Customer Reviews

Hard Rock Zombies

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Amazing. "Hard Rock Zombies" is truly amazing. Before I go to far please note that my 3 star review is for the film, as well as the DVD presentation. Meaning that, as far as awful films go, this would get 5 stars without a doubt. Seriously, this film features:
1. Nazi Midgets
2. Awful Hair Metal Wannabes
3. Octogenarian Sex
4. A love story sub-plot with strong overtones of pedophilia
5. Hideous dialogue
6. Completely inept special effects
I sat in awe for 90 minutes as this film played out. I'm tempted to watch it again this evening just to make sure I didn't miss any of the on screen awfulness. If you are a fan of awful cinema, you must own "Hard Rock Zombies".
The DVD release is simply awful. The color is faded, scratchy & jumps around. The sound is muddy, and at times it's impossible to understand the dialogue. In short it's everything Quentin Tarantino tried to do with "Grindhouse"...but this is the real thing. If you are a fan of the film, this probably won't effect your viewing experience too much. I recommend this film for fans of awful horror films, but try to find a used copy if possible.

Yes, there may be something wrong with me, but I love bad movies. The more times you see the crew in the shot the better. We bought this movie at the local supermarket last night and I have never laughed so hard in my life. The music is pure cheese, the plot is hysterical, the acting is downright scary. I even checked it out on imdb and all the actors had to be the director's friends, because they have not acted in anything since 1984 when the movie came out. This movie + alcohol + friends = a fabulous time!

I did this review judging that you've already seen the film, I didn't go into the story aspect of the film.


Being a fan of Hard Rock Zombies for a few years now, me and my friends have been awaiting a DVD release of this film. Well now it's here, and here's my review.

My initial reaction while hearing the first key drum beats to the opening track was oh god, it sounds awful. I didn't expect much sound wise after turning over the DVD box and saw AC-3 sound, this normally means in my head the sound isn't going to be great. At the time I had it running though my 5.1 surround sound receiver. After listen to a few minutes of the movie, I decided it would be best just to let my TV speakers handle the audio.

Then after my reaction to the sound it was on to the picture. As well my initial reaction to the sound, the picture quality wasn't a good one either. The opening shoot features a road zipping by into a tunnel, then the title credit, which is red instead of white. It just looks like the film this was taken from wasn't well preserved, a lot of new lines and hairs if you will, were beset on to the picture that didn`t exists on the US VHS version. After watching awhile the image did seem to be sharper then the VHS. No VHS fuzz, but still it's far from perfect. A lot of technical errors, on a few occasions the film would just lock up for a seconds. Then it had a few clipping issues where the 75% of the screen would flash white. Then a few static clips though out the picture.

Now onto my biggest problem with this DVD. Maybe I'm nuts, but I find the music numbers in this movie just awesome. Well every time the band is playing a rockin track then a line of dialog is spoken the music is doubled up then a few seconds afterwards, making a ungodly bunch of echoing in place of the wonderful tracks. I don't know if they've taken the audio from a test version of the film, or if the dialog just simply couldn't be heard so they had to boost the speech and replace background sound. I don't know but it isn't good. I love the music in this film. If anyone reading this has a soundtrack please email me, I'll make it worth your while.

Alright so I pointed out all of the bad points, now I'll point out the good points. This is great if your a fan. The picture at time does seem to be crisper then the VHS. It's good to own a official release of this film. But here is what makes this DVD worth owning to any Hard Rock Zombies fan. Their are a lot of scenes that were cut out of the original VHS release. Those scenes have been added back in this version. Not like it's a entire different movie, but it is nice to see a few more scenes being a fan of the film.

(...)

Special Features, their are none. They have a cast in crew section that doesn't reveal more then the ending credits do.
In closing the picture isn't great, but it's probably the best your going to find for this title.

Well I guess that does it for my review. (...) 4 out of 5 stars. Considering the likelihood of another DVD being produced I was easy on my star ratings.

This movie deserves five stars for being so bad. It has everything the worst movie ever made should have: Zombies in bad makeup, bad acting, 80's hair band music, Hitler, midgets, and Lisa Toothman (yummy!). I was happy to find this on DVD as I remember seeing this with friends in Junior High (we snuck in). Sadly the dvd transfer sucks. It looks like they used a worn out VHS (or Betamax) tape as the source. I couldn't even enjoy the shower scene. This movie needs to be digitally remastered so everyone can enjoy the worst movie ever made!

