Black Roses

Watched September 30, 2022

 

1988  

Directed by John Fasano  

Starring: John Martin, Karen Planden, Frank Dietz 

 

Starts in New York at a Black Roses concert, the band members are already monsters. The cops show up to shut it down but the transfixed teens rush out, crushing the cops. It's not clear if the Black Roses need teen spirit to feed or to change from humans to their true monster selves.

Two lamborghinis roll into small town Canada. Several cool '80s rock 'n' rollers get out, it's the Black Roses! They walk around the empty town putting up posters for the 4 nights they're playing the high school auditorium.

 Mr. Morehouse (John Martin) is the English lit and poetry teacher at the high school. All the teens in his class are excited about the Black Roses coming to play their town, let alone their high school auditorium! Especially since these shows are kicking off their larger North American tour. Julie (Karen Plandon) is a student who really admires Mr. Morehouse and has a little crush on him. Johnny (Frank Dietz) another student in Mr. Morehouse's class, has a crush on Julie, but she considers them just friends.

The local church members are against the concert, since rock music is aligned with the devil, duh. But the mayor is for it. The town council stays for the first song and Black Roses play one of their ballads and tone it down. The town council leaves approvingly and the party is on! 

Julie hangs out with Johnny after the first concert. They wander around town, Johnny steals a can of red paint, spills a little bit in a parking lot and leaves his pocket knife nearby. The next day in class, Mr. Morehouse returns the knife to Johnny and tells him to stay out of trouble. That afternoon, the Black Roses give out free records to all the high school kids. One of the teens, Vinny (Carmine Appice) gets into a fist fight over one. Vinny plays the record at home and his dad tells him to shut it off. Vinny storms off, but the record comes on again, looking all melty-gooey. A monster emerges from the speaker, attacks the dad (Vincent Pastore) drags him back into the speaker.

After the second concert, Johnny goes home to his nebbish dad. He goes to bed and has sex with a dream demon, I think it's supposed to be Julie but it's also a body double so it's confusing. He wakes up and shoots his dad three times. Another high schooler Tina heads home after the concert with her sexy friend. At Tina's house, her younger brother is throwing plastic action figures in the fire while the dad watches. The dad realizes it's 11pm and shuffles the kid off to bed. The mom is playing cards at a friends. Tina asks if her friend can stay because her parents aren't home and she's locked out. All three of them play gin rummy until Tina goes to bed. Tina's friend convinces the dad to play strip gin, she comes on to him and gives him a heart attack. Vinny comes home from the concert and runs over his mom while she is taking out the trash.

Mr. Morehouse has been 'dating' the mayor's daughter Priscilla (Carla Ferrigno). He goes after school to talk to the mayor once some people have been dying but she doesn't let him get past.

Julie goes fully bad and beats her step dad to death with an ashtray. Julie then sneaks into Priscilla's car while she was playing tennis. Once Priscilla gets in the car, Julie cuts off Priscilla's head. Julies goes to Mr. Morehouse to seduce him, he rejects her but them Julie turns into a demon and tries to kill him. He fends her off with a tennis racket and he escapes.

If there is a third concert, it happens somewhere in here.

The last concert everyone is all dressed in black now. Damian (Sal Viviano) the lead singer of the Black Roses notices Mr. Morehouse tossing gas onstage. Damian turns into a demon to fight Mr. Morehouse, they tussles. Mr. Morehouse gets Julie out of the concert hall and lights a flare that sets the gas soaked stage ablaze, engulfing Damian and the band. The teens escape the burning auditorium. TV news footage announces the Black Roses are coming to Madison Square Garden and it shows Damian and he's fine.

Cool title sequence with animated growing roses that the lamborghinis drive over. It needed more stakes, a lot of kids kill their parents but it doesn't seem to mean anything. Mr. Morehouse isn't much of a hero that you root for. Does the band need the kids to turn into demons, do they feed off of them? Do they get energy from the kills. The demonizing seems reversible. Damian calls the kids his Black Roses, it that a clue? Good demon effects but aside from the kids gone bad/satanic panic it doesn't make much sense.

Parts of it seem high-ish quality but then random shots of bellies like they didn't get enough coverage. Julie didn't want to do nude scenes, but the stands ins are are really different and there is a very strange weird cropped boob shot. Not a lot of fun overall. Decent music, weird background music choices. It seems like they wanted to show an innocent town that goes to hell through satanic music, but it didn't quite come together for me.

Same writer as Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare, Cindy Cirile, she really got some mileage out of music and monsters. I wonder how many metal/music/horror movies were made in the '80s?  Lloyd Kaufman is listed as a producer, it doesn't have a of Troma feeling aside from monster effects.

They played this at a local theater a couple of weeks after we watched it, something was in the Santa Fe air for the Black Roses.

