Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare

1987 "When you raise Hell...the Devil must be paid - in full!"
3.8| 1h23m| en| More Info
Released: 10 July 1987 Released
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Synopsis

At an old farmhouse, a family mysteriously dissapears at the hands of evil. Years later, hair metal band The Tritons comes to the farmhouse, whose barn now features a 24-track recording studio. Lead singer John Triton gets the band to perform their first night in the farmhouse after dinner, and weird little beasties suddenly appear, and strange things start to happen. Band members (and their tag along girlfriends) begin to act strangely and vanish one by one. Soon, only John Triton remains, and he holds a secret. Finally, the evil shows itself and a battle between heaven and hell ensues....

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Reviews

Console best movie i've ever seen.
TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
MartinHafer Ignore my numerical vote--this is a bad movie but only in the best possible way!! I am a bad movie fan, but not all bad films. Some bad films are dreadfully boring and I hate them (such as "The Conqueror" or "Cracking Up"). However, a small group of film are bad but hilariously bad--so bad, so silly, so unbelievably stupid that you can't help but like them. I love films like "The Apple" and "Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare" because they don't take themselves seriously--and they revel in their badness! Now this isn't to say the film is all bad--the music, for 80s hair band tunes, is great stuff and made a wonderful soundtrack to an apocalyptically bad film.This film is basically like taking "Halloween" or "Friday the 13th" and injecting them with great tunes--along with taking about about 98% of their budget! It's hard to imagine, but the film was made in only seven days and cost a paltry $53,000 to produce. This budget, adjusted to inflation, makes it even cheaper to make than Ed Wood's "Plan 9 From Outer Space"! The film begins with the slaughter of some family. Then, many years later, a rock band goes on a retreat in the middle of no where (Canada) to work on their music and cut their next album. However, the place is infested with demonic hand puppets who wipe out the cast one by one until their is a final climactic battle between a large-breasted guy and a giant Satan puppet that throws evil starfish at him! You really have to see it to believe how bad it is--but also how incredibly funny it is.By all means watch the film--it's horrible and funny. But be prepared--like so many slasher films of the day, there is LOTS of nudity. But, considering that the movie is all about Satan and his hand puppets butchering rock stars, you wouldn't think to show this to kids or your mother! So amazingly bad AND cool at the same time, you just have to see it. And, if you can't stand the film (because it is dumb), just listen to the songs--they really are awfully good.
Red-Barracuda To say the very least, they don't make them like this anymore.The Edge of Hell is really like nothing you will ever have seen before. It a horror film that epitomizes the term 'eighties cheese'. You would think after witnessing this that it must surely have been written by a 14 year old boy, and possibly a slightly stupid one. But no, this is the work of Jon Mikl Thor the lead actor and pioneer of the completely forgotten heavy metal sub-genre known as muscle-rock. He sports a haircut so obscene it is easily the most disturbing element in the entire movie. His music is mind-bogglingly awful and he gets to play a couple of tracks in full for our benefit. Lyrically you will be hard pushed to find anything more banal. But of course the sheer stupidity of this film is the chief reason to see it. Thor is nothing if not a one-off, and as events unfold in this film you will agree that this cheese-fest is certainly unique.The story is borderline incomprehensible. It's sort of about a possessed house where a heavy metal band have decided to record music in but by the end you will be left entirely baffled and unsure just what exactly has unfolded before your eyes. Characters disappear and reappear with really no rhyme nor reason. For instance, about half-way in a bunch of groupies appear in the middle of the night for a scene that has truly no purpose whatsoever. The monsters in the film compromise for the most part of finger puppets and cheap masks. They are completely ridiculous. As is the accent of the drummer – was he meant to be Australian? English? Who knows quite honestly.However, nothing, I repeat NOTHING, can prepare you for the final confrontation. Up to this scene the film has been a pretty strange experience. A combination of lame horror, vaguely hideous soft-core sex and mind-bogglingly awful hair metal music performances. But the finale takes everything that has gone before and disregards it with an extended scene where Thor turns into a character called The Intercessor and battles Beelzebub. Words are simply not adequate at describing the contents of this scene. But suffice to say Thor strips down to his leather underpants, sports eye-liner and has his previously ridiculous haircut made even more ridiculous via the application of a bottle of hairspray. The homo-erotic nature of this metal warrior is simply impossible to ignore. He then proceeds to battle the giant puppet that constitutes Beelzebub. For some reason the demon begins this confrontation by throwing starfish at our hero. They then engage in a wrestling match. This whole scene is quite honestly legendary, and worth enduring the other rubbish for.Yeah, as I say, they don't make them like this anymore.
