Best movie of this year hands down!

That was an excellent one.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

A metal band rents an old farmhouse to use as a recording studio for their new album. It doesn't take long, however, for things to go horribly wrong. Creatures begin to appear and people start to go missing. Soon, only lead singer John Triton (Jon Mikl Thor) is left to do battle with the devil and his many minions. But Triton is not who he seems and is ready for this battle.A plot summary really can't do Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare justice. There's more here than seems to be at first glance. It's a fairly ambitious plot for a reported $53,000 budget. Speaking of the budget, with limited funds like that, it's amazing how watchable the end product actually is. You can tell that there's a lot of unpaid work by family and friends, not to mention Jon Mikl Thor's music, that were key to making this thing work. And, given the budget, the special effects end up looking "special". No, they won't compete with today's CGI effects or anything from big a big practical effects company, but for what they are, I enjoyed them. And then there's that final fight scene. What a total blast! Even though I had fun watching most of Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare, there were a few things that kept me from fully embracing the film and lowered my overall rating. The main problem comes from the long stretches of the movie where nothing happens. Maybe I"m just getting too old, but endless shower scenes and PG-rated sex scenes do nothing for me. A little more variety might have really helped.Overall, I'm impressed with what these people were able to do. I say "these people" because it's apparent Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare was a group effort. The final product is good, but not great. My slightly above average 6/10 rating seems appropriate.

John Triton (Jon Mikl Thor, who also scripted) and his band Triton rent a secluded farm house that has a 24 track recording studio built in the barn so the group can prepare for a tour and get down ten minutes of new material. What they don't know is that this place just happens to be a portal to hell and soon folks are getting offed faster that Eddie Van Halen's fingers on the guitar. BLACK ROSES director John Fasano proved himself heavy metal horror ready with this debut feature. Well, he proved he could make a film in focus and throw a few monsters around. This starts out as a standard horror yarn but takes a decidedly odd twist at the end. The film is pretty rough around the edges (I had to listen to the audio commentary to figure out what the final two scenes were about), but if you have an itch for big hair and Beelzebub, it will fit the bill. The film appears to have some sort of cult following, most likely due to hipsters digging the totally 80s look and the toned Thor, who really is the poster boy for 80s muscle bound metal.

After what seems like an eternity watching a white van travelling down a series of roads, Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare begins proper at a secluded farm-house where crap 80s hard-rock outfit Triton, led by musclebound singer John Triton (Jon Mikl Thor, who is like David Lee Roth on steroids, but minus the charisma), plan to record their latest album.As the guys (and their big-haired women, who have also come along for the ride) are busy rocking 'n' rolling, evil forces rise up from the bowels of Hell to cause all manner of mayhem; the demons, however, are unaware that front-man John is an undercover archangel out to destroy them all...Heavy rock and horror have always been natural bedfellows, but never has the union been so plain bizarre as in Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare, a nonsensical slice of 80s cheeze, written and produced by it's star Jon Mikl Thor (who proves to be as lousy at scriptwriting as he is at songwriting). Making not a lick of sense from start to finish, this film serves primarily as a glorified music video (we are treated to several bad rock tunes in their entirety), secondly as a spot of soft-core porn (between the music, the band members get it on with their girls), and finally as an actual movie.Unsurprisingly, the acting is dire, the special effects are laughable (the demonic creatures are badly made hand puppets and manky marionettes), and the direction is uninspired (Evil Dead style camera-work yet again), all of which qualifies the film as essential viewing for experienced fans of trash cinema. And if that wasn't enough, there's also Thor's embarrassing heavy rock fashion sense (his wardrobe includes a particularly nasty silver jacket with tails), a band member who speaks with the worst Aussie accent ever (so bad, I thought it was Cockney!), a one-eyed monster chicken in the farmhouse fridge, and an attack by deadly flying starfish (!), all of which should be more than enough to convince you that life ain't complete until you've witnessed this unbelievable crap-fest for yourself.

I had my movie geek friends over for beer and they were like, Jon-Mikl Thor? Whodat? I said "huh"? They emailed our friend who writes a bad movie zine and she hasn't seen it either. This freaks me out. The Intercessor's light is dimming. We must all join hands and shout it to the world. So I made them watch it, and it rocked the house! Seeing it again I realized this is bad in a bad, bad way: these people are not conscious of the crime they are committing, and that is what makes it rock so hard. Thor says that in the end he was supposed to be up on a big hydraulic platform with lightning and sh*t fighting the Alien but they couldn't afford it, so that phenomenal Platonic dialogue at the end is actually a golden Stonehenge moment. Nothing beats the fake Australian for me, although when the idiot hoser landlord turns and goes "heh heh you'll see" it does momentarily steal the movie. What exactly is Thor talking to his friends about in the van that inspires him to those strange gestures? And really, did we really need the camera to pan down to Thor's ass in the shower scene? It was totally uncalled for, especially since he was already winning the Battle of the Boobs. Did he throw in the "Scarborough chapter of the Tritonz Fan Club" as a sop to Gerald Pratley?! Finally, be advised that my girlfriend got me the soundtrack for Christmas...and THERE IS ACTUALLY A TRACK CALLED "I'LL SEE YOU AGAIN, OLD SCRATCH."