Shitty Flicks is an ongoing column that celebrates the most hilariously incompetent, amusingly pedestrian, and mind-bogglingly stupid movies ever made by people with a bit of money, some prior porn-directing experience, and no clue whatsoever. It is here you will find unrestrained joy in movies meant to terrify and thrill, but instead poke at your funny bone with their weird, mutant camp-girl penis.
WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up.
There’s one thing you need to know before watching Hard Rock Zombies: It doesn’t care what you think, and it doesn’t fuck around. It’s not going to lead you by the hand and slowly explain things to you. It’s not going to care if you can't follow the mile-a-minute, incomprehensible mess called a plot.
It’s just going to be.
It’s going to rock
And it’s going to blow your mind.
HARD ROCK ZOMBIES.
The movie opens wide on a road flowing fast and furiously underneath you. Hard rock jams start to thunder, and a fun-loving kid picks up a hot (in the '80s sense) hitchhiker. The blonde canoodles the driver for a little bit before they pull over. For no reason, the girl immediately begins skinny dipping in a lake as three men (two of them tiny, demon-suited midgets) watch enthusiastically from the shore.
And while another suited man snaps pictures from behind some bushes, the hitchhiking blonde kills the driver and feeds his dismembered body to her tiny, demon-midget friends.
Seriously folks, we’re four minutes in, and we have tits, demon midgets, mutilation, and '80s hair band music.
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When the brothers were young, Manny was severely ostracized
by the other children because of his unsightly eye patch.
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Suddenly we’re in a sweaty club, jamming hard with the titular band. There’s gyrating and leather, and good times are rolling.
After the performance, the band hits the road in their bus as their nervous wiener manager drives.
During the drive, the band leader, Jessie, lazily plays a song on his guitar. Its weird vocals attract the attention of another band member, and Jessie explains, “I got it from a book. It’s a spell to raise the dead.”
Then they stop and pick up that mysterious blond hitchhiker.
Incantations to Raise the Dead
+ Murderous Blond Hitchhiker
The Best We’re Going to Get for a Plot.
The blonde leads them to her castle, where one of her suited-demon henchman helps the band unload.
“Hey, can I give you a hand?” asks the midget.
And he does…one of those hands recently cut from the movie’s opening title victims.
Everyone laughs, and no one is really concerned.
Before you can say mullet death, we’re right smack in the middle of a dance sequence, with the band linedancing and doing fancy moves on skateboards set to one of the band’s rockin' jams.
Tens of adoring fans stand around to watch them perform random bullshit everywhere in this Podunk town, and if I don’t miss my guess, I think it's Chinatown, based on everyone's high amount of Chinese features.
Honest to God, I really don’t know what the fuck is going on, but I’m
hanging on, because there’s a picture of Hitler on the back of the case
and I gotta see how that comes into play.
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"And THIS ONE's for the boys!"
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After the dance number, one of the friendly town locals tells Jessie to “get the fuck out of town, pecker,” and the band is then locked up by the town constable for absolutely no reason.
Oh my God, we just met Hitler and he's fucking his wife as he screams furiously in German!
Holy shit!
Then the midget demons came in the room!
Holy shit!
Hitler is still fucking his wife even though the demon midgets are in the room watching him!
Holy shit!
The band is freed from their jail cell thanks to their blond hitchhiker friend and they set up their instruments on her front lawn to pad even more running time with their bad hair rock. The music is so good that the midget demons, murderous hitchhiker, and even the Hitlers have a seat to watch their performance. The creepy photographer is also there, as well as some bald gentleman who looks a lot like Dr. Cox from "Scrubs."
Hitler really seems to be enjoying the music, and he enjoys it so much that he bends over, plugs a wire into an outlet, and electrocutes the entire band is half-to-death. Luckily they don’t die, which leads me to wonder why that even happened in the first place.
Meanwhile a town meeting takes place which features a room full of people voicing their concerns about the presence of the band, and rock music in general.
“My reader’s digest says musicians cannot play a single note unless they EAT DRUGS first,” says a concerned woman.
“Rock music causes sex,” says another woman.
A concerned man stands up and cautions that some of the town’s kids listen to their rock music as they beat off. (How he knows this remains deliciously creepy.)
What a fun town meeting!
The concert, as voted by the board, is hereby canceled, which ultimately ends up banning all rock 'n roll of any type in town.
Let’s pause for a bit of real trivia, courtesy of IMDB:
Originally, this movie was only meant to be about 20 minutes long and solely used as the feature movie in American Drive-In (1985). At some point during production, the decision was made to invest a little bit more money and come out with two full length feature films instead of just one.
Does it show, ladies and germs? That a movie that would have been pushing it at 20 minutes in length then had an extra eighty minutes fucked into it? I’ll leave that up to you.
Back with the band, Jessie continues to practice fingering, running his hands up and down his smooth wood, but then all of a sudden spies a large spider, which he smashes. He goes back to playing, and wouldn’t you know it, the spider comes back to life!
As does the disembodied hand in the jar behind him!
Could it be the incantation he had read about in his book and transformed into a song?
Or could it be…anything else at all?
(It’s the first one.)
