'80s Trash: Rock & Roll Nightmare

I've seen a lot of bad movies from the 1980s and this is no exception.  This film is the brainchild of Jon Mikl-Thor and John Fasano, two names that are not exactly household.  To fans of shit like this, they are quite famous though.  Thor got famous after his monstrous lead role in Zombie Nightmare, a film that kind of sucks.  Naturally, he was given leeway to write and produce his own movie the following year.  As a DVD-accompanying interview explains, he wanted to write a horror film with a superhero in it.  Naturally, that hero had to be him.  Does this vanity project hold water or is it just a dud?  As a side note, I should mention that this film is also known by an alternate title, which you will see below.  Get out your guitar picks for my review of...

The film begins with a pre-credits scene of  some nice household being taken over and killed by an unseen zombie.  I hope you like the Evil Dead camera, by the way.  After the long credits, we get about five minutes of a car driving down a road towards the house.  Padding at it's finest!  This is also an excuse to play a bunch of music by, you guessed it, Jon Mikl-Thor's band.  After that waste of time, we get the plot.  In a nutshell, a band leader (Thor) who is trying to get his band back on the right track.  He has arranged for them to stay at this Canadian farmhouse and record their next album.  All of the group is there, plus their respective women and the manager.  We get a bit of comedy with the manager before some really self-indulgent stuff with the group.  You see, they all have to have some sort of sex scene in the movie.  Just like Pringles, they can't stop at just one!  We are also 'treated' to the band performing one of its songs in the barn.  Oddly enough, they have no problems playing in unison.  That makes the whole set-up a bit silly, doesn't it?

Unfortunately, the house is haunted by some evil spirits and they don't take kindly to the new residents.  The first victim is the manager, who is seduced by a demon-form and killed.  After a night of un-fulfilling sex with his lady, one of the band members is knocked off.  We get another musical number, since the first one was just so damn great.  The now-demonic band member goes off with his lady, gets her topless and then kills her via a demon arm popping out of his chest.  That same day, the young, happy couple are both killed off-camera by a demon arm.  Don't worry- they already got their prerequisite sex scene out of the way.  After a very disturbing shower scene involving Thor and his lady, we get to see the keyboard player and the drummer finally hook up.  Following that, they see the young boy from the beginning and follow him to a shed.  The boy turns into a demon via some cheap make-up and kills them...off-camera.  This leaves just Thor and his lady to...oops, she's dead now too.  What kind of stupid twist do you have up your sleeve, movie?

As it turns out, this Third Act twist is a doozy.  All of those band members you saw- they were illusions.  The only real person was Thor.  What's going on exactly?  Well, Mr. Thor is actually an Angel who set this whole thing up as a trap to lure out...Satan!  Old Scratch is portrayed here by a silly puppet that barely hides the strings from off-camera.  Thor goes from his normal 'rock star' clothes into his Intercessor outfit, which is...a thong.  Could you put on pants while you fight Satan please?  Much to the dismay of Satan's finger-puppet companions, he gets thoroughly-trounced by the Thor-Angel.  Not even throwing rubber squids at the man can slow him down!  He sends the Devil packing and puts an end to this ridiculous farce.  It's a miracle!

This movie is a giant, ridiculous mess!  It's a string of sex scenes combined with some minor horror moments and glam rock performances.  What part of that is supposed to appeal to, oh, anyone?!?  No offense, Thor, but your band was just not that good.  When you explained in the interviews that you had to write all of these just for the film, I'm not surprised!  The acting is pretty bad here, which is no surprise when you consider that they hired rockers and tried to make them act & not vice-versa.  Thor himself proves that his most marketable role is as a zombie that shambles about!  The reveal with Thor being an Angel is not built-up at all and really makes no sense.  As a comedy, this movie fails.  As a horror film, this movie is not scary at all.  As a film designed to market Thor's music, it fails.  None of the tunes are memorable, even for a guy who likes some pretty out-there foreign rock like Hammerfall and Lordi.  If you want to see a collage of how shitty stuff from the 1980s can be, the film is good for that!

Next up, I try my best to make some sense of the sequel...made in 2005.  This is going to be rough!  Stay tuned...