BLACK ROSES: Heavy Metal Cuts Deep
An interview with John Fasano
Editor's Note: This interview was published in Fangoria Magazine #323 in May 2013.
Many card carrying members of the headbanging fraternity grew up in the 80's devouring gore drenched epics and getting drunk off the dizzying heights of 80's make-up and FX wizardry. It was a magical time for genre fans with a humongous appetite for horror films and heavy metal, both seemed like a natural extension of each other.
In fact there was a time when horror and heavy metal would go hand in hand in the 80's, effectively creating a sub-genre broaching both subjects into an orgy of cinematic bliss. We all know about such classics like Trick or Treat, Rock ‘N Roll Nightmare, Slaughterhouse Rock, and even Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park, but there is one more that needs to be added to this esteemed list. It might just be the grand daddy of them all thanks in large part to the impressive cast of veteran actors and musicians who all took roles in this little film shot just north of the border.
Of course I am talking about Black Roses; a film vividly remembered for the famed Julie monster sequence that titillated most genre fans. It was just one of the handfuls of horrific surprises to be found in this b-movie extravaganza that dared to feature cinema's first satanic heavy metal band. The Black Roses, as they were known in the film come to the sleepy little town of Mills Basin to give the kids a concert they will never forget. When the band's music begins to demonically possess the kids during the show, everyone is turned into bloodthirsty demons and chaos quickly ensues.
What a way for this film to go down in a fiery battle between man and the ultimate evil come in the form of a heavy metal band. Like I said, it's the grand daddy of all heavy metal horror films and it just happens to be reaching a milestone of 25 years in 2013.
To Celebrate the 25th anniversary, FANGORIA tracked down director John Fasano to talk about the film. During the conversation he candidly spilled the beans about his trials and tribulations of bringing Black Roses to life. The one key fact that we both took away from the interview was how the film lives on and is still being talked about 25 years later.
FANGORIA: It's been twenty five years since the movie was first released. How you feel about that?
JOHN FASANO: That's a long time. God, now I have grown children! Twenty five years ago I was just trying to make a little horror movie that I was hoping could get onto TV or video.
FANGORIA: Right and you shot Black Roses in Canada. Wasn't it in Dundas, Ontario?
JOHN FASANO: Well we shot mostly in Hamilton.
FANGORIA: Right.
JOHN FASANO: Paul Mitchnick who didn't end up getting the job originally to shoot the movie, came in for the interview and told me we should look into Hamilton because that's where he had grown up along with Eugene Levy and the other guys. He thought it looked like a small, American industrial town and when we went out there it was perfect. There was a big elementary school that was closed that we used for the high school and the main street which is kind of the highway was used in the opening for when the Lamborghini came down.
FANGORIA: Did you get any tax breaks for filming in Canada?
JOHN FASANO: There were no tax breaks per se like there are now, but what it was is that when you shot in Canada for Canadian content your distributers would get a better tax deal. So we just went there because we knew we had a good crew and the exchange rate back then was a good thing.
FANGORIA: What was the impetus behind the concept of Black Roses?
JOHN FASANO: Well we had done Rock 'N Roll Nightmare and Zombie Nightmare, and Rock 'N Roll Nightmare cost fifty two thousand dollars and it was shot in 35mm and it made like four hundred thousand dollars in sales. Shapiro-Glickenhaus came back to us and said this time we will give you four hundred thousand dollars to make the movie because you proved yourself. Then what was happening in America was this little known Senator named Al Gore and he was always trying to find a cause. First it was anti-tobacco, and then they found out he owned a tobacco farm, then his wife Tipper got it into her head that there were teen suicides if you were listening to heavy metal. She got it into her head that heavy metal was music of the devil and back in 1985 there was a huge movement against heavy metal music. My ex-girlfriend who wrote the script said, so what if this band really is from hell and we thought that was great, so we went to Lenny Shapiro and said we want to do a movie where the band is really from hell. Now because of Rock ‘N Roll Nightmare we had a worldwide soundtrack album with Thor, so he said as long as there can be a chance for a soundtrack album I am there.
FANGORIA: Oh wow, I remember Thor. Did you plan on getting him involved with the film?
JOHN FASANO: My first thought was to use Thor to play Damien because he was Canadian and he was my friend, and at the time we had a lot of success with Rock ‘N Roll Nightmare. So my first thought was that Thor would be Damien and his wife at the time Cherry Bomb wanted him to become the main producer and not me, so we didn't end up working together. I ended up getting Sal Viviano who was a Broadway actor and brought him in to audition and he became a great Damien.
FANGORIA: Yeah he was.
JOHN FASANO: It was always sad to me because my dream early on was that everybody from Frank Deitz to my make-up men Andrew Clement, Tony Bua and Thor would be in all my movies. They were all in Rock 'N Roll Nightmare and Zombie Nightmare, so I just figured they needed to be in anything I did, almost like how John Ford had a stable of actors back in the day.
