James Cortez, aka Cortez the Killer aka Bad B-Movie Slayer aka the man behind the "go horror or go home" site Planet of Terror, gladly checks into this week's proceedings to talk shop on one of his favorite crap flicks ever. Morte Ascendre Amen, Cortez...
I have an unsubstantiated claim about most horror filmmakers from the 1980’s and it is this: they were all snorting coke during production. I mean have you seen most of the films of that era? No film is more mind bogglingly ‘What the fuck?’ than 1985’s Hard Rock Zombies. Let’s take a looksee, shall we?
I have an unsubstantiated claim about most horror filmmakers from the 1980’s and it is this: they were all snorting coke during production. I mean have you seen most of the films of that era? No film is more mind bogglingly ‘What the fuck?’ than 1985’s Hard Rock Zombies. Let’s take a looksee, shall we?
A rock n’roll band headed to a gig in Hicktown, CA, stops and picks up an attractive blonde hitching on the side of the road. She takes them to her place, an old mansion that’s home to an interesting cast of characters. You have:
- Two midget brothers, one of which is mutated. Both like watching grandma and grandpa fuck in bed. The mutated one eventually eats himself for reasons unknown.
- Grandma who has a lust for sex, is a werewolf and wields a wicked pair of switchblades.
- The aforementioned blonde who likes to randomly dance and gyrate. Preferably before something bad happens to our band mates.
- A hillbilly groundskeeper who likes to use garden tools as killing devices.
- And last but certainly not least, a heavily accented German Grandpa who has an equal lust for sex and is harboring a ‘secret’ (more on that later).
But none of the weirdness bothers the band too much as they’re invited to stay at the mansion and use the grounds as a practice space before the show. So what does a rock n’ roll band do to signal their arrival to the small town? Why they dance and gallivant around town of course!
And that doesn’t make the townsfolk too happy. You see, they don’t like the rockin’ n’ rollin’ too much and don’t want the band to play. So the town sheriff throws them in jail for a bit, thinking that would lead them to change their minds and head back home. While in the slammer, the lead singer swoons over a jailbait groupie who appears to him outside of the cell. A wonderful piece of dialogue then occurs.
Lead Singer: ‘You’re neat.’
Jailbait Girl: ‘No I’m not.’
Lead Singer: ‘Yeah ya are.’
So the boys eventually get out and our singer who’s now completely smitten tells the young girl that he’s penned a special song for her and that she better be at their upcoming show. The band then heads home and sets up their equipment outside of the house and begins practice on the front lawn. But the freakish little midgets are up to no good and fuck with their sound equipment, sending an electrical surge and shocking the entire band. It seems they are in cahoots with the townsfolk! ZOINKS!
The townsfolk get together and plot a way to stop the concert from happening. They go back and forth, speaking the typical rhetoric of rock n’ roll hating folks like they’re all into ‘eating drugs’ (yes, that’s the actual phrase that is used). Some creepy dude who looks like Lars Ulrich's dad is involved in the proceedings.
That evening, our whacked out family takes matters into their own hands, making short work of the band and offing each of them. One gets seduced by the blonde and stabbed in the shower (a near exact rip off of the Psycho shower scene), another is taken by the hands of our mongoloid groundskeeper, and granny goes all Mexican gangsta with some double fisted switchblade action:
The next day, the band is shown buried on the grounds of the house. Our lovelorn jailbait visits the graves and openly mourns the loss of her beloved. But she resurrects him and the rest of the band by playing a little ditty they penned which unknowingly wakes the dead. Its payback time bitches!
But before our band is able take their revenge on the family, it’s revealed that grandpa is Adolf Hitler himself! It appears that he’s been hiding out in Hickville, CA for far too long and it’s high time that he restarts his quest for world domination! Has your head exploded yet?
The boys kill off the entire family but they end up coming back from the dead too! And then the rest of the townsfolk become zombies as well! Oh whatever will you do, Scooby Doo?!
As you can see, this flick is absolute insanity. After watching the film for the umpteenth time the other night, something occurred to me. Maybe the filmmakers behind this weren’t coke snorters? As the credits rolled, they had very Indian sounding last names like Patel. Maybe there was an ‘obvious’ commentary on society that was trying to be made much like the Italian filmmakers behind Troll 2? And somewhere along the way everything got lost in translation. Either way, we get this fantastic piece of cinematic gold and one of my favorite ‘turn off my brain and bask in it’s ridiculousness’ horror film.
1 comments:
Just when I thought I read every kind of review on this film, you kick it off woth a cocaine reference...and an appropos one at that. Thanks for adding to HRZ at TMC week in the most colorful of ways dude!
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