Adam Baran

Synapse DVD seems to have it’s eyes on the prize right now. First they release the restored Snake Woman’s Curse and Horrors of Malformed Men, which I reviewed a few days ago (Click Here). Now they’ve put out one of the most hysterically cheesy horror movies I’ve ever seen, the heavy-metal horror shocker Black Roses.

The trailer above is basically all the highlights of the movie in 5 minutes, but it’s really worth seeing in its entirety. It’s about a heavy metal band who for some untold reason decides to kick off their world tour in the sleepy town of Mill Basin, which fortunately for them is rife with teen angst. What the teens don’t know is that the heavy metal band - which is sort of supposed to be like Ozzy but looks more like Twisted Sister or Quiet Riot, only gayer, are demons from hell trying to possess the minds and souls of their fans. A local teacher who prefers to teach about the transcendentalists (snooze!) becomes concerned when his kids start acting like angry zombies and parents start turning up dead by the tour-busloads. Yoinks!

There’s tons of gratuitous body double nudity. In one sequence - the sequence in the trailer where the girl kills her stepdad - right before that there’s a scene where the body double of that girl stands in front of the mirror rubbing her boobs for 10 minutes! It’s great! Plus, all the monsters in the movie are superb 80’s Stan Winston clones, and the final demon that Damian turns into looks more like something from an old fifties creature feature than something that’s supposed to scare us. Synapse also included the hilariously bad audition tapes of all the actors who tried out for the part of Damian, the lead singer of Black Roses. It’s a lineup of some of the most cheesy 80’s hair metal losers ever captured on video.

There’s also an appearance by Vincent “Big Pussy” Pastore, from The Sopranos, as an Italian father who doesn’t like his son’s musical tastes, and ends up getting sucked into a sub-woofer by a demonic spider monster that for some reason, he can’t fight off, even though it’s really small. He delivers a classic movie line when speaking to his son. “Only two kinds of people wear earrings: pirates, and faggots. And I don’t see any ship in our driveway.” This is primo stuff here people! You still have time to Netflix it or pick it up at your local video emporium before All Hallow’s Eve, so get on it!