Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare

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.

OMG, what a glorious mess It's so bad that it's great

Ignore my numerical vote--this is a bad movie but only in the best possible way!! I am a bad movie fan, but not all bad films. Some bad films are dreadfully boring and I hate them (such as "The Conqueror" or "Cracking Up"). However, a small group of film are bad but hilariously bad--so bad, so silly, so unbelievably stupid that you can't help but like them. I love films like "The Apple" and "Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare" because they don't take themselves seriously--and they revel in their badness! Now this isn't to say the film is all bad--the music, for 80s hair band tunes, is great stuff and made a wonderful soundtrack to an apocalyptically bad film.

This film is basically like taking "Halloween" or "Friday the 13th" and injecting them with great tunes--along with taking about about 98% of their budget! It's hard to imagine, but the film was made in only seven days and cost a paltry $53,000 to produce. This budget, adjusted to inflation, makes it even cheaper to make than Ed Wood's "Plan 9 From Outer Space"! The film begins with the slaughter of some family. Then, many years later, a rock band goes on a retreat in the middle of no where (Canada) to work on their music and cut their next album. However, the place is infested with demonic hand puppets who wipe out the cast one by one until their is a final climactic battle between a large-breasted guy and a giant Satan puppet that throws evil starfish at him! You really have to see it to believe how bad it is--but also how incredibly funny it is.

By all means watch the film--it's horrible and funny. But be prepared--like so many slasher films of the day, there is LOTS of nudity. But, considering that the movie is all about Satan and his hand puppets butchering rock stars, you wouldn't think to show this to kids or your mother! So amazingly bad AND cool at the same time, you just have to see it. And, if you can't stand the film (because it is dumb), just listen to the songs--they really are awfully good.

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.

I can't believe stuff like this gets made, but I am so glad they did it.

Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare is a delicious piece of mid-80s drive-in fodder. The thing that makes these kinds of films so unique and fun to watch is the seriousness with which the major players seem to take their part in them. It is their obliviousness to the low-quality of the product that is this grade-Z film's most fascinating aspect.

It is appallingly poorly acted. It is written by total amateurs. It is directed enthusiastically and even artistically in places, and is thankfully short in duration, for although it has moments of professionalism, they are more than outnumbered and greedily overshadowed by some of the silliest scenes ever to make it to the VCR.

It's the Muppet Show meets Spinal Tap meets Friday the 13th meets total crap, and total crap wins the day! Hooray!