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Hard Rock Zombies
R0 - America - MVD Visual Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (24th June 2025). |
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The Film
 Rock band Holy Moses has just landed a gig in the township of Grand Guignol. It matters not to manager Ron (Ted Wells) that they receive a very unfriendly welcome by the town council - headed by the mayor (The Tomb's David O'Hara) and the very Southern sheriff (Scarecrows' Richard Vidan) - because they can finally get an audience with talent agent Don Matson (Alien Nation's Michael David Simms) who is stopping through. Lead singer Jesse (E.J. Curse) is unnerved by a warning from willowy teenager Cassie to stay away from the town, but his bandmates (Dr. Alien's Geno Andrews,Roller Blade's Sam Mann, and Mick Manz) cannot resist the invitation of comely hitchhiker Elsa (former Miss Delaware Lisa Toothman) to take advantage of the hospitality of her creepy family: vociferously Aryan papa (Jack Bliesener), wheelchair bound mama Eva (Nadia) - whose lunar "primal scream therapy" is actually caused by lycanthropy - and dwarf siblings Mickey (Troll's Phil Fondacaro) and deformed Buckey (partially Gary Friedkin, partially a sub-Ghoulies puppet creation from John Carl Buechler and crew). The sheriff and the mayor rush through a decree banning all rock music from the town - because rock music contains hidden messages that provoke sex, self-abuse, and "non-curricular fantasies" - but before the village mob can even get their torches and pitchforks on the rockers, they have all been brutally slaughtered by the family, and the sheriff is more than willing to pass off their deaths as a freak accident and has them hurriedly buried. Left without a band and a job, Ron does not even have the opportunity of refusing a job offer from papa who reveals himself to be still alive Adolf Hitler who is planning to unleash The Fourth Reich upon the world. Cassie's tears and a tape recording of Jessie's Latin ballad "Morte Ascendere" bring the bandmates back from the dead and they wreak their revenge upon the family. Unfortunately, while the zombies put on a concert, the family resurrect and terrorize the town who decide to try offering up a virgin sacrifice to appease the dead. Originally intended as a twenty-odd minute segment for director Krishna Shah's American Drive-in, Hard Rock Zombies was always intended to be a cult movie oddity. While its everything-but-the-kitchen-sink concoction of elements might have worked in short form where one could overlook the discontinuities, in feature-length form, it is as plodding a "look at me" midnight movie-wannabe as the likes of Six-String Samurai. The "hard rock" is actually pretty mellow even by eighties New Wave standards, Wells and Coe are in an entirely different movie than the supporting players whose characterizations range from broadly burlesque to flat-out incompetent, and - in spite of some gore and parallels between conservatism and Nazism - it neither funny, scary, or clever. American-educated director Shah had worked in television as a writer before his more disturbed than disturbing feature directorial debut Rivals in which poor Joan Hackett is trapped in a psychosexual triangle between her child and her manchild second husband, followed up his African American character drama The River Niger with the all-star Bollywood picture Shalimar - released stateside as "Raiders of Shalimar" shorn of nearly an hour and its 70mm six-track stereo mix reduced to mono - before the back to back Hard Rock Zombies and American Drive-in, the former distributed by Cannon and the latter self-distributed (with both winding up tangled in a lawsuit for some time). 
Video
Given scant theatrical release by Cannon, Hard Rock Zombies gathered dust on the rental shelves as a Vestron Video VHS which may have been the source of various unauthorized DVD releases throughout the world. In 2022, Vinegar Syndrome had to make do with 35mm archival materials for their Blu-ray double feature with Slaughterhouse Rock. Since the print was American in origin, it was the R-rated cut of the film with some bits of not-particularly-graphic gore composited in from a standard definition video source. MVD Visual's 16:9 anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen DVD is derived from the same master. Since the film was badly-photographed, the otherwise print materials has some baked-in issues or murky blacks and blooming window highlights so not all of the inserts may be easy to notice but they do reveal how petty the MPAA could be with non-studio films. Just as with the Blu-ray, trying to inject some vibrancy into the image with your television's different picture modes results in orange skin and blue zombie pallor. 
Audio
The film's mono track sounds clean enough in Dolby Digital 2.0 but it a flat mix apart from the dialogue (some of which is post-synched), some exaggerated dismemberment foley, and intermittently dynamic music. Optional English SDH subtitles have been included. 
Extras
MVD was not able to include any of Vinegar Syndrome's extras – including an hour-long retrospective documentary and a trio of interviews (presumably hardcore Hard Rock Zombies fandom already own that edition) – but they have included an exclusive in an Australian video trailer (0:41) that sells the cheese. 
Overall
Hard Rock Zombies is unfunny and decidedly not scary but it has a place in the cult of rock horror films and the Cannon filmography.
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