Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare (1987)
AKA “The Edge of Hell”
Starring John Mikl Thor, Jillian Peri, Teresa Simpson, Frank Dietz, Lara Daans
Directed By John Fasano
I remember back when I was a springy young kid of about ten my mom would occasionally babysit for some lady she used to go to church with. I don’t remember much about the brother and sister except they were extremely well-mannered, a little creepy, and ultra-religious. Sometimes I would come home from school only to see them sitting up straight on my living room sofa, hands folded softly in their laps, nodding attentively to whatever gibberish my mom happened to be spouting out at the time…. Very well-mannered kids.
It was after mom went to her room, leaving my brother and myself with the fresh-faced siblings, that shit would start to get weird real quick. See, according to them, they were knee-deep on the front lines of an ongoing epic battle of ultimate good vs. the most ultimate of evils. They spun bone-rattling tales of how their house was infested with evil spirits. But that was just the tip of the iceberg, they swore up and down that their mom was a top-secret leading practitioner of white magic. Deceptively paunchy on the surface, she was actually locked in an ongoing battle with Satan himself and his horde of demon minions. I knew it was all true of course, because they had actually laid eyes on these vile creatures of the netherworld firsthand. Their recollections of their mom’s first battle with the devil rattled me to the point of etching tiny crosses onto the wooden posts of my bunk bed for added protection. I had damned well believe in God now, I feared. Because according to these creepy-ass kids, Satan was fighting my mom’s friend in her kitchen on a daily basis and might come after friends of the family next. The real kicker in these eyewitness accounts however, was their odd description of the lord of darkness… this wasn’t your typical red horned, pitchfork wielding Satan. No. According to them he was very skinny and had a body “made out of black sticks”.