Hard Rock Zombies aka Heavy Metal Zombies
The movie starts with like 12 totally senseless stereotypes. A rock band is on the road and that’s already trash at it’s best. The singer, Jesse, would win any Freddie Mercury lookalike contest in a heartbeat. The mustache! But also the guitar-or-bass-guy (they switch instruments sometimes) scores with a perfect symbiosis from Jon Bon Jovi in his weirdest hair crime times and Richie Sambora, putting together the very worst of both.
But back to the story. This awesome band also has a manager and sometimes that guy uses buttons on a mixing pult. And now he invited THE record label owner to a gig. Of course, this historic moment takes place in a village out in nowhere. Where else? On the way there, the pretty musicians take a female hitchhiker with them; she will shine in ultra-senseless dancing scenes a bit later. However, for now she invites the band to stay over night in her house – but does not mention her family: her 95 years old super-potent grandpa, her werewolf grandma (Are werewolfs blue?), two dwarves (one eyed and disfigured) and a not really introduced guy who is addicted to taking photos.
Meanwhile, Freddie-Mercuy-Wannabe played out his sensible side. He hates groupies and wild orgies, he has only eyes for the morbid hairdo of the village’s beauty queen Cassie. She sometimes shows up and tells him to leave the village because the mayor declared rock music as the devil’s work. And what do politicans do? Right. They come up with a new law: rock music prohibition! For being devil worshippers, the band is sent to jail, but the hitchhiker girl helps them to escape. While Jesse writes a love song for Cassie. It’s also a good rhyme, Jesse and Cassie.
The band hides in the hitchhiker’s house again and now the real fun part begins. The freak family starts to slay the band; partly in parodies of famous movies from more talented directors. For example, we share the doubtful pleasure of a very very bad copy of “Psycho”. But that’s not the real big bang. The real big bang starts with the grandfather to pull off his rubber mask and turn out as Adolf Hitler! And his wife is not only a blue werewolf, she’s also Eva Braun! Grandpa’s speech is the funniest piece of celluloid history ever made. I mean, really, Adolf Hitler saying “Ami go home, Winnetou is back!” is a milestone.
But before I get distracted too much by the most awesome speech in movie history, back to the story. As the last survivor of the band, Jesse gives Cassie a tape and tells her to play it in case he dies. And yeah, of course he dies. The miracle happens: the music played on the band grave brings them back to life! The zombie band takes revenge on the freak family, turning them into zombies in the process, and then goes to play their gig.
Now guess what, the record label guy doesn’t notice the band is dead and tries to sign them. Meanwhile, outside the concert hall, almost the entire village is a zombie nest. The last humans try to stand their ground and fight the zombies with the best weapon against walking dead: posters of Jimi Hendrix! Of course, that makes no sense and also doesn’t save them. So the villagers remember an old legendary way to get rid of zombies: Tie a virgin to a tree. As soon as the zombies ate her, they’ll go away for 100 years and become someone else’s problem. Luckily, Cassie shows up to the villager meeting – and surprise, she’s a virgin!
The raging mob, or what’s left of it, drags her to a hill where some tree-like whatever stands. But they didn’t count in the band’s manager! He goes to re-animate the band again and the undead rock stars fight the zombies with their satanic music and save Cassie. Of course, she still loves Jesse and will stay a virgin forever because the undead lover returns to his grave after the battle and stays there.
The most awesome movie ever made! Really, it’s a perfect and senseless treasure case of trash that I can only recommend again and again. From cheap early 80ies rock including hideous hair metal outfits to awful parodies to the tremendous speech of the grandfather – this movie has it all.
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