Black Roses (1988)

A rock band comes to a small town and brings a reign of terror and violence with them in 'Black Roses' a film I came across due to fellow film reviewer Eric Harrison and I wasn't disappointed. The film is a fun movie with lots of cheap monster costumes and heavy metal music throughout and its 80's cheesy goodness. The film's hero is a high school English teacher who is trying to save his students from the titular rock band before they take their souls. He is one of the blandest protagonists ever, with his classy porn 'st
ache and flannel shirts every other scene.

Even the kids themselves are a laugh riot, with one in particular clearly being at least 35 years old yet they don't try hard at all to conceal that fact. Every time I look at the guy he makes me laugh my ass off, he might have been older than the teacher himself. It's all part of the film's charm however. Films like this you either love for its cheese or you hate, therefore it really makes the film difficult to review its cons and pros, since they tend to be the same. The film itself is very cheap, down to its poor acting, camera work, and special effects. One of the scenes in particular has the hero fighting in a one on one punching match against a giant lizard monster that looks painfully stupid, even down to the Styrofoam denting in when its kicked in the crotch.

The film does have some notable cameos from 80's band King Kobra and Lizzy Borden and the music is the best part of the film, especially if you love this kind of thing. The music is catchy as hell and I would love to find the soundtrack someday. You also have a cameo from Julie Adams of 'Creature from the Black Lagoon' fame as a cranky church lady who very much disapproves of the Black Roses band. The director also made 'Rock and Roll Nightmare' which is another film I recommend to 80's horror fans as it provides the same fun.

Overall, I really enjoyed 'Black Roses' due to its fun and quite frankly stupid nature which leaves me in a very hard spot. Do I really rate this movie on the same scale as others on this blog? I don't believe that is really fair when it comes to a movie like this, but at the same time it's not really fair to review it differently than other bad films I've seen and reviewed. Let's label this film as a 'Best Bad Movie' and rate it on that shall we?

FUN FACTOR:

THE FILM ITSELF:

I would like to personally thank Eric Harrison at Horror Twitch Review for showing me this film. You can check out his YouTube site HERE. Thanks again and thanks for reading.