Hard Rock Nightmare

Just when you think you've discovered every "heavy metal" horror film from the 80's, an unsung ruby of corundum(b)* falls into your lap.  I feel like I've used that introductory sentence before.  Switch out the sub-subgenre (say, seaside creature features), and yeah, these are well-worn galoshes.  As for this sub-subgenre, I've settled on an exemplar model.  The peak of the mountain, a crag of riffs and spooks.  Good Lord, that's cornier than Jim Cornette shucking an ear of corn while fucking a member of Korn...with a corn cob!  Don't ask what Colonel Sanders did with the kernels.

My pick for the top "heavy metal" fright flick?  It's clearly Black Roses.  You may disagree.  That's fine.  However, if your pick is 1988's Hard Rock Nightmare, we have a problem.  I strongly doubt that we could ever be friends.  This isn't the worst oddment I've pulled from the dustbin (a.k.a. the metagalactic void), but it's not honest with the viewer.  Hell, forget the viewer; it's not honest with prospective consumers at large.  Abrupt left turn!  I struggle with spoilers.  Meaning, apart from twist endings, I never know how much of a film's storyline to unveil.

I have gathered you here today to spoil the ending of Hard Rock Nightmare.  If you don't want to know how it sews itself up, point your browser elsewhere.  Back to sewing!  If this churlish cheapie were a surgeon, it would suture wounds with shoelace and blue raspberry bubble tape.  Eek, that's one wretched vasectomy.  In any event, we are told that the main lad's grandfather was a total prick.  He delighted in scaring the shit out of his grandson (whose name is either Jim or Charlie) by saying that he was a vampire.  He was going to drink Jim's/Charlie's blood and kill his whole family.  Yeah.  Told you he was a prick.

I guess that he also claimed he was a werewolf?  We are led to believe that Jim/Charlie fucking stabbed him and spent the rest of his pre-18 days in therapy.  We cut to the present, and Jim/Charlie is rehearsing with his band in the peace of a remote cabin.  Before you can say "this band sucks," ancillary characters begin to drop off.  They are gashed to death by a...monster.  We are shown a silhouette and a ghostly shot of feral, saffron eyes.  The poster image, indeed.  We get a good look at it.  Repeatedly.  Boy, it's impressive the first time you see it.

Hard Rock Nightmare climaxes with the surviving nobodies removing the monster's mask.  It's an episode of Scooby-Doo!  And it's not even a cool episode.  The cast is interchangeable, the kills are trite, and the cheesiness of the rock 'n' roll cheese is mitigated by the fact that - again - the music sucks.  I realize that I said it's not the worst of its ilk, but that's only because it's relatively short.  Robert Z'Dar says, "Is this what Billy Corgan dreams about?  No wonder."

* A ruby is a type of corundum, a common mineral.  I almost went with "rhinestone(r)."  Laughs were heard for miles...