The new life of “The Number of the Beast” in “28 Days Later”

It was 1982 when a video destined to cause discussion arrived on the newborn music channels: that of “The Number of the Beast” by Iron Maiden. The song, title track of the album of the same name, sparked controversy especially in the United States due to the satanic imagery evoked by the title, but immediately became a commercial success, entering the top 20 in the United Kingdom.
Not without friction: on the newly formed MTV (which began broadcasting in 1981), for example, the video was censored in the final segment, when the gigantic Eddie appears with the devil’s number and symbols. Directed by David Mallet and filmed on a modest budget at Newcastle City Hall, the clip shows the band performing the piece live, alternating the performance with clips of classic horror cinema. A language that is perhaps naive today, but fundamental for describing the beginnings of the video clip as an autonomous narrative form.
Vintage movie inserts have been the subject of discussion among fans for years. Some come from easily recognizable monster-themed horror titles like “Nosferatu the Vampire” (1922) and “Watang! others appear only for a few moments, superimposed and filtered, giving rise to a long game of collective identification on music forums.

Nearly half a century later, in 2026, that same song finds new cinematic life. “The Number of the Beast” has in fact become the heart of the most memorable scene of “28 Years Later – The Temple of Bones”, the second chapter of the saga directed by Nia DaCosta. At the center of the sequence is Ralph Fiennes, here promoted from supporting character in the first film to true narrative pivot.
Fiennes plays Doctor Kelson, a survivor of the zombie contagion who lives in a huge ossuary, the “bone temple” of the title. Doctor, scientist and almost philosophical figure, Kelson cultivates a passion for 80s music: thanks to a manual generator he listens to perfectly preserved vinyl records. In the film we hear “Girls on Film”, “Ordinary World” and “Rio” by Duran Duran, as well as “Everything in Its Right Place” by Radiohead, a song that accompanies well his ethical solitude and the rigor with which he has reconstructed a possible everyday life, twenty-eight years after the end of the world.

The sequence destined to remain, however, is the one built around the Iron Maiden classic (beware of spoilers). Kelson must convince a group of boys born after the collapse of civilization that he is Satan himself, the “beast”. He accepts the game and, in his temple, blasts “The Number of the Beast” at full blast, using science to create blazes, rings of fire and a real fireworks display. It’s an ironic but very powerful scene, in which Fiennes transforms himself into an unlikely metal frontman, with headbanging, running black makeup and surprising physicality.

The sequence was initially designed for the entire duration of the piece, then reduced for reasons of rhythm. Fiennes said he learned the song in its entirety to best lip-synch it and that he experienced the moment as one of the most intense in the film, a physical and energetic peak that deliberately contrasts with the silence and degradation of the post-apocalyptic universe.
In the play of references between music and cinema, “The Number of the Beast” thus finds a new “alternative video”: more spectacular, more aware and perhaps even more iconic than the original one. A perfect meeting between heavy metal and horror, over forty years later – waiting