Im Angesicht der Hölle

John Triton (Jon Mikl Thor, who also scripted) and his band Triton rent a secluded farm house that has a 24 track recording studio built in the barn so the group can prepare for a tour and get down ten minutes of new material. What they don't know is that this place just happens to be a portal to hell and soon folks are getting offed faster that Eddie Van Halen's fingers on the guitar. BLACK ROSES director John Fasano proved himself heavy metal horror ready with this debut feature. Well, he proved he could make a film in focus and throw a few monsters around. This starts out as a standard horror yarn but takes a decidedly odd twist at the end. The film is pretty rough around the edges (I had to listen to the audio commentary to figure out what the final two scenes were about), but if you have an itch for big hair and Beelzebub, it will fit the bill. The film appears to have some sort of cult following, most likely due to hipsters digging the totally 80s look and the toned Thor, who really is the poster boy for 80s muscle bound metal.

The Tritons, your typical 1980s hair band with cheesy songs, is on retreat in Canada in order to rehearse some new songs for an upcoming album. But the farm house they rented, once visited by Alice Cooper, has some otherworldly creatures that are hell-bent on destroying the band and their very lives.

This is a "guilty pleasure" 1980s film to the extreme. Poorly acted, poorly directed... really lame music. The special effects are humorous but very clearly low budget. Yet, despite all this the film has a charm. It's what you might call Tim Ritter meets early Peter Jackson... "Killing Spree" meets "Dead Alive". But weirder.

Most of the film comes across as either a music video or a softcore porn. When the band isn't performing a song ("Energy" or "Live to Rock") in its entirety (take these out and the film is an hour), they're having sex. And while there's not excessive raw sexuality, there's plenty of gratuitous skin, particularly in a shower scene... it runs a little longer than usual, and we get a nice view of Harry Manasse's brother Slick.

While for much of this picture I found myself thinking it was fun but nothing special (and wondering why my friend loaned this to me), there is a dramatic plot shift later on. And, believe it or not, the movie gets even weirder and cheesier... leading into the sequel ("Intercessor"). I never saw the change coming and am still really confused on what the heck I was watching.

Synapse has released a lot of great cult and exploitation films ("Street Trash", for one) and this is right at home on their label. While I don't see there being a great resurgence of interest in this one, it has a quality that makes it fun and hard to hate, regardless of how silly and low budget it may be.

If you don't take this movie as the new "Psycho" or "Rosemarie Baby" you can have a good time watching "Rock n roll nightmare". This is one of those movies that achieve cult-status as "So bad that are funny" like the infamous and great "Troll 2". The rocker Thor is the lead here. The plot is about a rockn roll band in some house that are attacked one by one by demons. This demons are very cheap and stupid-looking puppets. The bad thing in this one is that most of the killings are off-screen and there isn't enough nudity. Not the perfect party movie IMHO but a good one to have a laugh with friends and lots of booze.

6/10

This is the greatest movie EVER!!! Actually, it's so bad it's good. "Rock N' Roll Nightmare" gives you puppet monsters, really boring and long sex scenes, some surprisingly good 80's metal ("Energy" is a favorite of mine), and Jon-Mikl Thor in a metal speedo! The plot revolves around a group of musicians who go to a farmhouse to record their new album (because the city has made them soft!). Little do they know, that a decade ago a demon killed an entire family who lived there. Now the demon is back and starts killing off the band members one by one. Jon-Mikl Thor is a likable actor and you can tell he really tried and put a lot of effort into this film. But the film is extremely cheesy and low-budget. Many consider this to be the "worst film of all time". I would totally disagree with that. The film has charm and a certain campiness to it. The twist ending is probably one of the greatest i've seen in such a bad movie. I actually was surprised at how well the plot twist worked. The director also did the metal horror classic "Black Roses". Overall, this is a cult classic that is pretty tame and cheesy, but it's fun and has heart. WE LIVE TO ROCK!!!

From the wilds of Canada comes "Rock 'N' Roll Nightmare," apparently a vanity project from writer-star Jon Mikl Thor. If you've never heard of him before, join the club - his discography after 1986 looks pretty thin. There is so much to love here: a barely coherent plot, non-erotic soft-core sex, ludicrous "special effects," horrible acting, lousy pseudo-metal music and HAIR. LOTS AND LOTS OF BAD 80s HAIR. What a shame MST3000 never got the rights to this one - maybe I'll float it as a reunion project. As other reviewers have mentioned, the final reel alone is worth the price of a used VHS copy of this gem. Any bad movie lover will enjoy this obscure piece of undercooked Canadian bacon.