Black Roses

The town of Mill Basin gets their opportunity to host the hard rock band Black Roses. However, I don't think the band tours anywhere else. Anyways, once they arrive in town, it's hell on earth. The kids soon get demoniacally possessed after listening to too much of this hard rock music. The band's vocalist, Damian, is the main culprit for all of the chaos. Damian's got a cool look. He's dressed in all black and has a cool hair style. This story kind of gets its premise from the problem with hard rock and all of the suicide incidents from real life situations attached to such bands as: Slayer, Judas Priest and Ozzy Osbourne. Black Roses was released in 88', which was right around when these law suits unfolded. This sort of music was really popular then and parents and teachers really were against this entire movement. The story basically takes the premise that if you listen to Heavy Metal, you too, will become a maniac. It sure makes one laugh. The kids in this picture begin shooting their parents and beating up their fellow classmates. The script isn't that great, but the 80's music makes up for it. Time after time, you'll hear LIZZY BORDEN's "Me Against The World." This song is featured at least three or four times. There is also a cool song by the title of "Soldiers in the Night." This song, too, really cranks! The special effects are cheesy, but they seem to work for satisfactory basis. I like the part when a guy gets sucked through a mounted wall speaker, case in point to my summary title. Stay away if you can't handle a juvenile script and head banging music from the 80's. 5/10

Famous glam rock band The Black Roses is booked to play their first (?) live shows at its hometown local high school. While all the teens are stoked that their favorite band chose their sleepy small town for their first ever live concert, the parents are less than enthused with The Black Roses and their seemingly demonic lead singer Damien. The teachers and mayor stick by "Free speech" while the parents protest. When the band shows up for the show, the PTA and other authoritative adults attend only to find a Michael Bolton type in a Don Johnson suit singing power ballads. They shrug their shoulders at this harmless lite-rocker and bolt for the exit. That's when Damien strips down to a kinkier outfit (think Cher in "If I Could Turn Back Time) and The Black Roses crank out the hard rock. The kids in the crowd go wild. When the band stays in town to do more three more shows, the kids' become increasingly zombie-like and violent. Their English teacher starts to think that maybe the PTA was right and the kids are becoming possessed by Leotarded Damien and his rocknroll.

John Fasano's follow up to his bizarrely awful "Rock & Roll Nightmare" doesn't fare that much better story-wise, but it's still sort of charming. It lacks the interesting visuals and characters of its predecessor, but makes up for that by adding more puppet-monster action. Nothing happens in the first half hour of the film, which has a really strange feeling, like it's a musical from the 50s instead of an 80s rocker movie. There's even a sequence where the bored lead teenager is trying to woo a girl by dancing around the street, from lamppost to lamppost, saying things like "Let's paint the town red!" The score is equally out-of-place for a movie about a demonic glam rock band. It sounds like something out of an 80s children's adventure movie. The special effects and puppetry are charming and one of the only things that kept my attention. Especially worth noting is a scene where future Soprano's star Vincent Pastore gets gobbled up by his stereo speakers. So while "Black Roses" isn't completely unwatchable, it isn't really a good movie and recommended for only those who really dig this type of thing.

Heavy metal band Black Roses puts on a series of shows in a small American town, much to the consternation of the adults, but to the delight of their young fans, who are unaware that their idols are in fact demons whose Satanic music causes listeners to commit acts of extreme violence.

If you're too young to remember, or weren't even born, it might be hard to believe just how popular heavy rock was back in the '80s. Men proudly grew their locks, sported leather and denim, and head-banged till their necks seized up. Girls put peroxide in their hair, glammed themselves up with plenty of makeup and strutted around in spandex leggings (actually, so did some of the blokes). The same decade also saw the cheesy horror film enjoying much success, with many movies forgetting all about logic in favour of crazy special effects laden chaos. Black Roses takes both metal and monster madness and combines them in a technically shoddy and often laughable movie that appears to enforce the outmoded notion that rock music is a corrupting influence on the young.

A great soundtrack (if hair metal is your thing), some cheap and cheerful monster effects and a spot of gratuitous female nudity go some way to making up for the lousy script, crap acting and seemingly denigrating anti-metal message, but in the end, it's just another disappointing rock/horror hybrid (see also Trick or Treat, Zombie Nightmare, Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare, Hard Rock Zombies and Shock 'Em Dead for more of the same).

Black Roses. Where to begin? First off, this movie is not for you if you cannot appreciate the comic genius that is a combination of bad metal music and massive mullets. Personally, I love bad movies and those two things have made [and broken] a great many movies for me. Black Roses is a beautiful melding of horrible acting, special effects that wouldn't have been impressive twenty years ago, and tons of terrible metal. Our Demonic band and their flamboyant frontman Damien [who is complete with a disappearing/reappearing mullet] use their music as a portal for evil! There are a great many unanswered questions come the end of the film, but if you are watching this film in the first place, chances are you're not in the market for a high-quality production. This is a great bad horror film, and a must-see for anyone who knows how funny mullets are.

7/10

[A few words on my rating system]

I review bad movies almost exclusively, that does not however mean that my rating system is inverted. A score of 1 denotes a film that is unbearable to watch, whereas a score of 10 epitomizes the best in the world of bad movies. A 5 is average, 6 connotes that there is something worthwhile, a 7 is a definate must-see for people who match the criteria that I will have listed in the review.

So there is a renegade high schooler named Johnny. He is 30 years old, with a mullet and a jean jacket. He hates his teachers and loves metal music. His favorite metal band has a lead singer who turns into a monster while performing cursed songs. There's some great-yet-bad metal music, especially the tune at the beginning. The score is very forgettable 80s synth noodling, unfortunately. It's an alright movie to look at, the acting is passable if you grade on a curve, and the monster effects are pretty decent all considered. This movie kinda has it all if you're into bad 80's monster movies: boobs, a messy script, rockin' tunes, cheesy dialog, and an awful main character you love to make fun of. Big Pussy from the Sopranos makes his acting debut, and it's freakin' hilarious. Lots of mentions of the "satanic panic" of the 80s where the media cast overprotective mothers and pitted them against heavy metal and rap music that had explicit lyrics. The theme of the movie seems to stem from that whole incident

This one was lots of fun to watch, with a great soundtrack and story-line, plus the right amount of cheese, it makes 90min fly by. 3.5 / 5