Honeymoon with the Band
Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare (1987)
directed by John Fasano
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Not only did Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare remind me of my time spent driving to the Fat Possum recording studio outside of Water Valley in my mid-twenties, but it makes the perfect, bottom-of-the-budget-barrel double feature to another self-financed testament to one's imagined self worth, Running Out of Luck. The affection I feel for Canadian bodybuilder/rocker Jon Mikl Thor can only exist in tandem with how terrible this movie is. It's the equivalent of something produced in a mildly imaginative kid's backyard, except that Thor is kind enough to float you a shower scene where his breasts are bigger than the girl's.
Cravats are meaningless for a movie like The Edge of Hell (the original, less fitting title), where sincerity and narcissism are two sides of the same crooked coin. Thor's personality is closest to that of a delusional professional wrestler, but his take on the domestic life of a heavy metal rock n' roller is more innocent than even staged TV. Thor's fictional band, the Tritons, decides to record a new album in an old barn in rural Ontario said to have been used by "Rod Stewart and Alice Cooper," presumably together. But the place is full of demons, and as the inevitable group tensions melt away while each member pairs off with a wife or girlfriend for sex, he or she is systematically killed by very silly-looking monsters. The rising body count and accompanying smell of blood eventually draws out Beelzebub himself, but - in a genuinely great twist - Thor reveals that he is an "arch angel" in disguise, sent to challenge His Satanic Majesty to a duel. Groupies from town, the addled manager, the bass player in Spandex: all were a vision conjured to lure the devil into the open.
I can't underscore how bad it all is, but I continue to write about it because it won me over. What, exactly, is Thor - producer, screenwriter, star - trying to say? Something about how difficult it is to record a metal record? That wives don't get enough credit, or front men are misunderstood sweethearts? Who knows? But Thor is willing to show rockers as lousy, distracted lovers who could use a little hellish pep in the attention they pay to their significant others. When the director asks for a crane shot, Thor the producer obliges.
That recording studio in Mississippi sat on a street in the middle of nowhere. At night, the woods felt close, and getting to the driveway was like traveling through a covered bridge, or something out of Faulkner before the Compsons cleared the land. The old house could easily have been haunted; it had the smell of a hunting cabin that is only opened from time to time and can never seem to get free of its past. But I remember it fondly, in spite of promises to myself that I never would.
directed by John Fasano
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Not only did Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare remind me of my time spent driving to the Fat Possum recording studio outside of Water Valley in my mid-twenties, but it makes the perfect, bottom-of-the-budget-barrel double feature to another self-financed testament to one's imagined self worth, Running Out of Luck. The affection I feel for Canadian bodybuilder/rocker Jon Mikl Thor can only exist in tandem with how terrible this movie is. It's the equivalent of something produced in a mildly imaginative kid's backyard, except that Thor is kind enough to float you a shower scene where his breasts are bigger than the girl's.
Cravats are meaningless for a movie like The Edge of Hell (the original, less fitting title), where sincerity and narcissism are two sides of the same crooked coin. Thor's personality is closest to that of a delusional professional wrestler, but his take on the domestic life of a heavy metal rock n' roller is more innocent than even staged TV. Thor's fictional band, the Tritons, decides to record a new album in an old barn in rural Ontario said to have been used by "Rod Stewart and Alice Cooper," presumably together. But the place is full of demons, and as the inevitable group tensions melt away while each member pairs off with a wife or girlfriend for sex, he or she is systematically killed by very silly-looking monsters. The rising body count and accompanying smell of blood eventually draws out Beelzebub himself, but - in a genuinely great twist - Thor reveals that he is an "arch angel" in disguise, sent to challenge His Satanic Majesty to a duel. Groupies from town, the addled manager, the bass player in Spandex: all were a vision conjured to lure the devil into the open.
I can't underscore how bad it all is, but I continue to write about it because it won me over. What, exactly, is Thor - producer, screenwriter, star - trying to say? Something about how difficult it is to record a metal record? That wives don't get enough credit, or front men are misunderstood sweethearts? Who knows? But Thor is willing to show rockers as lousy, distracted lovers who could use a little hellish pep in the attention they pay to their significant others. When the director asks for a crane shot, Thor the producer obliges.
That recording studio in Mississippi sat on a street in the middle of nowhere. At night, the woods felt close, and getting to the driveway was like traveling through a covered bridge, or something out of Faulkner before the Compsons cleared the land. The old house could easily have been haunted; it had the smell of a hunting cabin that is only opened from time to time and can never seem to get free of its past. But I remember it fondly, in spite of promises to myself that I never would.
posted by NPK at 12:01 AM
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