Possibly the most RANDOM movie I’ve ever seen!
*** This review may contain spoilers ***

In my never-ending quest for the ultimate in cinematic craptacularity (I made that word up, I own the copyright on it, don’t steal it) the title “Hard Rock Zombies” has come up many times as one of the films I supposedly “had to see to believe”. Luckily, I came across the film on a cheapie 3-film zombie compilation DVD at the local supermarket (!) for only a buck 99, so I happily took it home for a night’s viewing. 90 minutes later, I am still picking my jaw up out of my lap and wondering, “What the HELL have I just seen?” “Hard Rock Zombies” is quite possibly the most random movie I have ever seen. It’s primarily a horror comedy with a rock-n-roll edge, seemingly pasted together from bits and pieces of other films in no particular order. It’s basically a never ending series of “WTF?” moments that will either have you laughing hysterically (as I did) or throwing things at your TV.

Our so-called story: the members of a terrible, mulleted rock band are on their way to a small town in the middle of nowhere to meet up with a record company scout for a showcase gig. A spooky underage chick with bushy eyebrows warns the hunky lead singer “Jesse” not to go there because “They don’t want you.” The band of course ignores the warning, and along the way they pick up a hot blonde hitchhiker who suggests they crash at her place instead of the local hotel. Big mistake. Hot Blonde’s house is populated with the weirdest looking cast of characters this side of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” including a wheelchair-bound, switchblade packing Granny, a couple of twisted looking midgets, and an old guy who we soon find out is Hitler himself. (!!) Adolf’s been in hiding for all these years and has decided that this exact moment is the time to start the Fourth Reich. The creepy house inhabitants murder all four band members and bury them in shallow graves, fortunately they’re brought back to life by the bushy-eyebrowed groupie who plays one of their songs at their gravesite.

From there….well, chaos is the only word to describe the goings-on. The re-animated band members (who now look like KISS and walk like robots) kill the Nazis, who unfortunately become zombies themselves (whoops) and overrun the town. The band’s (still living) manager somehow manages to convince them to play their showcase concert anyway (even though they’re dead), and all the zombies show up and rock out. Then the band leads the zombies Pied-Piper style to a hidden mountain cave outside of town, where they are dispatched by a hidden stash of Hitler’s mustard gas. Seriously. I’m not making this story up folks.

If you can stand the absolutely ludicrous storyline, “Hard Rock Zombies” is a hell of a lot of fun to watch (and make fun of). IMDb sez the movie started out as a short film intended to be a movie within another movie before being padded out to feature length, which explains the interminably long rock concert sequence, as well as a couple of hilariously bad MTV video-style musical montages of zombie munchin’ and hot girl dancin’ amidst all of the mayhem. The acting is laughable, the gore effects are cheap, and a lot of jokes fall flat, but at least there is some nice female eye candy (nice nod to the shower scene in “Psycho” as well, by the way) to balance it all out. Lovers of good ol’ fashioned sleazy grindhouse stuff will have a ball with this one.

“Hard Rock Zombies” is a totally ridiculous mix of blood, boobs and bad music that is so grimy it will leave a film on your teeth. I had a blast, but by the same token I never want to see it again. You’re either going to love it or hate it, but you HAVE to see this movie at least once before you die. Trust me..

Brought to you by Keith Abt, the Dollar DVD Guy. He suffers through these movies so YOU don’t have to!

