Tag: Monsters

Black Roses (1988)

Posted on by fenrisfil

Heavy Metal Horror, “Black Roses” is directed by John Fasano. At this point in his career he was a relative unknown. Later he would gain some solid writing credits and become a popular Hollywood script doctor. Back in 1988 he had only one directing credit to his name. That was for another Heavy Metal themed horror called “Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare” (1987). Writing credits for this one went to Cindy Cirile (John’s now ex-wife). John was obviously a metal head and by the late 80’s that’s no surprise. This was the era where metal was mainstream. So heavy metal themed horror was inevitable and there are many examples of it throughout the 80’s.

Heavy Metal was also highly controversial in the 80’s. It was linked with the Satanic Panic and Court cases had been brought against the likes of Judas Priest and Ozzy Osbourne for allegedly encouraging suicides. In our story the band “The Black Roses” want to open their first US tour with an appearance in the small town of Mill Basin. Despite local opposition the band play a series of gigs, but they have a secret. The band actually are demons here to corrupt the youth. The only person that can stand in their way is local school teacher Matthew Moorhouse (Played by John Martin).

Ready To Rock

This is a movie I would describe as “Fun trash”. The budget for the movie was reportedly one million dollars. The directors previous heavy metal horror cost a mere $52,000 and ended up a big success. It’s notable that what made it work though was it’s trashier aspects. Many critics said it was unintentionally funny. So upgrading the budget for a similar film could have been a recipe for disaster. It’s hard to say if the film was financially successful. While it was originally due a theatrical release, it ended up going direct to video. In the 80’s however that market was booming. That inflated budget mostly went towards creature effects, which is one of the films strengths. These effects look dated by today’s standards, but they aren’t terrible.

Not all the budget was spent on effects though. A great deal was put towards providing the songs for the soundtrack. The band “The Black Roses” was made up mostly of members of King Kobra. This was former Ozzy Osbourne Drummer Carmine Appice’s band. While most of the songs on the soundtrack are by this group, there are also tracks from Lizzie Borden, Bang Tango and a few others. The movie makes sure to give you the time to enjoy each song, which makes it all the more unfortunate the tracks aren’t particularly good. Still, they do the job and the band are the villains anyway, so maybe the music didn’t need to be great!

Dirty Demons Done Dirt Cheap

When it comes to plot, this movie keeps it as straight forward as possible. It doesn’t waste much time or hold much back from the viewer. In the very first scene we see the band in full demon form (Notably different looking to when they transform later) and see the kids at the concert similarly transformed. We do get time to get to know some of the characters and while it’s very bare bones it does what it needs to. Things fully kick off fairly early (Compared to a lot of 80’s films) and they really do showcase a great variety of hellspawn. None of it really seems to have much purpose though and the truth is the kids are far more effective threats before they transform.

That is the big dilemma for this film. The creature effects are its strength but the lack of mobility for those beings really makes them seem almost comical and not a threat at all. This isn’t helped by the way Matthew manages to defeat all The Black Roses demons entirely by himself in a room full of monstrously transformed teenagers. So this is why we are back at “Fun trash”. You really have to shut your brain down a bit and just enjoy the ridiculous visuals. A few beers should make that pretty easy. I’m going to be generous here and give this one a 5.5/10. What can I say, I’m a sucker for movies that mix horror and metal!

Rating: 5.5 out of 10.

Ghoulies (1984)

Posted on by fenrisfil

For the second Charles Band produced horror of this October’s viewings (With at least one more to come) I’m checking out “Ghoulies” from 1984. This was a well known low budget horror back in the day that I was always aware of, but never got around to checking out. That is likely because it seemed obviously inferior to “Gremlins” (1984) and “Critters” (1986) while covering much the same ground. As a fan of the kind of imaginative low budget horror that Band usually producers though I think it’s time I gave it a chance. So let’s see if these little monsters can stand tall or not.

Dark Past.

Ghoulies is directed by Luca Bercovici in his directorial debut. Originally Band was going to direct this himself but back out when he was unable to secure Stan Winston to do the effects. It was written by Bercovici and Jefery Levy. The film had a difficult journey in it’s production. Warner Bros sued the production company to stop them using the name since they were at the same time developing Gremlins, though this was unsuccessful the production also ran out of funding which delayed release until after Gremlins had come out. Thus regardless of the truth, Ghoulies would always be seen as a Gremlins rip off.

The movie stars Peter Liapis as “Jonathan Graves” a young man unaware that he was meant to be a human sacrifice as a baby. He was saved from that fate by his father and raised away from his evil father. Obvious to all this, 25 years later he has inherited his fathers estate and moves in. On investigating the old mansion he finds various occult relics and is drawn to use them, eventually summoning the little demons known as Ghoulies. However, this was all an evil trap by his now dead father, the return from the grave and steal his son’s youth. Jonathan is joined by his girlfriend “Rebecca” (Lisa Pelikan) and a group of somewhat goofy friends. The friends are actually quite amusing to watch, though it’s probably a good job none of their roles asked a lot of them.

Black Magic.

The first act sets up the characters and the second shows Jonathan turning to the dark side. It’s not until the third act though that the Ghoulies really come into play. Before this they are just sort of hanging around. This puts it in line with a lot of low budget direct to VHS horrors that promised a lot on the cover and then delivered something barely related to it. In that regard, it’s not the worst I’ve seen, but it doesn’t contrast it well with Gremlins or Critters.

This is really an Evil Warlock story that happens to have Ghoulies on the side. This should be obvious by the lack of Ghoulies in these screenshots. A lot of that is probably due to the low budget, when the Ghoulies do get involved they are pretty much just launched at victims to bite them. Given the budget though, the creatures didn’t actually look too bad. I especially liked the variety (Back in the day I thought they’d all be the toilet Ghoulies from the poster). I’ve seen far worse in movies that cost more so credit for that. One creature that actually bursts out of a clown doll looked particularly cool.

On a side note: The scene from the poster with the slime Ghoulie popping out of the toilet was actually added later after the poster was made. That’s B-Movies for you! It’s almost blink and you miss it. It’s actually quite impressive that they did go back and add the scene given the budget issues they had. It doesn’t really add anything to the movie, but it was a cool visual. You can see the entire scene at the end of the trailer below.

Down The Pan.

Ghoulies has a reasonable amount of charm and is ultimately not terrible unless you actually put it up against the very good Critters or a masterpiece like Gremlins. While it doesn’t hold a candle to either of those it provides adequate entertainment for its (fairly short) run time. Fans of ambitious low budget horror will find something here to entertain them. This is a 5/10

Rating: 5 out of 10.