Hard Rock Nightmare

I recently watched Hard Rock Nightmare (1988) on Shudder. The storyline follows a young man who, as a child, had visions that his grandfather was a monster and killed him. Now the lead singer of a rock band, he returns to the scene of the crime with his band and some groupies. As they settle in, the killings start again. Could it be his grandfather returning for revenge or possibly something else?

This film is written and directed by Dominick Brascia (Evil Laugh) and stars Martin Hansen, Greg Joujon-Roche (Spider-Man), Lisa Elaina (Blood Diner), Tom Shell (Beverly Hills Vamp), Troy Donahue (Monster on the Campus), and Johnny Venokur (Evil Laugh).

Hard Rock Nightmare has an '80s summer camp slasher vibe without actually being one. It doesn't take itself too seriously, which is clear from the hilarious and fun black-and-white opening sequence. The attack scenes and costumes are absolutely wild, albeit in a bad way. The acting is inconsistent, with some characters feeling stiff at times. In classic '80s horror fashion, there are lots of gorgeous ladies and splashes of nudity throughout. The blond female groupie in this obviously has something off about her, and you do genuinely want to see how that fits into the plot. There's also a nice Friday the 13th music segment that's enjoyable. However, the kill scenes are pretty average and just okay.

In conclusion, Hard Rock Nightmare is a very average addition to the horror genre that doesn't really add anything new. I would score this a 4.5-5/10 and only recommend it to diehard '80s horror fans.

When I sat down in 2022 to watch the 1988 horror movie "Hard Rock Nightmare" for the first time, I must admit that I was expecting this to be an archetypical late 1980s cheesy horror movie. And my expectations were correct, because this was definitely an archetypical late 1980s horror movie.

The storyline, as written by writer and director Dominick Brascia, was pretty straight forward. I will actually say that parts of the storyline were actually quite good. And this was by no means a lousy movie, it was just cheesy and somewhat antiquated.

The acting in the movie were adequate. It was all unfamiliar talents to me, and that is something I enjoy in movies. However, it should be said that you're not in for any extraordinary or exception acting performances here.

Visually then "Hard Rock Nightmare" was definitely a late 1980s horror movie, and the effects scream late 1980s. The creature effects were perhaps good back in 1988, but they haven't aged well and were just barely passable today.

All in all then "Hard Rock Nightmare" is a watchable movie, though it was somewhat on the plain side. While I managed to sit through the movie, this is not a movie that I will be returning to watch a second time, nor is it a movie that I would recommend horror fans to rush out to get to watch.

My rating of "Hard Rock Nightmare" lands on a mediocre five out of ten stars.

This isn't a paid promotion, I swear, I just wanted to show some love for the Shudder platform. Sure a lot of their content is crap and they don't have the budget for originals of say Netflix, but there's a real human touch to the curation. It's like being friends with a horror nerd who routinely comes by with a sack full of DVDs that you otherwise wouldn't have known about. Like how just the other day, out of nowhere, they just dropped five obscure rock 'n roll themed 80s b-movies. How did you even know I wanted five obscure rock 'n roll themed 80s b-movies? Well I did, and I thank you for your service.

Overall, Hard Rock Nightmare is exactly the kind of trash you'd expect, corny in all the right ways. Every time a character opens their mouth the bad dialogue and acting is worthy of a good chuckle. The effects are less scary than the Thriller video, with dollar store props throughout. I suppose the terrible wolf costume can be forgiven though because (SPOILER ALERT: but do you care, really?) in the end, they hilariously go the Scooby-Doo route and it turns out it was old man Gary all along, bahaha! Grab a bud and a brew and just let the cheese waft over you.