Black Roses (1988)

 

 

 

In the mid to late 80’s Heavy Metal was a very polarizing music genre.  More so than it is today in that it was touted as The Devil’s music with roots in the claims dating back to the seventies.  The Beatles, believe it or not, were one of the earliest examples of a band using Backmasking which found backwards messages placed on record albums.  With rumors of Satanic messages on Led Zepplin, Judas Priest, and Slayer (just to name a few) albums Black Roses takes it one step further.  Black Roses, a hair metal band has come to the small town of Mill Basin to perform for three nights.  The parents of the town don’t like the idea.  The band decides to give the parents a small sampling of their music that appeases the town elders and they agree to allow the band to perform.  Of course the band plays a more stripped down, “give them what they want to hear” type of performance.  Nothing like what they are really going to perform at their concerts at all.  Matthew, a teacher at the local high school, still doesn’t like the idea.  Matthew is played by John Martin also seen in The Lone Star Kid as well as several soap operas. 

 

Playing the part of the town mayor is character actor Ken Swofford from Captain American 2: Death too Soon and The Domino Principle).  The music was written by Carmine Appice who was in Vanilla Fudge and King Kobra just to name a few of the bands he has been a part of.  Appice also stars as the drummer of Black Roses, Vinnie Apache.  Julie Adams (Creature From the Black Lagoon and Tickle Me) has a small part as Mrs. Miller.  Also starring as one of the town’s parents is Vincent Pastore who you might know better as “Big Pussy” from The Sopranos.  After the first two nights of concerts all the kids attending begin to get weirder and weirder.  They become very withdrawn and begin committing murders.  Parents are now dropping like flies in town.  One of them is eaten by a record player that turns into a monster.  Matthew’s favorite student Julie, kills his ex-girlfriend.  Matthew decides he can’t let the third night happen.  The band are actual demons in disguise and their music is designed to place the teens in a trance which gives the band more power. 

 

The makeup effects are laughable and the creature effects look undone.  The music isn’t that terrible, but it does get a bad rap with only one or two songs being considered average or better.  Black Roses is another of those 80’s low budget film that suffered from a lack of resources as well as being hurried.  The studio forced the director, John Fasano (Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare and The Jitters) to finish the film in just eight weeks.  Crews often were forced to work 16-to-20-hour days to finish the film.  Fasano delivered but the film originally budgeted under 500k ended up costing nearly twice that much coming in at just under a million dollars.  The film isn’t bad and I’m sure if they were given more time, it would have been a much different film.  As it is I’ll grade it right down the middle and go two and a half Satanic Panics out of five.  That seems like a cop out but even cheesiness, which this film is  loaded with, is worth something.