The Black Roses DVD Review

With the underground success of Metalocalypse, the deification of Ozzy Osbourne as reality television star, and countless Behind the Music profiles in which aging headbangers warmly reminisce about their glory days of boozing and whoring, it was only a matter of time before someone transferred The Black Roses from a forgotten video tape master to a commercially available DVD (Synapse Films).

It's a matter of personal taste whether such a transfer should ever have occurred, and certainly depends on your age and tastes circa 1988. If around that time you teased your hair and strangled your leg with a bandana, then you likely already own a copy of this movie which you store on the shelf next to the Lost Boys and This is Spinal Tap. If you never experienced this sordid time in history, then viewing this movie about a demonic heavy metal band who wreaks havoc on a small town will most likely leave you with a look of dumb bewilderment.

Heavy metal was at the peak of its popularity in 1988, with many of its sharper edges dulled by commercial and popular pressures. In this regard, metal was ripe for roasting, and it's not surprising that the Black Roses treats its subject with a healthy dose of humor. In the film, heavy metal is a style of music literally played by demons that causes youths to become hypersexual and violent. The promotional trailer for the movie tells us that "everything your parents warned you about heavy metal was right," and the movie supports this thesis: a horny metal chick seduces a lecherous father, giving him a heart attack; a disgruntled metalhead runs his mother over in the driveway for bitching about his late schedule; a demonic lizard crawls out of a stereo speaker to feast on a dad who criticized his child's long hair.

While some of the images are comical, others are surprisingly violent. In one scene, a dazed headbanger grabs a snub nosed pistol and for no reason other than the glory of metal, blasts his father in the head, spattering blood on his smiling childhood portrait. The mix of the utterly ridiculous (death by stereo) which the fairly edgy (handgun patricide), keep the movie pleasantly unpredictable if not entirely coherent. In the end, a concerned English teacher is able to thwart his horny and deadly students, sneak into the Black Roses concert hall with a can of gasoline, and burn the demons while they continue to rock and roll.

The Black Roses is a fun premise with cult written all over it in more ways than one. The movie delivers metallic glory to anyone capable of withstanding its pop metal score and righteously configuring his or her flux capacitor to 1988.