FANGORIA: Well speaking about other actors then, didn't Sal Viviano continue on in your next film Jitters?
JOHN FASANO: Sal was in Jitters because I liked to carry over the people who did a good job for me. Sal was on Broadway and he did Romance/Romance and Three Musketeers and he was just a nice guy. Interestingly, his Uncle Sam Viviano was one of the editors of Mad Magazine, and his wife is on Law and Order and is also a Tony winning Broadway actor.
FANGORIA: It sounds like you picked a winner with Sal. Another interesting casting choice was Julie Adams, so how did that all come about?
JOHN FASANO: Well the first movie I ever saw was Creature of the Black Lagoon and I just loved the Creature. When we were looking for people to be in the film I wanted to get a character actor like Adam West who could come up to Canada and work for three days for twenty five thousand dollars, so when I saw Julie again in Creature I knew I wanted her.
FANGORIA: What about Vincent Pastore?
JOHN FASANO: My sister Felicia worked on this movie as associate producer, she also casts Californication and In the House of Lies for Showtime, and she is one of the Hollywood top casting people now. Well she and my ex Cindy went out to find someone and they came back with Vincent Pastore. His scenes were additionally shot and weren't involved in the original filming. When we were done with the filming and cut it together, Glickenhaus said we had room for more monsters, so the scenes with Vincent Pastore and the scene were Julie fondles herself and you see the band playing in prosthetics, all that stuff was shot in New York in and around my house in Westchester County.
FANGORIA: I love a good monster sequence and since you brought it up, talk a little bit about the visual FX in Black Roses.
JOHN FASANO: Well Tony Bua sculpted the head of the zombie I wear in Zombie Nightmare when I fight Adam West at the end. He and his best friend Andy Clement were in College when they did Zombie Nightmare, and when it came to Black Roses Tony sculpted the Julie Monster and Mike Maddi finished it and made the puppet. So it was Tony who did the sculpture and Mike did the cast, painted it up and made it of foam and everything.
FANGORIA: When I first saw Black Roses the Julie monster really caught my attention.
JOHN FASANO: It's a real cool creature. I had learned lessons from Rock 'N Roll Nightmare that having one giant puppet was difficult, so I called Mike Maddi and said I wanted a puppet from the waist up, the arms won't be articulated enough, but will be much wider. Then I want an arm to be used for grabbing and he just showed up and put all that stuff on one puppet. It was attached to a big 4 x 8 plank, so when you watch that scene in the kitchen you don't see the five guys on the floor trying to work the cable. So the monster is attached to a big board and the fight in that scene is predicated by an actual puppet.
FANGORIA: Right on, the magic of cinema at its finest. Now I do want to move away from that and get your thoughts about the music.
JOHN FASANO: Ok.
FANGORIA: How did you manage to get a musician like Carmine Appice involved with Black Roses?
JOHN FASANO: Carmine was a friend of Elliot Solomon, and Elliot's dad worked for Shapiro-Glickenhaus the distributer and latter on he would take over the whole company. His friend Elliot wanted to do soundtracks and Elliot did the soundtrack for Black Roses. For the songs he didn't write, he had connections with Vanilla Fudge and he brought them in to help out. Since he knew Carmine, we thought it would be hilarious if we had Carmine come in and play the drummer.
FANGORIA: Were you a fan of heavy metal music growing up?
JOHN FASANO: This is interesting and I get asked this a lot, and I will say that I listened to AC DC in College, but I grew up on Long Island so our hero was Billy Joel and there was Springsteen. I didn't listen to heavy metal at all except when I was in College, but heavy metal was huge in the news because of these suicides and so I wasn't a fan until I did these movies and then liked heavy metal afterwards.
FANGORIA: In 2007 Synapse films released Black Roses onto DVD. Did they involve you with the release?
JOHN FASANO: Oh yeah I did commentary on it.
FANGORIA: Was there anything further beyond the commentary?
JOHN FASANO: What happened was that Allan Solomon from Synapse was a huge fan of Rock 'N Roll Nightmare and he said he wanted to do a whole collective edition of the film, but he had forgotten he owned the movie. Once he made his money on it, he didn't really remember he had it. People have always asked me when this movie was coming onto DVD for years, so the rights were sold and he did Rock' N Roll Nightmare and because Thor and I had a deal for net profit we made a little money from that. Then I said to them you should do Black Roses, and I had the VHS audition tapes for some of the characters, so I worked with the Synapse guys to give them extra material.
FANGORIA: Lastly, Black Roses will also be remembered for the Lizzy Borden song "Me Against the World." What's your take on the song?
JOHN FASANO: It's a great song.
FANGORIA: You won't get any arguments from me. In fact I think the movie deserves to be talked about and 25 years is a long time to still be discussing it.
JOHN FASANO: It's a long time for us to still be talking about a five hundred thousand dollar movie.
Kenneth Gallant, HMS