3 Headstones out of 5

**NOTE: This review is based on the version of this film known as “City of the Walking Dead.”**

I’ve been getting a crash course in ’70s/’80s Italian horror movies lately thanks to my local dollar store (of all places), where some surprisingly cool titles have been turning up on their DVD rack. A few weeks ago I watched and commented on Dario Argento’s “Creepers” (aka “Phenomena”) and now I’ve also watched the infamous “City of the Walking Dead” (also known as “Nightmare City,” “Nightmare in the Contaminated City” and “Zombie 3,” and possibly a few other titles too, depending on where you are in the world!), which was on the same DVD. I’ve never been a huge fan of Zombie movies outside of the Romero canon, but that’s OK because “City of the Living Dead” (a Spanish/Italian co-production directed by trash movie legend Umberto Lenzi of “Cannibal Ferox” fame) technically isn’t a “zombie movie” anyway, despite its more than passing resemblance to Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead.” The creatures in this film are never referred to as “zombies.” They may have the rotten, scarred look of the Dead Who Walk and they do attack and kill humans, but these “walking dead” have more in common with vampires, as they drink their victims’ blood, rather than eating their flesh. Whatever you wanna call these critters, the movie in which they star is a complete and total Z-Grade hoot and a half. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a film with such cheap effects, terrible acting, and nonsensical script and dialogue, yet I still had a crap load of fun watching it!! The film opens with a news report of a nuclear accident near an unnamed metropolitan area. A TV reporter (played by the incredibly wooden Hugo Stiglitz, a Mexican actor who apparently continues to have a long career in Spanish language TV and film, despite this film being on his resume) is sent to the airport to interview a scientist who is going to update the authorities on the situation. When the airplane lands, a horde of irradiated and irritable zombie-like creatures (with “makeup” that appears to be burnt oatmeal smeared all over their faces) bursts out of the plane, massacres everyone within reach with knives and axes and sucks the blood from them. Before you stop to ask “Wait a minute…since when do zombies use weapons? Are zombies intelligent enough to fly a plane?”, the movie is off and running and you never have a chance to think about it again. Stiglitz and his cameraman haul ass back to the TV station to broadcast a news flash, but are told that an information blackout has been ordered by the military in order to avoid panic. Shortly thereafter the horde of undead attack the TV station (in the midst of what appears to be a broadcast of a “Solid Gold” style disco-dance program) and make short work of the dancers on live television. This scene features some nice gratuitous boob shots and a laughably fake looking scene of a dancer’s nipple being carved right out of her chest by an attacker. Stiglitz battles the undead killers for a while then races to the hospital where his wife (Laura Trotter) works in hopes of getting them both out of the city alive.

The rest of the movie follows Stiglitz and Trotter as they try to find a safe haven from the creatures, mixed with random scenes of Undead attacking various background characters, and a group of military generals who stand around a tiny model of the city and spout a lot of goofball pseudo-scientific dialogue about containing the “contamination.” Especially funny is when they advise police and soldiers that the only way to kill the creatures is to “destroy the brain,” yet anytime you see a soldier open fire on one of’em, they shoot them everywhere except in the head, which of course then ends badly for the shooter. Way to follow orders there, guys. The dialogue is uniformly ridiculous throughout (you can tell it was written by people whose native language is not English), and the special effects waver from being occasionally competent to out-and-out cheap. We see lots of stabbings and throat slashings, a few head explosions, the aforementioned nipple chop, and an eyeball gouging (every Italian horror movie has to have at least one, I suppose) before the finale in an amusement park, where Stiglitz and Trotter battle hordes of the undead while trapped atop a roller coaster (!). I don’t want to violate the Spoiler Warning rules so I won’t even go into the absolutely ridiculous ending except to say it’s the most massive cop-out I’ve ever seen.

So okay, “City of the Walking Dead” was a completely ludicrous piece of Eurotrash grind house cinema. Fortunately it was also fast paced and had enough over-the-top action that it distracted me from the fact that the movie made little to no sense for much of its length. I gotta give Lenzi a little bit of credit for taking what could’ve been a total “Dawn of the Dead” bite and trying to inject something new into the formula, even if the end result is pretty half-assed. This is the kind of film that you watch with a couple of good friends who love bad movies over a case or two of cheap beer. Considering that I only paid a buck for the DVD, I got my money’s worth!

P.S. I absolutely love how the U.S. posters for this movie trumpet the fact that “MEL FERRER, STAR OF TV’s FALCON CREST” stars in it — I guess ol’ Mel must’ve lost a Super Bowl bet with someone and had to appear in this movie as punishment.

Brought to you by Keith Abt, the Dollar DVD Guy. He suffers through these movies so YOU don’t have to!

4.5 Headstones out of 5

Hey there fright fans. We recently added a new ghoul to the Dr. Death-Threads team. Keith Abt “The Dollar DVD Guy”, will be supplying you with his horror-filled movie reviews. Debating on wether or not to watch that fright flick? Don’t worry, we have you covered. Keith will be your go-to-ghoul on all good and bad from the horror bin. His first review is the Klaus Kinski 80’s classic, “Creature“. Enjoy!

