Hard Rock Zombies (1985) Starring E.J. Curse, Jennifer Coe & Jack Bliesener Written by David Allen Ball & Krishna Shah Directed by Krishna Shah

It has been a long standing tradition in the realm of horror that Rock 'n' Roll and horror made for good, yet strange, bed fellows - if only for pure cheese factor. Would ROCK 'N' ROLL NIGHTMARE be as epic a film if it didn't feature ROCK 'N' ROLL in the title? This scribe says NO.

However, as you can expect, just because you put a Rock 'n' Roll band into your horror film - let alone a zombie film - doesn't mean you're going to make some compelling art. Case in point, I bring to you exhibit A: HARD ROCK ZOMBIES.

The film was written and directed by Krishna Shah, and if that's a name that doesn't ring any bells that's hardly a surprise. Sit down for a spell little trail hand and I will tell you a little about our man Shah: He got his start in the late 60's writing an episode of THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. here, and an episode of the FLYING NUN there. He also made the notoriously awful AMERICAN DRIVE-IN, and for all of you SLEEPAWAY CAMP fans out there you probably know Shah as the man you want to burn in effigy for unleashing the torrential shit storm that is SLEEPAWAY CAMP IV: THE SURVIVOR. Also looking over his bio in IMBD makes me want to check out a movie he helped cast: OMEGA COP... But I digress...

The Synopsis:

The film starts off with a vivacious blond (Lisa Toothman) hitch hiking on the side of the road. She is picked up by some guys and she convinces them to pull over on the side of the road so that they can go skinny dipping. As the blond (who we later learn is named Eva) splashes around with one of the guys, they're photographed by a man with his two midgets (one played by world famous midget actor Phil Fondacaro!). The woman proceeds to murder the two men and we find out that she is in league with the three perverts. After cutting off one of her victims hands, she holds it up and starts singing a horrid rendition of the Beatles "I Want to Hold Your Hand".

It's not exactly a gorilla in a suit but the same principal applies here

This horrible musical rendition is also a segway to more horrid music: The rock band that are the stars of this movie. The interesting thing I must point out is that they never mention the name of the band, nor do they properly introduce the band members. So there's the band which features the lead singer and lead guitarist Jesse (E.J. Cruse), drummer Bobby (Sam Mann), and the nameless keyboard and bass players (played by Geno Andrews and Mick Manz) are playing a gig to an excited crowd. After the show their manager Ron (Ted Wells) tries to get them to get photos of them signing the breasts of their under aged fans(!) Jesse wants nothing of this and walks out and runs into a little girl named Cassie (Jennifer Coe) who warns him not to go to their next gig in her home town of Grand Guignol. Before our aloof hero can get any more out of her (like her name) she runs off.

The guys ignore this warning and head off to Grand Guignol where they are going to play two gigs and also be watched by big time record industry talent scout Don Matson (Michael David Simms). Along the way, Jesse is picking away at a guitar coming up with a song based on some resurrection chant that dates back to the Dark Ages. They run into the hitchhiking Eva, and Eva offers them an alternative to staying in a motel: Come stay at my families mansion. The band members (minus Jesse) are so mollified by Eva's ti-- er I mean offer that they take her up on it. There they meet her wacked out family which includes the two aforementioned midgets and shutter-bug, a giant bald dude who chops the head off a chicken, a howling grandmother (who unknown to our heroes can turn into a werewolf for some unexplained reason) and of course her grandfather (Jack Bliesener). The group get a little scare when the midget Mickey gives them what appears to be a severed hand.

Mom always makes people feel uncomfortable, especially when she starts licking her own crotch.

Meanwhile, the band puts on a show for the family that's put them up and the old man of the house just doesn't like it and attempts to electrocute them and make it look like an accident, they survive however. They aren't so lucky that evening as they are all picked off one-by-one. Jesse being the last one, passing on a tape recording of his resurrection song to Cassie telling her to play it if he dies. Cassie does just that, and the band comes back to life as zombies.

While this is happening, Ron (who wasn't killed) is offered a job working for grandpa who reveals himself to be (wait for it) Adolf Hitler in disguise.

Shit, and I had my money on him being Moriarty.

He explains his master plan of launching various attacks on the world and usher in a new Fourth Reich. Ron, naturally responds to this poorly - but don't worry here come the Hard Rock Zombies to save the day, and they murder Hitler and his entire family. They then go off to the concert hall where they begin putting on a performance for Don Matson, who is completely oblivious to the fact that they are undead creatures.

The Hitlers however are not done and over with, see Ol' Adolf found a way to cheat death in that if he or any of his family were killed they would come back to life as flesh eating ghouls. These ghouls would then begin attacking the towns people, and all their victims would transform into ghouls as well. As the towns people soon get picked off one by one, and turned into ghouls themselves. The rockers don't care overly much to save the towns people and play their gig and walk away from Matson who can't understand why they are walking away from a million dollar contract.

The surviving townspeople find an ancient book that tells them the only way to stop the ghouls is to offer them a virgin sacrifice which the ghouls would essentially fuck to death. Which spells bad news for little Cassie, the towns only apparent virgin. Ron realizes that the life of a fame seeking agent isn't all it's cracked up to be, especially when young virgins are about to be horribly raped and murdered by an army of ghouls led by Adolf Hitler. He rushes off and gets the Hard Rock Zombies, who use the magic of rock and roll to lure the ghouls away from young Cassie and into Hitler's underground cavern where they expose them to Hitler's "purple gas" which kills them all. With the Hard Rock Zombies buried in the ground once more, Cassie pays her respects telling Jesse that she will always love him, not matter what.

