"We Summon the Darkness":: Gay Heavy Metal Fans?

It's the distant, magical summer of 1988. Thursday night means Cosby, A Different World, Cheers, and Night Court.  Saturday is movie night: Die Hard, Cocktail, Rambo, Who Framed Roger Rabbit,   Everyone is listening to Cheap Trick, Tracy Chapman, and Madonna, or if you are into heavy metal, Bon Jovi, David Lee Roth, and Thrasher  And in the distant, magical country of Indiana, three little girls are driving to a heavy metal concert.   Their names are Alexis, Beverly, and Val, but that's not important. What's important is that they are just like millions of other little girls growing up in the distant, magical summer of 1988, discussing sex and fashion and Teen Bop magazine  and who ate the last Ding Dong.

At a gas station, the attendant is watching a televangelist scream about the evil of heavy metal music.  This is the summer of Satanic panic, the unfounded fear that thousands of kids were being abducted by their neighbors, the pastor, the school principal, or the mayor and sacrificed to Satan.  Somehow the two are connected. Foreshadowing? The girls scoff and move on.

You are probably guessing what will happen next.  You are wrong.

Continuing down a rural road in Indiana, they are passed by a blue van, which chucks a milkshake at their windshield.  OMG, what's wrong with people?

The girls arrive at the concert, negotiate scalpers and "Jesus Saves" protestors, and guess what?  There's the blue van!  Makes sense -- where else would anyone be going on that desolate country road?  They get revenge by throwing firecrackers into the van.  Three boys emerge:

Mark (Keean Johnson, top photo), Kovacs (Logan Miller), second photo, and Ivan (Austin Swift, left).

Turns out that they are aspiring musicians.  Yeah, in 1988, who wasn't?

Surprisingly, they don't do a ot of flirting with the girls. One might suspect that they are gay, except there aren't a lot of gay heavy metal fans.

They discuss Ozzy Osbourne and the epidemic of Satanic ritual murders. 15 so far this summer.  Gulp!

They go to the concert together, jump up and down, yell "Hail Satan!"

You're probably wondering, when are the real Satanists gong to show up?'''

Spoiler Alert:  




There aren't any real Satanists.

After the concert the girls invite the boys to "my dad's gigantic, elegant mansion," 30 minutess away.

Wait -- if they live 30 minutes away, what was with the driving for hours through the Indiana wilderness?

There they tie the boys up in their underwear, and prepare for the sacrifice.

Turns out that the girls belong to Daughters of the Dawn, the church of the pastor on the tv at the gas station.  They kill people and make it look like Satanic ritual murder, in order to illustrate the evils of heavy metal music.

What follows is a melange of unexpected visitors showing up to disrupt the plans, Pastor showing up to help, a lot of beefcake, and a lot of "I'll save you!" buddy-bonding.

One of the girls has a change of heart, and escapes with the Last Boy.

But other than the heteronormative ending, there's no  hetero-romance, and endless gay subtexts. (No texts, unfortunately).

And plot twists that I actually did not see coming.

My grade: B