In 1984 Kurt Cobain was 17 years old and bursting with creative adolescent energy. He was already friends with Krist Novoselic and Dale Crover, who a year earlier had formed the Melvins with Buzz Osborne and Matt Lukin, best known today as the bassist for Mudhoney.
One of the things they liked to do together was record footage in a horror movie style—it’s doubtful that they had any concrete designs to put a movie together; more likely they were play-acting as much as anything else. It’s not a “horror movie” as much as a bunch of unconnected shots cobbled together into a kind of “horror home movie.”
The two most memorable moments on the video are a few shots of Cobain wearing a Mr. T mask and worshiping in front of a pentagram, and another handful of shots in which Cobain pretends to slash his own throat and wrists, fake blood and all. That last section has earned the tape an alternate title of “Kurt’s Bloody Suicide,” which as you’ll see below is rumored to be Kurt’s own title, but Dale Crover dismisses the notion. If not, it’s of questionable taste given Cobain’s actual demise in 1994 by his own hand.
Mike Ziegler, once described as possessing “an arsenal of Nirvana recordings that goes unparalleled by any trader in the universe,” once asked Crover about the “horror movies.” Here is the substance of that conversation:
Ziegler: Do you happen to remember what the title of the movie was called? I’ve heard rumors from people that Kurt said the movie was titled “Kurt’s Bloody Suicide.”
Crover: I’m sure that there was no title. We were just fucking around with a camera.
Ziegler: So… what the hell is up with the Mr. T scene in the beginning. Whose crazy mind thought that one up?
Crover: The Mr. T Idea just developed as we shot it. Krist filmed while I held the lights. Kurt made the satanic altar and played Mr. T. I think I manned the vacuum cleaner for the coke snorting scene. We were going to do more but never finished.
Ziegler: What did you use to record it?
Crover: Novoselic’s super 8.
Brendan Hunt compiled this amusing list of things you might see in the video (lightly edited):
The first shot is of a turtle crawling around, followed by a bloody hand.
Kurt Dressed in a Mr. T Mask, worshiping a pentagram, and snorting a lot of (fake) cocaine.
Statue of Virgin Mary (?) which later appears on a concert poster.
Kurt’s claymation.
Kurt washing a wall.
Images of a strange fat man.
Kurt jumping around with an electric guitar.
Kurt cutting his throat and wrist with fake knife.
A dog being stabbed with a fake knife.
Kurt getting shot with a fake gun.
A masked man cutting somebody’s throat.
A picture of somebody masturbating to people passing on the street.
A black dog running down a street.
An unseen killer stalks a teenager. Comes up on him with a knife, and slices his arm open.
In this YouTube video, the footage is scored to songs off of the Melvins’ 1991 EP Eggnog, which were obviously recorded much later, specfically “Hog Leg,” “Wispy,” “Antitoxidote.” It fits very well, I think.
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Illiteracy Will Prevail’: Demo tape from Kurt Cobain’s pre-Nirvana band Fecal Matter