There is a scene early on in the absolutely bonkers horror camp-fest Sound of Violence where murderess-musician-mistress Alexis (Jasmin Savoy Brown) kidnaps a homeless man and rigs him up like an electric drum set. Part-hardware, part-flesh, done up as if Kevin Mcalester and Jigsaw were there to help perfect the evil mastermind mechanics. A meat tenderizer dangles above his skull, a mallet aimed at his kneecaps, scalpels bisecting his wrists like cello bows. Alexis nervously puts on her earphones and gets to work.

As she pokes at her DJ soundboard, the various weapons stab, bash, slash, or otherwise mutilate her helpless victim, all to the beat of a vicious tune; one she’s creating out of other people’s abject misery. Her symphony of torture elicits a euphoric wave which washes over her in bright hallucinogenic waves, a sonic bloodlust satisfied only by the howls of the suffering. As the film’s hilariously unsubtle log-line reads, “her music kills” and writer-director Alex Noyer is there to jam out to the gleeful track of hysterical camp and shamelessly silly slasher colliding.

The mashup of Kevin Smith’s Tusk and Guitar Hero you never expected to come to fruition, Sound of Violence finds that sweet spot between music and murder and plays it like with all the wild-eyed gusto of a drugged-up musician plugging away at a too-tightly-strung harp. There’s heads that explode, arms that peel, fingers that slash down to stumps, and a laughably gnarly mecha-metamorphosis that serves as a perfect visual representation of how unabashedly ridiculous Alexis’ musical murder spree becomes.

As is almost always the case, the taste for blood starts early, with Alexis’ early memories revolving around the fact that her entire family has been murdered. More specifically, her father brutally slaughtered her mother before Alexis intervened…by brutally slaughtering her own father. Talk about a tough upbringing. Reborn in the afterglow of this horrible tragedy, Alexis becomes a sociopathic harbinger of pain: a DJ. With beats literally to die for.

If only Sound of Violence were as completely zany as it sounds, there might be even more room for murdery mayhem. Instead we’re treated to some sticky plot mechanics like an unnecessary back-and-forth regarding Alexis’ on-again-off-again deafness, her somewhat opaque obsession with pain-related bouts of synesthesia, and her super-duper obvious infatuation with her roommate and best (and only) friend Marie (Lili Simmons), which works only in the roughest sense of basic human chemistry but is as two-dimensional as they come.

Sonya Munro as Detective Sonya Fuentes, hot on the trail of Alexis’ spree, is gnawing so hard on the scenery that she seems beamed in from either a Mexican soap opera or Adult Swims Children’s Hospital. She at once seems to be the only one who gets what movie she’s in at times, especially juxtaposed against Brown’s convincingly committed turn as Alexis. But when Sound of Violence shucks off the conventions of “good movies” and revels in the oily, absurdist intestines of victims-made-music, the gory shlock is hilariously triumphant and you can’t help but give yourself over to the beat.

CONCLUSION: Destined to be hated by many and cherished as a cult classic by others, ‘Sound of Violence’ is an off-the-rails hoot where a deranged musician tortures people to make the ultimate club-thumping beat. The only way to satisfy her craving for sonic perfection: lots and lots of violence. If you’re not laughing, you’re definitely watching it wrong.