Trancers

Watched May 6, 2022

 "Dry hair is for squids" says Jack Deth

1985

Starring: Tim Thomerson, Helen Hunt, Michael Stefani, Telma Hopkins

In a future coffee shop, Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) hassles a big guy about being a trancer. Jack puts a bracelet on him but it indicates he's not a trancer, but the server behind the counter is. She goes from looking normal to looking zombie-like and crazy. She attacks Jack, after a tussle he grabs his blaster that had been slapped out of his hand and 'singes' the trancer, making them disappear. Jack's boss doesn't like that he keeps destroying the trancers and he isn't following protocol. Jack's wife was killed by a trancer so he's very bitter. 

The head of the organization of trancer destroyers reveal that Whistler (Michael Stefani), a super bad guy has time traveled back to 1985 and is killing the ancestors of the current anti-trancers board. Aunt Rachel from Family Matters (Telma Hopkins) is the scientist that can send the brain back to a family member's body in the past. They send Jack's brain into his distant relative Phil's body in 1985. Phil is casually dating Leena (Helen Hunt), so Jack in Phil's body wakes up and drives her to work. It's a Christmas movie, she's a mall Santa photographer. Jack walks her into the mall and it turns out that Santa is a trancer. Santa fights Jack, Jack gets a security guard's gun and kills Santa. Jack tries to explain to Leena about the time travel deal and trancers, she's not having it.

They go to the tanning salon to find one of the people Jack is trying save or contact. Leena stays in the car, but then drives off since she thinks the guy she knew as Phil is nuts. It turns out that the tanning dude is a trancer and he locks Jack in a tanning room and turns it on super hot. Leena comes back to see the dead trancer dude disappear/singe, now she believes Jack's story. She saves Jack from the hot tanning room, it was jammed shut by a surfboard. As they leave the tanning salon, the cops show up and Whistler turns out to be the head of the cops...so they're all trancers? They are about to shoot Leena and Jack, but Jack has a special watch that makes one long second, a second that last 10 seconds. Everyone is basically frozen in time, Jack grabs Leena and throws her in the car and they get out of there.

 They can't go back to Phil's place, so they go to Chinatown where Leena knows a friend's apartment is empty since it's Christmas Eve. The apartment looks like a neon club and happens to be over an actual club. They go downstairs to the punk club to dance, but Leena is hassled by an old boyfriend she's not interested in. Some punk trancers attack Jack, so Jack and Leena get out of there. They go back upstairs to make out but are interrupted by a little girl. She's the only relative Jack's co-worker McNulty (Art Lafleur) could find, and she reminds Jack that another board member is dead. Jack kicks the girl out and he keeps making out with Leena. But the future pulls him back to tell him that it's getting serious. They have a photo of the relative he is supposed to find before Whistler does. He goes back to 1985, but missed the sex with Leena. Lenea tries to go to sleep but Jack wakes her up to try to find  the guy in the photo. 

Leena knows how to hot wire scooter, they take some from in front of the punk club. They head to skid row but are pursued by Whistler. Jack and Leena find some hobos, ask about the guy in photo, they say check the old paper factory for him. They do find another group of hobos including an old baseball player who is the future ladies' relative, the last board member. They grab the guy, use Leena as bait to trick Whistler. But Whistler throws Leena off the building, Jack got another watch when he went back to the future. He saves her again, then the hobo baseball guy throws something at Whistler and he falls off the building. Whistler doesn't have a future body to go back to, as Jack had destroyed it on one of his trips back to the future. Since Whistler's past body is destroyed and so is his future body, he dies or stays in brain limbo. Jack stays with Leena in 1985 to become his own Grandpa or something.

At only 76 minutes it still feels a little long at times. There's not a lot to it, but compare to Fateful Findings at least its a real movie. It's spawned a whole bunch of sequels, which might be fun. Helen Hunt is great, Tim Thomerson seems too old to be dating her but that's usually how it goes. They don't really explain how people become trancers, but it does seem to be like a trance-like switch, I guess Whistler was in charge of them the whole time, I just don't understand why they are killing.

Fateful Findings

Watched March 25, 2022

 

2013 (gives way more 2005-06 vibes)

Written and Directed and Everything-ed by Neil Breen 

Starring: Neil Breen, Klara Landrat, Jennifer Autry

 

What's the deal with Neil Breen? I'm late to the game on this one.

Blue sky and buildings, two kids walk through a high desert forest and field. They find a mushroom under a tall pine. It transforms into a glass box, inside is a black cube stone. Dylan takes it and Leah takes some beads that were outside the box. She writes " It's a magical day" in her journal. They walk back home. Soon or possibly the next day, Leah's family moves away and Dylan is very upset. Leah hangs out the car window waving, very unsafely. She has laced the magical beads into a bracelet. V/O informs us that Dylan never saw Leah again after that day.

Cut to present day, Dylan (Neil Breen) is now an adult married to Emily (Klara Landrat). While talking to Emily on his cell phone, Dylan approaches a cross walk. He has a walk sign but is hit by a car. Luckily he's holding the special black cube stone he found as a kid. From the car accident, he has severe head trauma. People show up to help but all we see are their feet. The lady who hit him gets out of the car but we don't see her face.

