid Gold (played by the Easy Action members) for a much-publicized music video shoot. Things go typically at first with lots of gyrating models and catty comments within the crew, while helicopter pilot and guide John (Harding) tries to keep track of the mayhem. However, the power station turns out to inspire a new angle for the video shoot, something the now-mutated residents don't appreciate. Thanks to a convenient avalanche, the interlopers are soon trapped and being picked off one by one.

Certainly memorable, Blood Tracks has to rank as one of the more unusual rock band projects around the time with the Easy Action gang delivering a very spirited rendition of the title song against a snowy mountain backdrop. There's a surprisingly generous amount of nudity here including the presence of multiple "Page 3" British pinup models, likely due to the presence of sexploitation veteran Derek Ford who gets a secondary directing credit here. It also doesn't skimp on the gore, though how much of that you saw depended on which version you caught on home video with many of the VHS releases (including the U.S. one from Vista) losing some of the squishiest highlights. On top of that its very wide scope framing suffered mightly in cropped transfers over the years, with even the two European DVDs from Sweden and Germany looking murky and awful with a ton of visual information missing. At least the Swedish disc is still worth hanging on to if you have it since it has some fun extras including "Blodspar" with Stefan Malmquist interviewing Easy Action band members Peo Thyrén and Bo Stagman at a burger joint (25m59s), the "A Hot Summer Night" (49m52s) Easy Action concert, a "We Go Rocking" (3m58s) music video, a trailer, a gallery (4m2s), an Easy Action discography, and a VHS art gallery (2m2s) of related titles. The film itself was shot in English and is presented as such with optional Swedish subtitles.

In 2025, Vinegar Syndrome bowed Blood Tracks on Blu-ray with a fresh 4K scan from the 35mm original camera negative presenting the film in real scope for the first time. As you can see from the frame grab comparisons below, there's really no contest here as the Blu-ray tramples all over anything before it with those pesky dark scenes now finally looking clear and legible. It's also fully uncut and, at 88 minutes, runs at the correct film speed compared to the sped-up, 84-minute PAL presentation on the DVDs. More controversial here is the audio, which takes some explaining; the film was originally mixed in stereo, albeit very cheaply and sloppily with some messy phasing between the channels throughout (which can be heard on some European VHS editions). All of the DVD editions opted for a mono track instead that appears to fill in the left channel for all of the sound, which is what many people are probably used to by this point. The Blu-ray goes back to the stereo version, for better or worse, with optional English SDH subtitles; if you're annoyed by it (which is probable), check if your receiver or TV can output as mono instead. A new commentary is a fast-paced and fun collaboration between Amanda Reyes (who knows her slasher stuff well as always), Rickard Gramfors (who covers the Swedish film and pop culture quotient), and Ewan Cant (who produced the special features here and has been bringing slasher oddities to Blu-ray since his Arrow Video days). They touch on the callbacks to '70s horror classics, the various casting ideas, the tricky issue of identifying some of the actors, the reason behind a glaring continuity issue involving the outdoor music video shoot, and much, much more. "Playing It Straight" (15m52s) is a very funny interview with Harding about his path to becoming an actor via TV and then film, his bemused perspective on his guide character who didn't have a last name, his memories of the "quick 'n' fast" director, and the location shooting in Sweden. In "I'm with the Band" (19m46s), actress Naomi Kaneda chats about the twisty path that brought her to L.A., the audition process for Looker that had her switching roles to play a makeup artist, her memories of Star 80, and of course this film and her impressions of this film's production which was much lighter than the tone of the end result. Then in "Bang for Your Buck" (21m27s), actress Harriet Robinson goes into the racy nature of some scenes that surprised a few family members, the "adventure" of shooting her first film in Sweden after going to Emerson, and other showbiz anecdotes including working opposite Peter Firth. In "This Is Going Too Far!" (21m12s), Dutch actor Frederick Offrein discusses his route to acting in Sweden after military service, his slew of movies with the Olsson, and the "not so nice" incidents that come up on a film set. Finally you get an audio interview with actress Tina Shaw (28m51s) conducted by Kant covering her modeling career, the odd reason she got invited to Cannes after finishing the film, Ford's participation, and the sundry personalities around. The Thyrén-Stagman featurette is ported over here from the Swedish DVD (now with English subtitles for the first time), plus the video trailer and a production still gallery (2m28s).

VINEGAR SYNDROME (Blu-ray)

STUDIO S (DVD)

Reviewed on March 12, 2025