Coventry Undoubtedly one of the most pointless and annoying trends in the world of 80's cinema were the horror/hard rock music hybrids. Presumably inspired by the success of "Heavy Metal" (1981), the eighties spawned a whole series of movies in which untalented and ridiculous looking rock band members suddenly found themselves trapped in all sorts of horrific situations like zombie infested little towns, cannibalistic mountain families, demoniacally possessed farmhouses etc… "Rock & Roll Nightmare" is just one of them, but there's also "Blood Tracks", "Terror on Tour", "Black Roses", "Rocktober Blood" and "Hard Rock Zombies". The problem with these movies, however, is that they are terrible for all the obvious reasons. The already thin and derivative story lines are too frequently interrupted to show integral clips of atrocious rock songs, the players are goofy looking amateur musicians without any form of acting skills, budgetary restrictions left right and center, incredibly cheesy special effects and zero amount of suspense. This particular dud, written as well as produced and starring the unimaginably pompous Jon Mikl Thor, plays in an entirely separate league of awful, though. The pre-credits opening sequence is the best part of the whole film, but it promptly goes downhill from there onwards. One windy morning at a secluded countryside farm, a mother calls her husband and young son down for breakfast but she senses there's a sinister presence floating around her kitchen. Only a few moments later the father and son discover the heavily burned and mutilated woman inside the oven. Albeit pretty cheesy and totally random, this intro falsely raises the impression of being the start of a good old-fashioned 80's horror gem, but you seriously shouldn't get your hopes up. The exaggeratedly overlong and boring sequence showing only a white van driving up to the farm already makes it pretty clear that Jon Mikl Thor didn't have much of a story to tell. This is the sort of scene that you use to display the credits, but they already did that prior, so the van's journey actually qualifies as padding footage and we're barely five minutes into the film. Thor is the lead singer/songwriter of a band called The Tritons, and he ordered his fellow band members and their girlfriends to the remote farmhouse – which has a completely operational recording studio set up in the barn – to rehearse and record a new album as well as practice their podium act. Triton's posse exists of a bunch of imbeciles, including a nerdy producer, a drummer with a horrendously fake Australian accent and a couple of very much in love newlyweds (very rock & roll, you guys!). Luckily for everybody, it only takes a couple of stupid rocks songs before the demonic forces get fed up with the band's presence and start taking over their personalities. "Rock & Roll Nightmare" is a boring and soporific ordeal with absolutely nothing recommendable in it. Over 75% of the film is irrelevant and shameless padding footage, mainly extravagant stage acts and gratuitous soft-core sex sequences, and the actual "evil forces" plot is underdeveloped. The special effects are pitiable, with cute one-eyed demon monsters that look more like cartoon characters and a disappointing lack of bloodshed. Director John Fasano often attempts to imitate the classic "The Evil Dead", especially through hectic camera motions up the stairs and uncanny sound effects, but actually this turkey doesn't even deserve to mentioned in one and the same sentence with Sam Raimi's classic. Joh Mikl Thor and his rock buddies are imbeciles with hideous outfits and embarrassing hairstyles, and their movie should disappear into oblivion. Apparently there's also a belated sequel called "Intercessor: Another Rock & Roll Nightmare"… Excuse me for not ever going to watch that.