Dylan is taken to the hospital. He has a cast that covers three quarters of his face, including his nose and mouth, but on top of that is an with an oxygen mask. Emily comes to visit. She kept talking to him on the phone after he got hit by the car. The first doctor says Dylan is in critical condition. They bring in a Neurologist, it's Leah (Jennifer Autry)! But Dylan can't see her because of his face cast and Leah reveals later she didn't read his name on his chart anyway. She checks his pulse.  Dylan's good friend Jim (David Silva) comes to visit him too. Maybe with the connection from Leah's bracelet is how Dylan got better, but he rips out two IV's that are taped to his arm and walks out of the hospital. Yes, we see his butt hanging out of his gown, more Breen nudity to come! He walks home, still bleeding from his head. He gets in the shower, and Emily gets in too with her slip on. Dylan keeps bleeding from his head as Emily hugs him and tries to kiss his face cast.

The doctors figure out Dylan left, but they can't do anything about it. Feeling better, Dylan tries to work on his next book that his publisher keeps bugging him about. Dylan's office has a bunch of laptops but they are never turned on.

 After Dylan's head injury, he starts to space out and go to his void and black plastic walled place where he's naked. Dylan stops taking his pills but Emily starts taking them. They fight about her pill addiction. Dylan goes to his pyschotherapist in a giant conference room. He is prescribed the medication that Emily takes.

Meanwhile, the other couple Jim and Amy (Victoria Viveiros) get drunk and fight. They don't have sex anymore, but Amy's job at the office at the bank is very stressful. Every woman in this movie wears tank tops and jeans. Dylan and Emily invite them over for wine, beer and sliced bread dinner. Dylan ask Jim's daughter Aly (Danielle Andrade) about school projects, but Jim says Dylan wouldn't be interested in that stuff but he is and that means a lot to Amy.

Dylan keeps hacking. Dylan and Emily reconnect in his office by throwing books, computers and papers off the desk then rip each other's shirts off and then have "sex." They invite Amy and Jim and Aly to a BBQ by their pool. They also invite Dylan's neurologist and her fiance. Leah didn't know Dylan was in the cast because she didn't read his chart?! Leah and Dylan don't know who the other is until Leah's
"it's a magical day" notebook falls out of her pocket and Dylan picks it up. They hold hands even though Dylan is married and Emily is right there. Jim gets drunk at the BBQ, gropes Emily and knocks over a plate of hot dogs.

Aly comes over to use Dylan and Emily's pool, she takes off her top, Dylan is home. Then she takes a bubble bath. She tries to seduce Dylan, but he tells her she needs to stop it. 

Amy is fed up with Jim, so she pulls a gun on him while he is waxing his Ferrari in the garage, the thing he does all the time.  She threatens to shoot the car, instead she shoots and kills Jim. Aly walks in and sees her dad dying but Amy won't let her go to him. Amy tells Aly that it was suicide and to call 911. Aly sees her step-mom stage it as suicide. Dylan just happens to come over, he grabs Jim and smears blood all over his face as he cradles Jim. 

Emily keeps taking pills. Dylan runs into Leah walking around a duck pond. They reconnect and find the treasure box and they have sex under the pine tree. Meanwhile Emily overdoses on pills and dies. Dylan finds Emily dead, he is sad for five seconds but then is with Leah.

 Dylan tells Leah about his hacking of government secrets. He eat a spinach pile on a plate while she watches. He puts the plate on top of an unstable paper pile and it all falls over, then they laugh. Dylan is worried about telling Leah about his hacking secrets. As they sleep a mysterious pair of legs/shoes gets into their house and shakes a mirror around that drips blood. Leah is kidnapped while on the phone with Dylan, but the kidnapper drops his note about where he is supposed to take her. She is in the trailer outside the storage facility . Dylan uses the magic stone to walk through the unlocked trailer and save her. 

Dylan then has a big press conference telling about his hacking. Various banks, insurance brokers, senators come up, state their wrongdoings then die by suicide: gun, pills, slit wrists. Dylan and Leah walk off into the field together. The End.

This is a Neil Breen production all the way, he did everything. He made up fake costuming, make up and catering companies to fill in the credits bu then reveals that anything starting with NB is a Neil Breen company.

Neil is comfortable in his naked body and wants to share that onscreen. The sex scenes are creepy, like he paid women actors so he could touch them. I've seen worse movies. The runtime is 100 minutes but it strangely moves even though the pacing is beyond strange. The character of Dylan doesn't care about his friend's death or his wife's death. It's never explained why Dylan and Emily are having problems. The other couple doesn't really get to what their problem is, aside from they both drink, don't have sex anymore and Amy is too busy at her job. Both couple have conversations that are strangely circular and reveal nothing. There is a wispy thing that moves across the screen. Did Dylan always have powers from the stone or they were unlocked with the car crash? The computers being off and the limited locations hint that this could all be taking place in his mind. It's super weird, terribly acted but one of a kind.