1. Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare
I've been wanting to have a John Fasano tribute for quite some time, since he tragically passed away the same day as our first Bad Movie Night, on July 19, 2014. So for our third Bad Movie Night, we watched three John Fasano films, starting with 'Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare' (aka 'The Edge of Hell'). Jon Mikl Thor starred in this hilariously bad rock 'n' roll themed movie that more or less turned into a religious film... But I'll come back to that in a bit. To begin with, at an old farmhouse a young boy watches his parents die when a skeleton/demon comes out of the oven and kills them. Then they must have strapped a camera to a cat and had it run wild around a living room for several minutes, followed by about 10 minutes of a van driving. The van arrives at the old farmhouse and Thor and his band 'The Tritonz' get out and talk about how they're there to record an album. They do the dishes a lot and sometimes they practice their songs (with strobe lights going because that makes practicing and recording way better). There are also several uncomfortable and uninteresting sex scenes that become really confusing if you think about them after the movie ends. Oh, and demons are roaming the house, killing the band members and turning them into more demons! After all that nonsense, we get to the final showdown (this is when things start to feel dangerously religious) where Thor's girlfriend turns into a huge demon and Thor declares he is an angel and he has been expecting the demon, and apparently nothing that had previously happened had actually happened (meaning there were lots of weird sex scenes that Thor had just imagined, or something). Thor thwarts the demon's starfish and sends the demon back to hell in what looked like about $10 worth of fireworks. This movie was worth watching for the creatures alone, but I'm going to recommend it to everyone anyway for no reason whatsoever.
2. Black Roses
In the quiet town of Mill Basin, 40 year old high school students eagerly await their favorite band, The Black Roses, who have announced a several day concert there. Their teacher consistently tries to teach them about Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson, but he can never seem to remember how long class is and the bell gets the better of him every time. The adults in the town don't like the idea of The Black Roses, and they have a town meeting and even show up to the first concert. Fortunately for the kids, the band is hip to what the parents are doing, so they start the show with a little rock ballad number that everyone can appreciate. The parents leave after the first song, believing the music is innocent enough, leaving The Black Roses to drop the act and rock everyone's faces off. The kids love it and keep coming back night after night, becoming steadily less interested in school and getting involved with all sorts of criminal activities. The teacher notices that the students don't care anymore and that their parents are all getting murdered, so he investigates and discovers the band is not what they seem to be and tries to stop them from brainwashing the town's youth. 'Black Roses' was the second night of our third Bad Movie Night, and I have to say there is nothing I don't love about this movie. It is delightfully bad with a great soundtrack and some fun effects and costumes.
3. The Jitters
Rounding out the John Fasano Tribute night, 'The Jitters' was the third and final movie of our third Bad Movie Night, and man is it a bad movie. It isn't the same kind of bad as 'Rock 'N' Roll Nightmare' or 'Black Roses', since both of those were at least somewhat exciting. This movie made me want to fall asleep several times, and a few people watching actually did. The film takes place in Chinatown, where some weirdly persistent bad guys keep terrorizing a store full of knick knacks for no apparent reason. Then a bunch of Chinese vampires that hop and growl start attacking everyone and they can only be stopped by sticking a piece of paper with some writing to their faces. It had James Hong, and he is always great, but other than that this movie was really lame.