Vomitron_G Screw those possible spoilers. You need to read this, if only for the fact that this film is still out there, unrestrained and does not come with a warning.It is virtually unfathomable that this film was conceived by regular folks out to make a normal low budget (horror) movie. Nobody in their right minds would come up with an idea like this - or a "concept" if you will - and then attempt to actually turn it into a movie. And only an insane aspiring "producer" (or one that has lost his wits a long time ago) would decide to invest money in something like this. Coca Cola Company, at the time, did see some benefit in it, though. Understandably, since the script contained a scene where a little demon-critter gets his hand flattened by a can of Coca Cola. That's pretty much the same like saying that Coca Cola is good for you. It's a force, or a tool, of pure goodness which you can use to fight off evil. This ridiculous theory even makes perfect sense in the light of this film, as basically - if you can actually say this film is about something - it is simply about Good versus Evil and nothing more. This should also tell you exactly how ridiculously senile this miserable piece of celluloid turd is. Because you tell me now, does that sound like a concept you or I could have come up with? Like I said, this epic failure was not made by normal people. "Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare" (aka "The Edge Of Hell") really is a shock to any young/struggling filmmaker's system to see how a steaming pile of cesspool-droppings like this ever received enough money to have cranes & dollies come with the "crew" that made this film. Actually, this is not a film; it's an un-film. A thing that never should have been.It was conceived, writing & probably influenced on many levels by one person. A guy named John Mikl Thor. He also (tries to) act(s) in it. Why? Why would he want to do that? Make some sort of un-film like this and then be the "star" in it? He can't act, he can't write, he can't sing, he can't... wait, it'll probably be much easier and quicker to list the things he actually can do... Nothing.So, okay, clearly Mr. Thor is a musician. Not a very good one, I suspect. Nor does he understand anything about 'the art of making music' and show this on film. When a guitar solo comes on in a song, you can see him playing this on a bass. Playing the air guitar would have been cooler, Mr. Thor. A shame nobody bothered to tell you that. Or perhaps they did, and you just wouldn't listen, right? Also, he's clearly the 'very wrong' type of musician. As becomes evident by the way he just plays his plain self in this flick. If it's so obvious that you've never written down a single musical note on a piece of paper, Mr. Thor, then don't sit your ass down in this movie and pretend that you can while trying to get your 'perfect love song' right. Mr. Thor might eat the cake, but his band members don't munch on sloppy seconds either. Extremely bad third-rate hair-band/poser hard rock music is what we are presented here. There's quite a bunch of sequences where the whole band can be seen rehearsing songs in their barn. But it's not a rehearsal of course. It's just the band performing (i.e. play-backing) like they would 'live', acting all stupid as if they are performing on some imaginary stage. In this case, it looks like they are trying to make it resemble a 7th-rate music video (shot in a barn, for about 3 complete & truly horrible songs). Even a blind guy can see that Mr. Thor just wanted to shamelessly promote his atrocious music and that a very bad horror themed un-film with no plot would be the best way to reach the kids. I suspect the music-vids-shot-in-a-barn segments where intended & created to have them easily removed from the film & turn them into an "official" music video that would hopefully get them some airplay on national TV. That's a pretty lousy scheme there, Mr. Thor.What's this movie about, actually? Well,... nothing. Absolutely nothing. A house. A barn. A bad hard rock band. Horribly dated fashion trends. Abominable music. Ugly people. Sex, nudity, sex. Talking about doing drugs but never actually taking some. Demonic possession. Demon critters. People disappearing, maybe one guy died but I can't recall seeing it. Tits & ass, both male & female. Groupies. Groupies having sex. Groupies vanishing. Groupies re-appearing. An empty house, eventually. A family with a kid from the past. A family with a kid from the past for which we get no explanation. Amazing latex & prosthetics SFX. Superb halloween masks. And an utterly baffling climactic end-battle/boss-fight... here it comes: The devil (a life-sized demon puppet on strings & sticks) appears. Mr. Thor tears off his shirt. Now he looks like a total barbaric moron and then he proclaims he's an arc angel. He proceeds to battle the devil-demon. Another song comes on and they just hold hands & dance in circles until the song ends. Devil-dude goes up in smoke after that. Then there's a final shot of some empty street with houses in some suburban area which I absolutely didn't get, and this un-film ends.This "movie" is impossible to grasp. A product extracted from a deluded mind. But who cares? It's not like anybody died or animals were harmed while making this movie. The film, in whichever format you might find it, does need a warning sticker to come with it, in my opinion. Something like... Caution: This movie can be hazardous to your health. Viewing this without alcohol may cause brain damage.