VHS Vednesday: Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare

ROCK 'N' ROLL NIGHTMARE (1987). Directed by John Fasano. Starring Jon Mikl Thor, Jillian Peri, and Frank Dietz.

Bodybuilder/heavy-metal musician Jon Mikl Thor (probably most familiar for the MST3K classic Zombie Nightmare) stars as...surprise!...a bodybuilder/heavy-metal musician named John Triton, who brings his band (along with the band members' wives and girlfriends) to an old abandoned farmhouse converted into a recording studio. Gradually, muppet-like demons begin appearing all around the place, and people start vanishing one by one, as you might expect. But just when you think the movie couldn't get any more predictable, the filmmakers pull a surprise twist completely out of left field, negating everything that's gone before.

While I'm tempted to keep the twist a secret, I realize that very few people are likely to see the movie in any case, so I'll go ahead and spoil it...it turns out that Triton is actually an angel (or some other kind of heavenly servant) known as "The Intercessor," and he arranged the whole thing to draw the demons out of hiding. The victims? Mere illusions created by the Intercessor. After taunting the demon with this revelation, the Intercessor proceeds to rock him back to Hell through the power of his music. Epic, dude.

Side note: Triton repeatedly mocks the primary demon by calling him "Bub" (short for Beelzebub). This automatically puts him on equal footing with Wolverine.

Who's Leaving This Off Their Resume?

Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare, a pet project of Jon Mikl Thor (in addition to starring, he also wrote the screenplay and co-produced), is undoubtedly the highlight of his film career...though considering he vanished from the screen for 16 years after this, and his only previous films were Zombie Nightmare and a supporting part in the police comedy Recruits, that's really not saying much. However, he was so proud of it that he did manage to get a sequel made 18 years later: Intercessor: Another Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare. The mind boggles at what that one must be like.

The rest of the cast is mostly comprised of newcomers in their only movie, with a couple of exceptions: Steady-working (if not exceptionally famous) actress Lara Daans makes a brief appearance as a groupie, and Frank Dietz, who soon abandoned performing to pursue a career in animation, has a more substantial supporting part as bandmate Roger Eburt. (Yes, that's the character's name.) I don't think they'll be listing this among the highlights of their careers.