Black Roses (John Fasano, 1988)
The eighties were, briefly, awash in rock and roll horror pictures, and as a hair metal fan back in the day, I was happier than a pig in Poison album covers. They ranged from the sublime (Hard Rock Zombies, still one of my favorite bad movies of all time) to the ridiculous (Trick or Treat, whose best feature was its Fastway soundtrack). Black Roses was firmly on the "ridiculous" side of the equation, though I didn't remember it being nearly as awful as the IMDB crowd make it out to be (as I write this, its IMDB rating is 2.6). So I grabbed a copy of it a couple of nights ago and gave it a look for the first time in twenty-odd years. And I was right, it's not that bad. Yes, it's ridiculous, but like all bad movies that transcend their badness, that's a part of its charm.
The admittedly lame plot: a bunch of (badly-made-up) demons have been sent from Hell to gather disciples. What better way to do that than to form a hair metal band? Their first concert goes horribly awry thanks to interference from the authorities, so after a quick hush job they decide to take the stage next in a small, out-of-the-way place. Of course, they also adopt human guise. Their lead singer morphs into Damien (standup comic, singer, and Broadway actor Sal Viviano), the kind of hair-metal Adonis one would expect to see back in 1988; the make-up folks probably spent more time making Viviano's hair that feathery than they did with the demon make-up in the opening scene. In any case, the town they opt for is conservative, and a local parents' group is up in arms about the concerts, opposed only by the mayor (TV character actor Ken Swofford, probably best remembered from 1982's film version of Annie) and the local English teacher, Matt Moorhouse (John Martin, who would go on from this to some success in the soap operas Sunset Beach and The Young and the Restless in the nineties), who's dating the mayor's daughter. The kids, of course, are over the moon that an actual rock band would come play in their dinky little town, and are more than willing disciples once Damien and his crew start weaving their musical spells. Needless to say, the music is eeeeeeeeeevil(TM), and the kids start turning very, very bad. Now Moorhouse has to find a way to stop Damien before the kids' souls are lost forever.
What struck me watching this in 2010, more than anything else, is how reactionary the underlying message is. The music is, in fact, inherently evil, and the two adults who stand up for freedom of expression against the annoying old biddies are proven very, very wrong. If I didn't know any better, I'd think the funding for the film came straight from the PMRC. And I know I should find myself far more offended by that than I actually do, but the simple truth of the matter is that the movie is so incompetent that I doubt its message ever actually got across to anyone. The acting is, in general, deplorable (though Viviano is passable and Martin is decent; most of the principal teen actors never worked in Hollywood again, though the movie's female lead did appear in another film in 2006), the direction is lackluster, the effects are laughable. And yet it's got a kind of basement-budget-gore-film charm to it. I can't really defend giving it a rating as high as I am for anything other than the stupid watchability of the movie... and its soundtrack. Which is phenomenal, as long as you were a hair-metal fan. Aside from tracks by Hallow's Eve (who sound incredibly out of place on this soundtrack), Bang Tango, Lizzy Borden, Tempest, and King Kobra, there's an actual one-off Black Roses band, and for hair metal, that stuff is quality. "Dance on Fire" and "Soldiers of the Night" will get stuck in your head for weeks. Heck, they upstage most of the real bands on the soundtrack (save, naturally, Hallow's Eve, who were a thrash band who occasionally slowed down to get songs on movie soundtracks anyway).
And when it comes right down to it, the message is so incompetently handled that you can't help but laugh at it anyway. **
