Director Mitchell Tolliday and co-writer Neil Rickatson have perfectly nailed the balance of rock music farce, a cheeky bit of horror and a helpful dollop of situational slapstick comedy in their film Murder Ballads: How to Make it in Rock ‘n’ Roll. Over the top and filled to the brim with daftness, we are left with a fun watch.

Stack of Corpses is a band in crisis. About to be cut from their label, they spend too much time doing drugs and partying to take anything seriously. Not only do they need a new band member, but they also need a hit song. But when both of those stumble murderously into their lives, can the band survive the fast rise?

Tolliday and Rickatson wrote Murder Ballads in a fun, anthological way, with the film structured into six chapters, which are introduced to us by Simon Callows and Richard O’Keefe. First off, we are introduced to all of our main characters and get to witness how Keys (Imogen Wilde) tries to get into the band via the keyboardist audition. We start off with a standard but great comedic farce as Keys meets fellow auditionees, Annie and Eileen; this soon turns into an action set piece as Keys literally has to fight her way into the band, with a hilarious shocker of a moment.

From here, the farcical side only ramps up as Bassist… Bass (Fran Mcateer) and Drums (yes, the character’s names are, in fact, their roles in the band) (Luke de Belder) decide that lead guitar and vocalist Brian (Rhiann Connor) cannot write a song to save his life so what better idea than to literally steal songs from the home of dead musician Richard O’Keefe. As you can imagine, this goes disastrously, and the story of Stack of Corpses only worsens for them.

It is all written expertly, with the right jokes placed throughout to keep the chaotic energy flowing to a more than satisfactory level for the audience. Murder Ballads is rife with over-the-top nonsense that strikes the right chord. While not all of the six segments work as well as you want them to due to slight pacing issues (the third segment drags a touch at times), you can feel the love that has been poured into the film as it is absolutely packed with characters and situations that only get more madcap and wonderfully nonsensical as we get closer to the final piece.

The film is full of all the music clichés you can imagine: classical prodigy “downgrades” to rock, the manager who has no control of his band, the lead singer who has sex with anything that moves and takes every drug in existence, even the reoccurring line about the drummer from Def Leppard only having one arm. It is all there like a bingo card, but purposefully so. It just so happens that the film is able to bring in those clichés and form them into a jolly bit of madness.

Mitchell Tolliday’s playful direction keeps the film as light-hearted as possible, with fun transitions from Keys’s audition to the band getting ready to head to the studio. This approach sets the tone for the rest of the film, ensuring that the audience is constantly amused and engaged.

In the end, Murder Ballads: How to Make It in Rock ‘n’ Roll is a violent slapstick that doesn’t pull its punches when it comes to a bit of blood and gore. While the film feels a tad disjointed at times due to the time skips we experience to get the band to each correct chapter, the strong filmmaking from Mitchell Tolliday and the core performances do more than enough to carry the film. This is a film that proudly wears its influences on its sleeve and is as loud as it is fun.

★★★ 1/2

Murder Ballads: How to Make It in Rock ‘n’ Roll is out now on VOD

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