The movie figures it’s been a while since we had some, so we get a bitty more titty, courtesy of the blond hitchhiker. A band member then figures that since this girl is taking it upon herself to shower in her own home, it would be okay for him to just get in the shower and have immediate sex with her.
Well, it works. For a little. Then she stabs him a million times with a handy dagger as that weird photographer shows up conveniently to take even more pictures.
And in another room, Mrs. Hitler turns into a dog and uses her switchblade hand to disembowel a couple more band members.
Jessie, meanwhile, receives a warning from one of the townsman’s daughter, Cassie, that they are planning on raiding the house to kill the band. They are then chased by the bald Dr. Cox-looking guy with a buzz saw until Jessie is nailed to a tree and crucified Jesus style and sawed in the chest.
Take that, rock and/or roll!
After the band’s multifuneral (which we don’t see and is only mentioned), the band manager has dinner with the Hitlers, the blond, and the midgets. Why he remains at the house remains to be seen, but all I know is, this movie has Hitler in it, so it’s automatically fantastic.
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Hitler Fun Facts:
1. Terrible flatulence
2. Vegetarian
3. Tremendous ballroom dancer
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Speaking of Hitler, he gets up and rips off his Old Hitler costume to reveal his Young Hitler self underneath, which shocks the band manager who is just now suddenly realizing he has been living with Hitler.
Outside, the forlorn Cassie plays some of the band's music over their graves as a tribute, but the music causes the dead band to reawaken from their earthly resting place to stumble about earth while wearing white face make-up.
Then Hitler flips out, bellows in German, and belts out a few "zieg heils." And because the band manager refuses to work for him, he is tied to a work bench for some death.
Before anything else happens in this god forsaken movie, the band enjoys their first post-death reunion choreography before taking bloody revenge on the people that have wronged them, one by one.
The first to go is the bald man, who has a spike slowly inserted into the side of the neck not visible to the camera. Next is the photographer; he gets his comeuppance by being drowned in a pond, along with the blond hitchhiker. As for the midgets, their tiny heads are clunked together and thrown aside like anyone would a dead midget.
Hitler laments over the loss of his suited-demon midgets and bellows in German fury to the heavens before he is ripped to pieces by the '80s zombie hair band.
That just may be the best sentence ever.
Being that Hitler and all the other adversaries have been killed, and that there is still an hour left to go in this movie, frankly, I’m a little concerned.
A random man walks over to the “dead” body of Mrs. Hitler and rubs her boobs for a bit. Then he gets up, straightens his jacket, and attempts to leave, but oh no! Rubbing the boobs of Mrs. Hitler is what wakes her from the dead and turns her into Doggie Mrs. Hitler!
Who knew!
Hitler then wakes up and rips the man’s head off.
What the fuck—seriously?
This movie should’ve STAYED 20 minutes.
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Though Ticketmaster charges an unheard-of $10 Ghoul Smell
fee, Hard Rock Zombies is still the third-best dead guy act in
town (just after Sergeant Mummy & His Mummies, and
The Rolling Stones).
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The dead band sets up for their show despite their deadness, and when a talent agent sits down to see what they’ve got, the dead band plays him a set. The smarmy agent comments on their make-up, saying that the band will have to get someone to “make it more convincing,” which is meant to be a joke, since they’re supposed to really be dead, but it’s actually a valid suggestion, since the make-up really does look like shit.
The recently resurrected townspeople killed by the ghouls begin to wreak havoc on the other living townspeople, all the while the demon midgets eat themselves (with mustard) and bite cows.
If a script for this movie exists, then so do leprechauns.
The townspeople concoct a theory that “ghouls don’t like heads,” which they will say as much as possible throughout the remainder of the film, so they figure their best plan is to hide behind large signs of famous celebrities as they run through town.
The only time this movie is remotely funny is right now, as the marauding zombies instantly tear apart the townspeople hiding behind their celebrity signs, not the least bit hesitant, confused, or stalled by their giant celebrity sign plan.
Meanwhile, the undead band still jams, and now the undead blond hitchhiker dances with them on stage. I guess bygones are bygones. You know, since she basically murdered them all.
It appears that once the band members were finished their rockin’ set, they climbed back into their graves, their mission now over, I guess. Their band manager pleads for them to come back from the dead again in order to save Cassie, for whom the band manager apparently cares a great deal.
“Is that what you want? Ghouls screwing her to death?” he pleads.
Huh? When was that ever a thing?
Anyway, it works, and the band climbs out of the grave to rock out one last time.
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"That's what she said!" (Sorry.)
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Part of me is tempted to smart-assedly point out that the band, who set up on top of a mountain or some place, are all playing their electric guitars through amps that are clearly not plugged into anything, but then the other part of me remembers that this movie also features Hitler and Hitler’s dogwife who lived with a house of demon midgets whose sole purpose it seems was to defeat rock and roll.
Well, the rock and roll kills all the ghouls, as smoke pours out of their writhing stink flesh. At least this is what I assume happened. No use dwelling on these things, you know.
Then, the midget demon, who has been periodically eating his own body throughout the film, sucks his own face off his decapitated head and eats it, its skull grinning and being sure to let out a healthy belch.
Hi-larious.
