Along with Hard Rock Nightmare, which I previously covered in this column, the similarly titled Hard Rock Zombies is leaving Shudder in a few days. This is no reason to seek out either, but of the two, Nightmare comes out way ahead since it actually looks like it was made by people who halfway knew what they were doing. This is not the case with Zombies, which is so haphazardly put together, it borders on incomprehensible — not that anyone should try to comprehend what’s going on in this bargain basement Cannon release.
The basic premise (and I’m using that term very loosely) of Hard Rock Zombies is that Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun resettled in California after World War II and put down roots in the improbably named town of Grand Guignol. That also happens to be the place where an up-and-coming rock band has arranged to play for a famous promoter who could make them big stars. As soon as they roll into town, though, the local bigwigs start giving them the stink eye, and after a Monkees-style musical interlude where they prance around town to a song titled “Na Na Na,” the band and their uptight manager are thrown in jail on trumped-up charges. The bigwigs even go so far as to ban rock and roll in all its forms within city limits at a hastily called council meeting that does not show off producer-director Krishna Shah or his co-writer David Ball’s flair for comedy. This is extremely detrimental to the film as a whole since it is pitched as a horror-comedy. It’s doubly disappointing, then, that it isn’t remotely scary or even vaguely creepy. It’s just dumb.
Take the nonsensical introduction of the film’s werewolf character. After picking up a scantily clad hitchhiker (who previously lured two unwary travelers to their doom), the band is directed to her family’s mansion, and as they pull up Shah cuts in flashes of a female werewolf in a wheelchair in an attic-like space brandishing knives and howling away for no particular reason (unless it’s just that she’s hungry). When one of the band members inquires about the howling, the hitchhiker explains it away as if it’s a perfectly normal sound for one’s mother to make. That the mother turns out to be none other than Eva Braun does nothing to make things any clearer, especially since the credits list different actresses for the roles of “Eva” and “Wolf Lady.” I refuse to speculate any further about the matter.
Anyway, the band does make it to their big audition, but only after they’ve been murdered in various gory ways by Hitler and his kin and brought back by a song their singer/bass guitarist was working on based on an ancient chant that has the power to raise the dead. In short order, they kill their killers in the space of a montage, but there’s still 45 minutes of movie left to go at that point, so Shah and Ball have to figure out how to keep it going. As it turns out, Hitler and company are unkillable ghouls, and everyone they bite also becomes a zombie, leading to a Night of the Living Dead-esque siege of the few remaining townspeople who aren’t Nazis, zombies, or Nazi zombies. As one of them says, “God, this sounds like a cheap movie.” “This whole day has been like a cheap movie” comes the reply. Nice attempt at lampshading, guys, but while Hard Rock Zombies is undeniably cheap, it is barely a movie.