Extremely R-Rated 80s Thriller Turns Satanic Panic Into Real Life

By Robert Scucci
| Published 1 hour ago

Back in the ’80s, conservative parents had it out for bands like Twisted Sister, Motley Crue, anything Ozzy Osbourne had his name attached to, and Dungeons & Dragons. By 1985, we had the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), spearheaded by Washington wives Tipper Gore and Susan Baker, and thanks to them, we got the supremely badass “PARENTAL ADVISORY” sticker on every album deemed explicit, which only made kids want to buy them more. Which leads us to 1988’s Black Roses, a film billed as horror but playing more like a horror-adjacent satire about Satanic Panic, mass hysteria, and the kind of preemptive damage control groups like the PMRC injected into communities “for their own good.”

Black Roses holds up decades later because it completely subverts the whole idea of Satanic Panic in the most hilarious way possible. Here, we have a cool and conscientious high school teacher who doesn’t buy into the doom-speak, actually witnesses the titular Satanic band and all the damage they’re causing to his class and everybody else, only for every other concerned parent to brush off his reservations about letting them complete their three-day stint in Mill Basin. The result is a small town successfully destroyed before the band moves on to the next stop.

It’s a direct-to-video outing that leans into the parental insecurities of the time, simultaneously taking shots at helicopter parents and more level-headed authority figures alike for not quite being able to read the room in any meaningful way.

Dressed To Impress

Right off the rip, we’re supposed to like Matthew (John Martin), the hip and down-to-earth high school teacher we spend most of Black Roses following. He encourages his students to hold forums in the form of open-ended discussions about the day’s lesson, and he’s the last person who would ever succumb to Satanic Panic because he thinks his students are smart enough to make their own informed decisions about the media they consume and how it influences them. Everybody in his class, and the entire school, though, is obsessed with Black Roses, the controversial band coming to town that has parents in an uproar.

Here’s where Black Roses gets kooky. Matthew is right not to panic like the rest of the parents. Town hall meetings are held ahead of the band’s upcoming three-show run, and every adult resolves to show up and see a Black Roses concert for themselves before making a final decision. Everybody attends, and the band is dressed nicely, respectful to the crowd, and puts on the kind of goodie-two-shoes performance that would put even the most conservative parents at ease.

The problem is that the members of Black Roses knew concerned parents were going to show up and suss them out, so it was all a ruse. They are, in actuality, a Satanic group, and the second the parents dip out after the early show, the fog machine fires up, everybody onstage is wearing leather bondage outfits, and it’s painfully obvious that their goal is to hypnotize an auditorium full of impressionable teenagers into doing their bidding. Now that those pesky parents hellbent on censorship are out of the equation, they can reveal their true demonic nature and wreak havoc.

As the concerts escalate, Matthew catches wise to their nefarious intentions and becomes the hysterical authority figure who wants Black Roses out of town forever. He doubles down on his claims when one of his students, Julie (Karen Witter), now possessed, murders his ex-girlfriend Priscilla (Carla Ferrigno) because she’s romantically interested in her teacher and feels the need to eliminate the competition. Matthew voices his concerns to Mayor Farnsworth (Ken Swofford), but the mayor saw what he saw and has deemed the band harmless, even though the band’s leader is named Damian and looks like he’s seconds away from performing a human sacrifice onstage at any given moment.

Well, That Ended Poorly 

Black Roses holds up today because it doesn’t really take a side in the Satanic Panic debate, which is where most of its humor comes from. On one hand, you have a gaggle of concerned, out-of-touch parents who only want what’s best for their kids but only know how to get upset over rock music and offer misguided advice. Then there’s Matthew, who represents the “cool” teacher we all had growing up, the one you’d want to grab a beer with when you’re old enough. He’s the last person to buy into Satanic Panic because he knows art is just art and that, as long as you have open, healthy discussions about it, you’ll be fine.

In between is the band itself, a group of literal demons who win over the parents while scaring the daylights out of Matthew. It’s the ultimate role reversal, and so much fun to watch play out because it’s one of the rare instances where the mob is wrong and the voice of reason is right in the worst possible way.

Black Roses takes great pleasure in subverting genre conventions, and it doesn’t hurt that glam metal band King Kobra contributed a healthy amount of music for the fictional band playing onscreen. If you want to explore your dark side and get possessed by Black Roses’ infectious melodies, you can stream the film for free on Tubi as of this writing.