I wanna rock.
We all know that Rock and Roll is evil; especially hard rock. There is no exception when the band Black Roses visit a sleepy small town to kick off their world tour. The parents in town are up in arms; they don’t want any bad influences for their children. The disaffected youth however, are all for it. It would seem though that the parents are in the right this time as there is more to the Black Roses than meets the eye. As it turns out, this band of spandex clad men are actually demons hell bent (ha!…get it?) on turning the town’s youth to the dark side and giving themselves an evil army to wreak havoc across the land.
When I word it like that, Black Roses sounds pretty sweet. Evil heavy metal bands, youth gone wild, demons, death, the works. All the elements are there, but one key point to remember; this movie was made in 1988. The most evil this band was guilty of was crimes against the ozone layer with their clouds of Aqua Net. (Crimes against fashion too, but it was the 80’s, that’s a given) While director John Fasano first made us laugh our asses off at his misguided attempts and hard rocking horror in Rock and Roll Nightmare, I was both excited and somewhat apprehensive when settling in for his second feature. Nightmare was a mess; a mismatch of rubber puppets and a big haired dude in nothing but a loincloth. In Roses he’s pulled together a tighter story, (some might say a story in general) but it’s still pretty hokey and all in all, kind of boring. It’s easier to follow and the majority of it even makes sense; it just takes a long time to for anything to get started. Whiny teens and an over involved and somewhat creepy English teacher take the main stage for the majority of the first half of the film. Once the demons start to show themselves it’s unfortunately not quite enough to get excited about. Sure the teenage boy under the spell who tells his dad he loves him before he pumps 6 shots from a revolver into him was a nice turn. Typical teenage girl’s girlfriend seducing said girl’s dad over a game of strip gin rummy, it was pretty funny and boobs are always nice. Our central ‘good girl’ rubbing her boobs in the mirror for ten minutes for no apparent reason…well, that’s always appreciated. The problem is there are good chunks to be found, there’s just too much boring crap in between to keep it interesting.
Black Roses is one of those 80’s horror flicks I always saw on the shelf but never got around to renting. It promises a lot but in the end disappoints over all. It’s a definite improvement over Fasano’s first outing and is worth the watch for nostalgic reasons, just don’t get too excited going in. If you want to enjoy your heavy metal horror, Trick or Treat is a lot more entertaining for the camp factor.
And really folks, how scared can you get when this is the face of evil?
2 girls rubbing their boobs in the mirror for 10 minutes for no real reason, but we like it anyways out of 5
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