Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare (1987)

Perfect cast and a good story

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

A metal band rents an old farmhouse to use as a recording studio for their new album. It doesn't take long, however, for things to go horribly wrong. Creatures begin to appear and people start to go missing. Soon, only lead singer John Triton (Jon Mikl Thor) is left to do battle with the devil and his many minions. But Triton is not who he seems and is ready for this battle.A plot summary really can't do Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare justice. There's more here than seems to be at first glance. It's a fairly ambitious plot for a reported $53,000 budget. Speaking of the budget, with limited funds like that, it's amazing how watchable the end product actually is. You can tell that there's a lot of unpaid work by family and friends, not to mention Jon Mikl Thor's music, that were key to making this thing work. And, given the budget, the special effects end up looking "special". No, they won't compete with today's CGI effects or anything from big a big practical effects company, but for what they are, I enjoyed them. And then there's that final fight scene. What a total blast! Even though I had fun watching most of Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare, there were a few things that kept me from fully embracing the film and lowered my overall rating. The main problem comes from the long stretches of the movie where nothing happens. Maybe I"m just getting too old, but endless shower scenes and PG-rated sex scenes do nothing for me. A little more variety might have really helped.Overall, I'm impressed with what these people were able to do. I say "these people" because it's apparent Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare was a group effort. The final product is good, but not great. My slightly above average 6/10 rating seems appropriate.

Screw those possible spoilers. You need to read this, if only for the fact that this film is still out there, unrestrained and does not come with a warning.It is virtually unfathomable that this film was conceived by regular folks out to make a normal low budget (horror) movie. Nobody in their right minds would come up with an idea like this - or a "concept" if you will - and then attempt to actually turn it into a movie. And only an insane aspiring "producer" (or one that has lost his wits a long time ago) would decide to invest money in something like this. Coca Cola Company, at the time, did see some benefit in it, though. Understandably, since the script contained a scene where a little demon-critter gets his hand flattened by a can of Coca Cola. That's pretty much the same like saying that Coca Cola is good for you. It's a force, or a tool, of pure goodness which you can use to fight off evil. This ridiculous theory even makes perfect sense in the light of this film, as basically - if you can actually say this film is about something - it is simply about Good versus Evil and nothing more. This should also tell you exactly how ridiculously senile this miserable piece of celluloid turd is. Because you tell me now, does that sound like a concept you or I could have come up with? Like I said, this epic failure was not made by normal people. "Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare" (aka "The Edge Of Hell") really is a shock to any young/struggling filmmaker's system to see how a steaming pile of cesspool-droppings like this ever received enough money to have cranes & dollies come with the "crew" that made this film. Actually, this is not a film; it's an un-film. A thing that never should have been.It was conceived, writing & probably influenced on many levels by one person. A guy named John Mikl Thor. He also (tries to) act(s) in it. Why? Why would he want to do that? Make some sort of un-film like this and then be the "star" in it? He can't act, he can't write, he can't sing, he can't... wait, it'll probably be much easier and quicker to list the things he actually can do... Nothing.So, okay, clearly Mr. Thor is a musician. Not a very good one, I suspect. Nor does he understand anything about 'the art of making music' and show this on film. When a guitar solo comes on in a song, you can see him playing this on a bass. Playing the air guitar would have been cooler, Mr. Thor. A shame nobody bothered to tell you that. Or perhaps they did, and you just wouldn't listen, right? Also, he's clearly the 'very wrong' type of musician. As becomes evident by the way he just plays his plain self in this flick. If it's so obvious that you've never written down a single musical note on a piece of paper, Mr. Thor, then don't sit your ass down in this movie and pretend that you can while trying to get your 'perfect love song' right. Mr. Thor might eat the cake, but his band members don't munch on sloppy seconds either. Extremely bad third-rate hair-band/poser hard rock music is what we are presented here. There's quite a bunch of sequences where the whole band can be seen rehearsing songs in their barn. But it's not a rehearsal of course. It's just the band performing (i.e. play-backing) like they would 'live', acting all stupid as if they are performing on some imaginary stage. In this case, it looks like they are trying to make it resemble a 7th-rate music video (shot in a barn, for about 3 complete & truly horrible songs). Even a blind guy can see that Mr. Thor just wanted to shamelessly promote his atrocious music and that a very bad horror themed un-film with no plot would be the best way to reach the kids. I suspect the music-vids-shot-in-a-barn segments where intended & created to have them easily removed from the film & turn them into an "official" music video that would hopefully get them some airplay on national TV. That's a pretty lousy scheme there, Mr. Thor.What's this movie about, actually? Well,... nothing. Absolutely nothing. A house. A barn. A bad hard rock band. Horribly dated fashion trends. Abominable music. Ugly people. Sex, nudity, sex. Talking about doing drugs but never actually taking some. Demonic possession. Demon critters. People disappearing, maybe one guy died but I can't recall seeing it. Tits & ass, both male & female. Groupies. Groupies having sex. Groupies vanishing. Groupies re-appearing. An empty house, eventually. A family with a kid from the past. A family with a kid from the past for which we get no explanation. Amazing latex & prosthetics SFX. Superb halloween masks. And an utterly baffling climactic end-battle/boss-fight... here it comes: The devil (a life-sized demon puppet on strings & sticks) appears. Mr. Thor tears off his shirt. Now he looks like a total barbaric moron and then he proclaims he's an arc angel. He proceeds to battle the devil-demon. Another song comes on and they just hold hands & dance in circles until the song ends. Devil-dude goes up in smoke after that. Then there's a final shot of some empty street with houses in some suburban area which I absolutely didn't get, and this un-film ends.This "movie" is impossible to grasp. A product extracted from a deluded mind. But who cares? It's not like anybody died or animals were harmed while making this movie. The film, in whichever format you might find it, does need a warning sticker to come with it, in my opinion. Something like... Caution: This movie can be hazardous to your health. Viewing this without alcohol may cause brain damage.

