We’ve been having a good run of Metal Horror Comedies - until we got to Jon Mikl-Thor’s Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare (1987). You may know Mr. Mikl-Thor from the MST3K classic Zombie Nightmare. That was much more coherent, and had better music. JM-T is a body builder, metal musician, and actor, and he’s mediocre to bad at all of them.
This Canadian tragedy starts somewhat like a one subplot of another MST3K classic (maybe our favorite), Pod People. A band is traveling to a remote location to vacation and rehearse. But all is not what it seems. OK, it is - the place is evil and infested with hilariously inept rubber monster puppets. These puppets do evil things that nobody notices and have no effect on anything. Meanwhile the band sings and plays comically bad metal ditties.
I did like the ending though. After everyone else has been killed off, a puppet of the Devil himself confronts JM-T. Ready for the SPOILER? JM-T informs the Devil that they had never really been there, it was always just him and some illusions! Mikl-Thor tells the Devil that he is now the Vindicator (or something) and they fight to the death. Neat twist.
Everything else stunk though. It was pretty clear that this was intended to be so bad it’s good. It very much wasn’t. Mikl-Thor is not particularly charismatic - sort of a Tommy Wiseau with muscles. His metal music is not all that bad - if you like lame hair metal. It might have made a better movie if the music was as silly bad as the special effects.
All in all, recommend avoiding, but check out Zombie Nightmare (with MST3K to help out). JM-T doesn’t talk much, and Adam West is in it.
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