It must have been an interesting time in the 80s when the biggest thing to worry about was the dangers of subversive rock and heavy metal music. Black Roses is a slasher that sort of doubles as a PSA for the PMRC, seeming to posit that maybe heavy metal really IS bad and will make kids kill people! Finally, someone is tackling the real issues!
This starts off with shots of this band of weird demons, making GWAR look like they could play your corporate holiday party even if only through believability, playing a song… or, rather, miming along as Lizzy Borden’s “Me Against the World” plays. It’s a good song and got my hopes up unjustifiably for the movie. So now I have a bit of a grudge against it. Though, frankly, what I heard of the newer Lizzy Borden material maybe should've clued me in.
Then we’re introduced to your stereotypical small town with a lot of Christian stuff going on like banning rock and roll concerts because they’re Satanic and will destroy the moral fabric of society, etc. One lady, who I believe was a Frankenstein’s monster combined of all the uptight Christian moms of the 70s and 80s and who has probably never known what fun is, just straight up reads some of this band Black Roses’ lyrics out loud. C’mon. You know the delivery is half of it.
But apparently Black Roses are cleared to play the small town anyway – it’s apparently the band’s first live show ever, and they’ve only ever played in the studio and have mysteriously chosen this random backwater town as the location to play for four nights straight or some shit. Well, all of that sounds completely insane, better just greenlight it and let it happen! No red flags!
There’s a bunch of other stuff that happens. Like there’s the high school teacher who spends the whole movie trying and failing to get his students to care about Wordsworth’s poetry. It doesn’t go anywhere. As a bonus, he’s apparently involved in some weird romance with one of his students! This guy becomes the hero of the movie, by the way. This is our moral compass for this grand epic of a film.
I do think the first rock show is funny where the band pretends to be this nice sentimental pop ballad type of band for the first song, only while the adults are in the room – then as soon as the adults go ‘huh I guess this music isn’t that bad’ and leave, the band immediately strips off their clothes revealing skintight black leather, and begin singing about how they’re going to take over the town! But nah, I’m sure the lyrics are just metaphoric. You know - rock and roll at its best is just open to all sorts of interpretations.
The rock shows keep getting weirder and weirder after that – by the end, it’s literally just chanting with red lights like it’s the cult from “Mandy.” Except the guy in that movie played better music than this. Frankly, I know there have been periods where there has been music that got popular that was super avant garde or atmospheric, very removed from what was traditionally popular. But I’m pretty sure this shit isn’t charting. Maybe you should go back to the drawing board.
I guess all of this hypnotizes the kids, and they start all wearing black, acting ruder to their teachers and parents and whatnot. As we know, children have never acted out before. This is totally new behavior as of the late '80s. I'm glad the movie is this socially aware. Then things get even worse and they start killing everyone. The kills aren’t even very good. Like one is a car hitting someone, another is a gunshot to the head. Yeah – real slasher hall of fame shit. I personally want my on-screen deaths to be better.
The main source of morality in all this is the teacher, you know, the guy who has a forbidden romance with a high school girl. Fantastic source of good and bad, I say!
The climax, where the teacher goes and tries to burn down the concert while all the kids are in the building, involves some of the worst CGI you’ve ever seen. It’s seriously like somebody was handed an assignment to make the goofiest looking CGI monsters possible. Like I guess the point of the movie was to show off how the evils of rock and roll were. To me it was just like I’d rather convert back to Christianity than ever see this shit again. Mission accomplished, movie. You won.
Overall the whole thing is complete garbage. Go listen to rock and roll and ignore this whole movie!
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