Hard Rock Zombies (1985)

This is a movie that I passed up in the aisles of my Mom and Pop VHS store many times. It had great box art but something about the pictures on the back gave me the feeling that the art was all that it had going for it. More than three decades later I finally decided to bite the bullet and spend a couple of hours seeing if I made a good decision all those years ago.

The movie kicks off with a couple dudes in a convertible picking up a pretty hitchhiker. They stop at a nearby pond and go skinny dipping. While this is happening, a weird dude is taking pictures while a couple of little people are running around. Wait… HOLY SHIT that is Phil Fondacaro! Okay now I’m a bit more interested. The hitchhiker kills the guys and then the action shifts to a band playing a show. After the show is over their manager sets them up with some groupies to take pictures showing they are living the rock-n-roll lifestyle. Everyone except for the lead singer who seems above it all. He meets a girl named Cassie who warns him to skip the next town/show they are playing. Seems the town of Grand Guignol isn’t too friendly.

Of course, they ignore her warning. While on the way into town they meet the hitchhiker, and she takes them home to meet the rest of her weird family. They also head into town long enough to piss off the super conservative locals with their badassery… I guess. They get tossed in jail aka. a barn but get sprung only to go back to the hitchhiker’s family home where they get murdered by the various family members. Before that though Jessie, the lead singer, gives Cassie a copy of a tape where he plays a song that he has figured out will raise the dead. Why? Reasons, I guess! Okay to be fair they were being chased by a killer. She plays it and they come back to life to get some revenge on those who murdered them. Unfortunately, everyone they kill becomes a zombie and kill more folks who also become zombies. We have an outbreak situation here.

Is that enough plot for you? Don’t worry there is more. The hitchhiker and her murderous family are hiding a big secret. They are all Nazis and Grandpa is Hitler, while Grandma is Eva Braun. And for some inexplicable reason she is also a switchblade wielding werewolf as well. After killing the band Grandpa Hitler decides he is done hiding and fires up the gas chamber again. I kid you not. They take the time to explain this on a tour with the bands manager who he is trying to recruit. Zombie Hitler and zombie werewolf Eva Braun… and yet the movie still sucks.

Originally conceived as a twenty-minute short to be used within another movie Hard Rock Zombies feels stretched out beyond the material. The pacing is terrible as I don’t think they had much more than some ideas they thought would be funny and tossed them together. This leads to horrible pacing as the movie spends way too much time on not one, not two, but three extended mini concerts. The music isn’t horrible, but I just wasn’t’ interested. In case you are wondering it is more pop than hard rock. They also decided to include and extended gag with a town hall meeting to ban rock and roll followed by them smashing records. Let me reinforce that the town has nothing to do with the main story of the band and Hitler’s extended family. See what I mean when I say they just tossed a bunch of shit together?

Now this next part is going to make me sound a bit… sensitive I guess is the right word. I like a tasteless joke as much as the next guy but almost all of the comedy in Hard Rock Zombies comes from them trying to milk the whole Hitler is alive and then a zombie thing. They are even poking fun at the holocaust a bit with the oven and gas chamber gag. Maybe if that was a one off tossed in to shock and then moved on from it might have worked. But the filmmakers keep going back to that well until it gets somewhat uncomfortable and certainly not funny. In the end none of the attempted humor landed with me which only made the movie even more tedious.

There are a bunch of kills that are okay and clearly done on a low budget. A head gets ripped off, a spike is driven thru a throat, and someone dies by weed whacker. The best gag has to be one of the zombies eating itself. Why did it do this? I guess for the laughs. Speaking of the zombies there is zero gut munching or over the top gore. The design of the undead is very basic and we don’t see a single elaborate makeup job.

Hard Rock Zombies fails as a zombie movie. It also fails as a comedy, which the filmmakers billed it as. The pacing is awful, nothing much happens that is slightly interesting or memorable. This one is a chore to get thru. Why the hell is this movie an hour and thirty-eight minutes long? But Phil Fondacaro is in it so we have that. Really don’t waste your time on this garbage. There are way better ways to waste your time.

 

© Copyright 2022 John Shatzer

Ghoulies II (1988)

The franchise review of Ghoulies continues with their further misadventures in Ghoulies II. The action doesn’t follow directly from the first movie, but it does keep the theme of the little rubber demons being summoned by cultists so there is that. Time to dive in and see how this first sequel turned out.

The action opens with a man carrying a bag full of squirming somethings. In hot pursuit are hooded cultists but before they can catch him the man dumps the bag into a vat of solvent to destroy the contents. Of course, the Ghoulies are in the bag and not only don’t they die but the man ends up in the vat instead. The little monsters hitch a ride on a carnival attraction that is stopped nearby and decide to make it their home. A spook house called Satan’s Den seems like the perfect place for them to stay. Before you know it the attraction is a hit because the patrons think that the Ghoulies are part of the act. But then they start killing people because you know Ghoulies have to do their thing. Eventually the carnival workers figure out what is happening and do battle with the hell spawn. Ever see a fire breather fight a puppet? Watch Ghoulies II and you will!

My biggest complaint with the first movie is that there weren’t enough Ghoulies in it. If you remember there is the plot with the son and his father the evil warlock/cultist. Here it is all about the Ghoulies and after a brief appearance we don’t even see the cultists! This allows more puppet mayhem to flourish on screen and that makes me happy. We get all sorts of fun and creative kills using the props of a carnival attraction. The wrack is used, another is shocked by the fake electric chair, and in a pinch the little bastards even use a straight razor on another victim. But the best kill of all has to do with a payoff that is a whole movie in coming. If you noticed the cover of the first movie has our little bald green pal climbing out of the toilet implying that something bad happens. Well that doesn’t happen in the original movie, but it sure as hell gets a proper payoff in this one! Yeah it is off-screen but damn the sound effects fill in some horrible blanks.

God I love the Ghoulies!

The human cast is decent. This is the last entry that Charles Band was involved in so I wasn’t too surprised to see the great Phil Fondacaro have a major role in the movie. A lot of directors and producers might use him as a gimmick, but he can act and Band always makes sure that he has something to do. The other familiar face is the legendary Royal Dano. Towards the end of his career he did some killer low budget genre movies and I count this among them. He is very good and makes every scene he is in much more fun to watch.

The effects work is good. You don’t get a ton of gore, but the kills we get are good for a low budget movie. The Ghoulies aren’t realistic, but we are watching a movie about puppets standing in for little demonic imps. How picky can you really be? That said I love them in all their goofy glory! I also have always enjoyed how each of the four have a unique personality and sort of do their own thing. Watching them high five each other as they create panic is a blast every time that I watch Ghoulies II. The big payoff is the “giant” Ghoulie that is summoned to drag the little ones back to hell.

I could go on. I love this movie so much. Yes, I know the creatures look goofy and much of the movie is played for laughs and not horror. But that is quintessentially ‘80s so who can complain? As much as I liked the first Ghoulies this sequel is much better. The formula is easy. More puppets equal more fun. I recommend it.

© Copyright 2017 John Shatzer