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.
No comments:
Post a Comment