Review: Hard Rock Zombies (1985)

“You're weird ya know?”

Director: Krishna Shah

Starring: E.J. Curse, Geno Andrews and Sam Mann

Writers: Krishna Shah, David Allen Ball

Every now and then I watch a movie that I can’t say is good, and yet I need to recommend it to people because the sheer levels of insanity are a thing to behold. It’s not a so bad its good movie, as a bad movie is still bad, but just sometimes you can’t really describe the madness, people need to experience it for themselves. Having said that watch me now as I try and describe the movie for your reviewing pleasure.

So much is packed into the story that I wonder what the writers were smoking, taking or thinking. Around the half way point the movie does make a turn for the bad taste, and what’s worse it doesn’t seem necessary as there is already enough to mull over without it. I’m not going to go into details about his bad taste turn, but it does have to do with Nazi’s. But besides Nazi’s, we have evil midgets, one which is deformed, a grandma werewolf, a pervert with a camera and a psycho killer girl all in the one family. And we aren’t even at the rock and roll zombies. Yep it’s pretty crazy.

Acting wise we’ve got two brands, bad or over the top. The band members are at least likable enough, but the movie does centre on them becoming zombies so after a certain point they are nothing more than walking corpses, so no acting needed. But they do have a unique zombie walk. The family of crazies is very unique, Jack Bliesener in particular seems to be having fun as the head of the family but even his joy can’t really overcome the bad taste turn.

Now the story is about this rock band that comes to town, is killed by the crazy family, then comes back to life thanks to a fan and then they seek revenge. There is actually more to this but it’s a big mess. While the jumping from story point to story point means there is next to no boredom, it’s hard to get invested in the movie. Especially seeming that half the time the style resorts to an almost music video with random things thrown into the movie for the hell of it. Stepping back there is a sense of lampooning the horror genre and the extremes of music videos. It never really works as Krishna Shah just has an idea, but no real talent when it comes to putting together a cohesive movie.

For those who love horror movies and those that are far from the main stream there is a core of insanity in this movie that needs to be watched. But it’s far from a good movie. There are several ideas working in this movie and they all appear to be undoing each other. I will also stress there is a plot point that while didn’t cause me much grief, but I can see some audience members finding it offensive. If there are friends about put it on, but otherwise maybe avoid it if you can.