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I was a teenager when “Creature” had a short run in theatres back in 1985. Even then I thought it looked like a low budget “Alien” ripoff, and though I loved a good sci-fi B-Movie back in those days (and still do) I never got around to seeing the film for one reason or another. Many years later, thanks to the magic of Public Domain, “Creature” turned up on the DVD rack in my local dollar store (on a double feature disc paired with Mark Hamill’s “Slipstream” no less), so I snagged a copy and sat down for some retro ’80s sci-fi cheese. Call me crazy, but I feel that the B-Movies from this era have more charm and character than any of the CGI-blasted so-called “B’s” that roll into our video stores on a regular basis nowadays, and “Creature” was no exception. It is definitely not original in the slightest but it was still a fun ride.

The plot is serviceable: a future archaeological team on Titan, one of the moons of Saturn, finds a collection of preserved alien life forms in stasis tubes, some of them dating back 20,000 years. Of course, they accidentally break one of the tubes open and the occupant wakes up and has the explorers for lunch. Sometime later a search team is sent from Earth to find out what happened to the first squad, and when they come in for a landing on Titan they find a ship from a rival German corporation already in their planned landing zone. They hurry down to the surface, thinking that their competition has beaten them to the find, which results in their ship crashing and becoming damaged beyond repair. The astronauts explore the seemingly-deserted German ship and are attacked by the title Creature, who looks pretty much like you would expect a low budget ripoff of Giger’s “Alien” to look like… rubbery and toothy. (The creature is kept mostly in shadows for most of the film, doubtlessly to prevent the audience from seeing its threadbare construction in full lighting.) Eventually the lone “name” actor in “Creature’s” cast shows up in the form of Germany’s Klaus Kinski (who usually appears in higher-brow films than this) as the only survivor of the German ship’s crew. He explains that “We’ve found someone’s butterfly collection… but some of these butterflies are not so friendly,” then makes plans to help the American crew reclaim the German ship from its nasty stowaway so they can all return to Earth together. Needless to say, these plans go horribly wrong, so the Creature gets to chow on a few other cast members (and take over using their minds/bodies using parasitic little sucker-creatures attached to their heads) before the remaining survivors manage to mount a final assault and take the critter down.

“Creature” was obviously pretty low budget but despite that it has pretty decent sets and costumes, and a sense of humor that’s often missing from other flicks in this genre. The cast (made up mainly of character actors from television) do their jobs well enough, and the action scenes are better than I expected. I seem to remember this film being rated PG-13 when it was released back in the ’80s but I wonder if that is accurate because of the presence of a few “F-bombs,” some pretty decent gore on display (including a head explosion, a decapitation, and a guy’s face being peeled off of his skull) and some female boobies would’ve definitely called for an “R” in those days. “Creature” kept my interest throughout and is something I’d watch again. Worth a look even if you’re tired of the “Alien” saga and its endless retreads.

Brought to you by Keith Abt, the Dollar DVD Guy. He suffers through these movies so YOU don’t have to!

3 Headstones out of 5

I made it over to my local theater this weekend and I have this to say….Ladies and Gentlemen, the slasher film is back! I’ve said it before; I’m not a fan of recent horror remakes, but occasionally there is a diamond in the rough. My Bloody Valentine 3-D is one of those diamonds. A remake that doesn’t stray too far from the original but also doesn’t make a carbon copy of the original.

Just like the 1981 film, this 2009 remake has solid character development (for a horror flick), interesting locations and balls to the wall gore. I was able to see it in 3-D which made the experience 10 times more enjoyable. Come on! Horror and 3-D go together like peanut butter and jelly. And the filmmakers know this. They take full advantage of the 3-D and deliver the blood right from the get go. 

Tired of all the recent “torture porn”? Me too. So it was nice to see an old-fashioned thriller flick again. Who knows, it might get old real quick once the Friday the 13th remake is released. But let’s enjoy it while it lasts. 

3 Headstones out of 5

Troma is known for many things. Making Academy Award worthy films is not one of them. That being said, their films cannot be taken too seriously. When watching a Troma film you pretty much know what you’re in for and if you don’t, you’re in for a world of hurt.