After what seems like an eternity watching a white van travelling down a series of roads, Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare begins proper at a secluded farm-house where crap 80s hard-rock outfit Triton, led by musclebound singer John Triton (Jon Mikl Thor, who is like David Lee Roth on steroids, but minus the charisma), plan to record their latest album.As the guys (and their big-haired women, who have also come along for the ride) are busy rocking 'n' rolling, evil forces rise up from the bowels of Hell to cause all manner of mayhem; the demons, however, are unaware that front-man John is an undercover archangel out to destroy them all...Heavy rock and horror have always been natural bedfellows, but never has the union been so plain bizarre as in Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare, a nonsensical slice of 80s cheeze, written and produced by it's star Jon Mikl Thor (who proves to be as lousy at scriptwriting as he is at songwriting). Making not a lick of sense from start to finish, this film serves primarily as a glorified music video (we are treated to several bad rock tunes in their entirety), secondly as a spot of soft-core porn (between the music, the band members get it on with their girls), and finally as an actual movie.Unsurprisingly, the acting is dire, the special effects are laughable (the demonic creatures are badly made hand puppets and manky marionettes), and the direction is uninspired (Evil Dead style camera-work yet again), all of which qualifies the film as essential viewing for experienced fans of trash cinema. And if that wasn't enough, there's also Thor's embarrassing heavy rock fashion sense (his wardrobe includes a particularly nasty silver jacket with tails), a band member who speaks with the worst Aussie accent ever (so bad, I thought it was Cockney!), a one-eyed monster chicken in the farmhouse fridge, and an attack by deadly flying starfish (!), all of which should be more than enough to convince you that life ain't complete until you've witnessed this unbelievable crap-fest for yourself.

The Tritons, your typical 1980s hair band with cheesy songs, is on retreat in Canada in order to rehearse some new songs for an upcoming album. But the farm house they rented, once visited by Alice Cooper, has some otherworldly creatures that are hell-bent on destroying the band and their very lives.This is a "guilty pleasure" 1980s film to the extreme. Poorly acted, poorly directed... really lame music. The special effects are humorous but very clearly low budget. Yet, despite all this the film has a charm. It's what you might call Tim Ritter meets early Peter Jackson... "Killing Spree" meets "Dead Alive". But weirder.Most of the film comes across as either a music video or a softcore porn. When the band isn't performing a song ("Energy" or "Live to Rock") in its entirety (take these out and the film is an hour), they're having sex. And while there's not excessive raw sexuality, there's plenty of gratuitous skin, particularly in a shower scene... it runs a little longer than usual, and we get a nice view of Harry Manasse's brother Slick.While for much of this picture I found myself thinking it was fun but nothing special (and wondering why my friend loaned this to me), there is a dramatic plot shift later on. And, believe it or not, the movie gets even weirder and cheesier... leading into the sequel ("Intercessor"). I never saw the change coming and am still really confused on what the heck I was watching.Synapse has released a lot of great cult and exploitation films ("Street Trash", for one) and this is right at home on their label. While I don't see there being a great resurgence of interest in this one, it has a quality that makes it fun and hard to hate, regardless of how silly and low budget it may be.