Despite being panned by critics the 1994 film Ace Ventura Pet Detective
was instrumental in launching comedian Jim Carrey’s movie career. Apart from helping
Jim Carrey’s career the film was also important in increasing the popularity of Death Metal legands
Cannibal Corpse who also appeared in the film at the request of the comedian. Today lets talk about
how the band ended up in the film, what happened afterwards and is jim carrey really a metal head?
The film Ace Ventura Pet Detective saw Jim Carrey’s character trying to find out who stole
the football team the Miami Dolphin’s mascot. In addition to Carrey the film would star real life
Miami Dolphin’s quarterback at the time Dan Marino and Friends actress Courtney Cox. The film would
be director Tom Shaydac’s directorial debut and he was given a pretty small budget of under $20M.
There were a lot of gambles leading up to releasing the filming. Actor jim carrey was mostly
known from standup and his appearance on the show in living colour. How would he translate to the
big screen, especially considering he improvised a lot of the scenes. It was a sentiment that
the comedian shared when interviewed by the LA Times in 1994 while promoting the film revealing
“"I knew this movie was going to either be something that people really went for,
or it was going to ruin me completely" he'd say.
Carrey would admit to Arsenio Hall in an interview a few years before the film
came out that he found himself fascinated by metal as you can see here. You like
music man? I love music. I love every kind of music, but recently i've really started to get
into thrash metal music.Idon't know there's something about it man that i can't let go.
It's great, it's great there's this one band out that's called
napalm death and it's so hilarious. i mean i listened to this album I started listening
to this album and it was literally i am not exagerrating that was it. You know i thought
someday this guy is going to want to slow down and don't do some duets. You don't bring me flowers,
i'm a little bit country.
According to Barney Greenway of napalm death carrey reportedly asked for napalm death to be
in the film, but it wasn’t clear what happened to the request so cannibal corpse was next in line.
By 1994 Cannibal Corpse was still unknown to a lot of people
even though they had already recorded 3 albums
The band would however catch the attention of politicians who deemed them controversial and even
entire some countries who outright banned them... Former U.S. Senators Bob Dole and Joe Lieberman
both called them out in his campaign speeches and Dole claimed the band and i quote “undermines the
national character of the United States” “mindless violence and loveless sex,”However an aide for
the Senator would later confirmed that he’s actually never listened to any of their music.
The band for their part wasn’t allowed to play any songs off their first 3 albums [in
Germany until 2006. & Their albums were banned from sale in Australia until that same year
and according to vice the band was kicked out of russia several times for inciting
religious division as well as having several of their gigs cancelled as well.
Getting back to the movie and the band. Carrey had made a special request for the film to
include the band and while the band was honored to get the offer they didn’t want to be made fun
of or be put in a comedic light. Cannibal Corpse drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz would tell Vice in 2015
“We got a call from our record label, Metal Blade, saying that they’d got a call from Jim
Carrey’s people saying that he wanted us to be in this movie he was making," "Of course,
that’s not a call you’re expecting to get. It just didn’t compute, you know? But it was a phone call,
simple as that." The drummer would admit that he was a fan of carrey from his in
living colour days going on to say "We’re a brutal death metal band,
and we’re serious about what we do. This seemed like it would be a cool opportunity,
but we didn’t want to be made to look like fools or to be laughed at," t "But they assured
us that we were going to be portrayed as Cannibal Corpse - they weren’t gonna make fun of us."
Originally the band turned down the offer because of scheduling conflicts but carrey
was adamant about wanting the band in the movie so bad the film production rearranged things
and worked around the band’s schedule. The band would fly to Miami for two days of shooting and
the group's drummer would go on to say that once the band arrived on set they met Carrey who was a
big fan and started rattling off lyrics and asked the band to play their song "hammer smashed face.”
They would lip sync their performance of hammer
smashed face a scene wandering into a cannibal corpse concert.
However, the band found the pace of shooting the scene rather weird with Mazurcieweiz telling vice
We weren’t used to the whole “hurry up and wait” thing, and we weren’t used to having to
pretend to play. We’d never even made a video at this point. So we were up there faking it,
air-banding. I don’t think we ever played the song start to finish.”
The band would film some additional scenes that never made it into theatres,
but they did make it into the film once it came to television several years later. That scene
would see carry joining the band onstage and crowd surfing. It’s important to note that the band was
on the verge of falling apartand some members were set to leave as Internal tensions seemed
to be boiling over in the band, but also born during this time was the song hammer smashed face.
Ace Ventura would go on to be a huge hit, spawning a sequel the following year and a made for
television movie in 2009. As for Cannibal corpse the appearance netted them a lot of new fans with
the band’s drummer adding "we got so many fans out of that. Since that movie came out, I’ve
met at least one person at almost every show that tells me they found out about us from that movie.
It’s dwindled a bit over the last few years because it was so long ago, but if you worked
out an average, it would probably be one person a day. We get people who say Ace Ventura is the
first time they even heard death metal. It was the same year that Ace Ventura came out that the
band released their 4th album their biggest selling of their career 'The Bleeding' & it
would go on to become the fifth best selling death metal album of all times in the US.
According to vice, the band would be credited as cannibal corpses in the movie, & while it’s
not clear whether it was a mistake or a play on words. The band wouldn’t end up making it
to the film's premiere instead seeing the movie in buffalo. It was during the filming of Ace Ventura,
that the band apparently got an offer ot appear in the film Airheads. But by the time the offer
came through ace ventura hadn’t been released and once the makers of airheads got word
that the band already appeared in ace ventura they instead offered the role to white zombie
You would think jim carrey was a fan of metal, but loudersound would report and i quote Carrey’s son
in law, Alex Santana, is the lead singer of LA death metal band Blood Money, has claimed his
purported love of metal is wildly exaggerated. In 1999, Santana wrote, "For the record, Jim
hates death metal... He'd never heard of Cannibal until doin' that movie. Trust me, it's the first
thing I asked him when we met." That does it for today's video guys thanks for watching be sure
to hit the like button and subscribe and we'll see you again on rock n' roll true stories. Take care.