Zombie Efficiency:

Reason for Unliving:

Right up front, the only zombies in this film are the band members, and they only get turned into zombies about half way into the film. I will have to dock them points for tardiness. The other thing is that they are possibly the most useless zombies I have ever seen. They shamble around like they're doing the robot, kill a hand full of people and then play a gig before returning to the grave. What the hell is up with that?

Guitar Hero: Hard Rock Zombies Edition

The ghouls in this movie act more like zombies than the zombies do.. Minus the whole virgin sacrifice thing that is...

Mind you, if an army of zombies were to rise from the grave and kill Hilter, not once - but twice, I am sure the military would have to invent a new medal for that.... Like call it a Beating Heart or something... Even though the zombies might eat it.

Rock Skills

Beat this, Zombie drama class!

Since the zombies don't really kill all that much, let us instead talk about their musical styling. I will have to say that even though they are undead and their style is about 18 years out of date, you have to admit as far as zombies go, they have quite the talent. If zombies had talent shows you know these guys would win the first prize trophy in front of their entire zombie school:

The songs they sing are your typical late 80's hair-metal cock-rock about "taking it easy" and singing about sexual metaphores. The entire menagerie sounds like they could have all been put into one of those old K-Tel record collections that they used to sell on TV:

Possibly the most disturbing song of them all is a little diddy they call "Cassie's Song", which is the song that lead singer Jessie wrote for Cassie, to whom we are led to believe he is falling in love with. I mean I couldn't really tell, what with the movie being all subtle about it an all:

STUPID:

This movie is rife with what I like to call "Stupid Townies Undergoing Periods of Instant Death", or STUPID for short. Yes, it's a clunky acronym sure to be lost in the annals of horror acronyms, but believe me: Your kids are going to love it.

The Stupid Townie syndrome is of course when your main characters find themselves in a town of ignorant small town people who have an equal balance of ignorance and stupidity. Not to mention a sense of wanting full control over things even though there are better qualified and more intelligent people from out of town that are around to trying to dispel the going crisis. You know the type, they're the kind of characters who will shove aside a super-scientist who came up with a zombie eating virus to destroy the virus, lock him up in a fruit cellar because the mayor is jealous that his daughter loves the scientst, and convinces all the towns folk to put faith in Jesus to stop the zombies.

You think this is bad, you should see the unrated directors cut.

We usually know where characters like this go in the end, that's right the magical boot hill where all horror movie victims end up.

The townies in HARD ROCK ZOMBIES are just like this, however their big hate on is for all things rock and roll. Taking a page from FOOTLOOSE, they not only ban the band from playing in town, but they order all rock and roll records and radios smashed into bits.

Of course when they are all trying to survive being turned into ghouls by Hitler and his family, they try everything. Not being terribly bright, they somehow come to the belief that the ghouls hate heads, and so they try to sneak past them by obscuring themselves with giant portraits of heads.

"Resale Value" is obviously an unheard statement at mob ruled record smashing.

Child Love:

What is up with all these film makers who want to put something disturbing into a film - and we're not talking Lucifer Valentine vomit-death type of disturbing, or Japanese pink film rape scene disturbing... But disturbing in that BURIAL GROUND kind of way.

To give HARD ROCK ZOMBIES some credit, at least it's not subjecting us to some mother-son zombie incest - but the love of a rock musician for his under-aged fan. But why, oh why, did the writer of this turkey think it was a good idea to include this in the plot to the film?

You can guess how well that went.

Okay granted, writer Krishna Shah comes from India - So I can suppose, culturally speaking - I can see why he would write something like that in the plot. Given the fact that Shah was born in 1939, and grew up in a culture where child marriage was common place I can see how he could write it into the plot.

On that token, how many rock musicians would seriously develop this sort of relationship with one of their young just-hit-puberty fans? Unless your name is Garry Glitter, then probably nobody.

I will get back to the fact that at first it is seems like harmless flirting with a young girl. What charming actor or musician hasn't done that before? But then it just gets weirder and weirder. The fact that Jessie comes up with a whole SONG about the girl, which has the following lyrics:

Just in case you forgot.

Oh and of course we have to go to the montage footage of Jesse and Cassie in the forest where - yes folks he kisses her clear on the mouth.

Midget Factor:

I would like to present a new factor to measure horror movie enjoyment, it is something I would like to call the midget factor. You see class, a movie is more enjoyable by it's midget factor. The midget factor can be easily calculated by this simple formula:

Midget(MF = s + [f1][f2] - VT)

MF = Midget Factor
s = situation
f1 = Factor 1
f2 = Factor 2
VT = Verne Troyer

Fig A: Being sexy, but dead.

Lookit me! Imma full course meal!

I give HARD ROCK ZOMBIES a full score of Midget Factor 10.

Final Word on HARD ROCK ZOMBIES:

HARD ROCK ZOMBIES is a train wreck that is not only fun for the whole family, but it will also try to score a date with the youngest members of said family, so watch out!

It's also one of those movies that goes full circle: It goes to bad, to ROCKIN', to kind of amusing, to tired, drawn out, long, ROCKS OUT SOME MORE, creeps us out a little, and then ends poorly.

It's an odd film that doesn't know if it wants to be a horror film, comedy, or poster film for the abolition of age of concent between a rock star and his groupies.

Either way, you'll find this odd film somewhat entertaining if only because of the really crappy music!

ENJOY!