The plot in a nutshell: Radioactive water leaks from a nuclear power plant and contaminates a near-by school. All the kids from the honor society have turned into total punk assholes. They’re called the “Kreatens” and they go around harassing all the other students. The Kreatens sell pot to the kids throughout school, but there’s a catch: the pot has been growing at the power plant.

The two main characters are Chrissy and Warren. Their school days consist of cuddling, hanging out with friends and dodging The Kreatens. They’ve been dating for a while but haven’t had sex yet. Some friends buy the radiation-bathed marijuana and both Chrissy and Warren smoke it. BIG MISTAKE. (Not the pot smoking part. Just the fact that the pot is covered in radiation). They get stoned and super horny and they end up losing their virginity together. Yes, Chrissy gets pregnant!!! And Warren has a 12-foot erection!!! Disturbingly amazing.

Chrissy’s unborn child is really a monstrous, grotesque creature from hell. During this time Warren mutates into a smashingly strong super hero mutant thing. He goes around town, kicking the piss out of The Kreatens.

Anyway. The editing sucks, the continuity is terrible, the dialogue is juvenile and the acting is crappy. But there is nudity, drug use, monsters, blood, guts and terrible special effects. Let’s not forget about the awesome 80’s crap rock that is sprinkled throughout the film. A good movie to watch after a night of Binge drinking, maybe smoke some pot (no radiation) and your golden.

3 Headstones out of 5

Released during the summer of 2006, most assumed Monster House was “just another animated flick”. Fortunately, they were wrong. Monster House is an intelligent little film with a great script, clever humor and likeable characters. The film is extremely well written with fantastic visuals. The writers have taken a basic premise and created a loveable world around it. Directed by Gil Kenan, Monster House is about a living house with an evil disposition that torments the neighborhood kids. A kid who lives across the street and his friends are the only ones who can stop it. After his parents go out of town, DJ and his friend Chowder, recruit Jenny and attempt to unmask the truth behind the monstrous nature of the house. The kids try to tell the police and adults about the house, but who’s going to believe a group of kids? No one. With one day remaining before Halloween, the pre-teens decide to fight back and end the Monster House’s torments. 

The film is full of sharp-witted scenes. Early in the film, DJ and Chowder stay up all night spying on the house from DJ’s room. They never leave his room, not even to pee. They’ve been urinating in empty soda bottles throughout the duration of the stakeout. The next day Jenny is introduced and the two friends create a small rivalry to win over the pretty girl. This tension creates hilarious instances not to be missed. Each character brings something needed to the table. DJ is the leader and has the courage to do anything that is needed. Chowder is the over-weight, clumsy, comical side kick. Rounding out the trio is Jenny, who’s intelligence keeps the other two in check.

Throughout the film, secondary characters are introduced. Although they have minimal screen time each character is essential to the film. For these roles, the filmmakers were able to get some good voice work from established actors. Steve Buscemi plays the creepy old homeowner. Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kevin James, Jason Lee and Jon Heder also lend their talents. Even Kathleen Turner has a small role. But her overweight animated character is a far cry from her hotter than hot Jessica Rabbit! One of the characters plays an old 8-bit style arcade game. It’s called “Thou Art Dead” and you can actually play it on the Monster House website. The scene during the movie is hilarious and the game is great!

Monster House is beautifully animated with vibrant colors and wonderful camera angles. The characters are animated by use of motion capture, similar to The Polar Express. But the humans are purposely cartoony looking, staying away from that creepy realness other films have attempted to overcome. The actual “Monster House” character is a frighteningly awesome design that has human-like qualities. The final climatic scene should not be missed.

I think we can all relate to a movie like this. As a kid there was always a creepy house on your block. I remember when I was a kid, my neighbors house looked like it was owned by the Manson family. The landscaping hadn’t been touched in ages. It also brings you back to your childhood, when you had zero priorities and no car insurance payments. Ah, those were the days. Anyway, this is a perfect Halloween movie for kids and adults. It’s also a good movie to own. It doesn’t get stale or boring on repeat viewings. Instead of watching Halloween 5 for the umpteenth time, get yourself a copy of Monster House, you won’t regret it.

4.5 Headstones out of 5