Hard Rock Zombies (1985)

This movie is so bad that it is awful. Looooow budget, bad acting, mind numbingly bad dialogue, lighting so bad that you can’t tell who is saying what or what the hell they are doing in some scenes, and a cheesy early 80’s video aesthetic sprinkled throughout the film all congeal to form the perfect storm of atrociousness. It is a hard movie to sit through, but it may be worth your time if these three words appeal to you: Midget Nazi Zombies.

The story centers around a traveling band that seems to be the American retard hydrocephalic cousin of the band Europe. Whoo! they stink on ice. They are traveling to a gig in some hick podunk town called Grand Guignol (ha, ha). (That name is a reference to a style in which many of the early 70s Italian horror/slasher films were done.) There are a few musical numbers in this movie, and I use the term ‘musical’ very loosely. During one of these numbers, the townsfolk of Grand Guignol decide they have had it with rock and roll (and if what they are playing is rock and roll, then I’ve had it, too!), so they ban all r’n’r music in all forms, which ends in cancelling the concert and smashing all rock and roll records they can get their intolerant hands on.

Meanwhile, a skeevy troupe of weirdos is busy roaming around killing people for no discernible reason. In this group is a man and woman in their 20s or 30s. The guy never really does too much, but the woman enjoys leading men to their doom by acting as a seductress and then stabbing them quite a lot, often removing a hand in the process. She also likes dancing in the middle of the road, which this movie highlights by cutting to this randomly. Also in this group is a pair of midgets. One human midget and one ghoul(?) midget. There is also a sometimes wheelchair-bound lady who turns into a werewolf and back quite a lot and also in random fashion. As a werewolf, she seems to rely on a pair of switchblades to get things done. I guess that is why she is in the wheelchair. The leader of this merry stabbing passel of reprobates? Why, Hitler, of course.

Now back to the good guys. The leader of the band comes up with some bass riff that brings back the dead and makes a demo tape of it. He falls in love with the town virgin and gives her the tape with the instructions to play the tape if anything ever happens to him. Lo and behold, Hitler and his pals kill the whole band. She plays the tape and they come back from the grave, with their awesomely feathered hairdon’ts intact. I think the tape causes others to come back as zombies who start attacking everyone, thus creating more zombies. The zombified band make several trips to and from the grave and on one of the trips they play a rehearsal gig or maybe it was a real gig where only one person showed up, a talent agent. The agent loves the zombie band’s performance, then he is promptly turned into a zombie by a roving ghoul. That’s showbiz!

I don’t remember (or care) how it ends, its fairly confusing throughout the film but particularly so at the end. There are some unintentionally funny lines in the movie but they are hidden amongst the reams of unintentionally horrible dialogue. This might be a good movie to watch with a group of people whilst drinking, a lot. It would greatly benefit from some MST3K action.
Anyhoo, low marks for just about everything, even skin. 1 and a half scenes (ass from a distance) is just not enough to make this movie bearable (bareable?). I will give this movie one George, for the one thing I haven’t seen before in cinema: Midget Nazi Zombies!