Hard Rock Zombies (Krishna Shah, 1985)

When I was but a wee media critic, there were three films, more than any others, that cemented my love of awful, awful movies. First, there was 1972's Beware! The Blob, directed by Larry Hagman (the recent DVD reissue trumpets it as "the film J.R. shot!"), one of the few movies I've seen over fifty times in my life. So many bad special effects all piled into one place, with so many quality seventies actors hamming it up. How can you not love it? Then came 1977's Shriek of the Mutilated, which I was lucky enough to catch on late-night TV one night when I was in seventh grade (1981? 82? don't know). I say "lucky" because it seems from the DVD that the master print of the film has become horribly degraded, so at least I had a chance to see it in all its original... okay, "splendor" is not the right word. It's an awful movie in every sense of the word, but for a movie I didn't see for over twenty years, between that one TV viewing and the release of the DVD, to have left that many indelible images on my mind, there had to have been something transcendent about it. And then there was Hard Rock Zombies, one of the mainstays of my high school years. I have no idea how many times I rented this from my local video store. All of my friends and I could quote from it at length. It's the kind of bad movie that you know is bad, but you just can't stop watching. I hadn't seen it since those days, but here's another case where a recent DVD release has reaffirmed my love for the awful. In fact, it's even better, in a horrible way, than I remembered it being from back in the day.

The story concerns a band, led by charismatic (and insufferably-coifed) lead singer Jessie (Silent Rage frontman and Chippendales model E. J. Curcio, known these days as E. J. Curse), who are headed for the small town of Grand Guignol for a show. Grand Guignol is not your normal town, however. Serial killers, religious fanatics, evil dwarves, corrupt lawmen, and all other manner of weirdness live there. Aligned against them is one young girl, Cassie (Jennifer Coe, in her only feature film appearance), who finds the band the night before and warns them not to go to the town. Jessie runs into her again once the band gets to town, and the two of them fall in love. When the town turns against the band and murders them, is the power of love enough to bring them back from beyond the grave? Well, okay, no, but a song Jessie wrote from lyrics he found in an ancient book of the dead sure does. The band can get revenge from beyond the grave and still play the concert for the record promoter who's going to be in town!

This movie is full of clichés, "hard rock" in the vein of John Waite, stupid plot branches that seem like they were last-minute additions (entirely possible; IMDB notes this was originally meant as a twenty-minute short), and really, really awful hair. It's the kind of movie that's so entirely bad that once you've started watching it, you simply can't look away, because you can't bear to not know how much worse this thing's going to get. And it seems to be the difference between your run-of-the-mill awful film and something like Hard Rock Zombies is that this movie never stops getting worse. When the big plot surprise happens about halfway through the movie, you have to wonder how they're going to get even stupider. But oh, my. Trust me on this.

There is a brand of stupidity that is capable of marketing itself as genius. Or there is a brand of genius that expresses itself in ways that are, shall we say, differently abled. One way or the other, though, Hard Rock Zombies is a classic example of the genre. It's funny, it's awful, it's stupid, and it's absolutely must-see. **** ½

If ever there was a film that deserved a holy s**t! award, this mind-blower would have to be it. Should you, dear reader, see this? Hell yeah! But go into this movie with your eyes open. People expecting Wes Craven or Sam Raimi will be sorely disappointed once the parade begins to go past of Midget Nazis, a mulleted hair band, a horny Hitler, a horny stammering redneck, a near sexy (and horny) Eva Braun, a werewolf lady, head twitchingly stupid redneck townies (wait until you see the thing they do with the giant faces), not one, but two 80s-era montages, and some kind of magic song that gets this whole snowball rolling. The acting for the most part is heinous, but for the record, the Hitler character was interesting. Where this movie loses its star is in the uber-crappy transfer and the equally frustrating sound--though as luck would have it, the lousy music comes across just fine.

My favorite scenes: the werewolf lady who pulls out two switchblade-looking knives to go after one of the band members.
and, death by weedeater--booyah!

Then you NEED to OWN this movie. Good luck renting this one at blockbuster!

The film is washy and scratchy, the audio is poorly mixed/synced throughout the movie, everything that happens is random and odd, all very low budget dialouge and acting of course.

This movie will surprise even the veteran b movie goers to be a crappy classic! I wont ruin the movie just !@$#in get it!

Wow...a film I never thought would get released on DVD. Here it is...and oh boy...it's just as lousy, stupid, and ridiculous as I remember it being. Why did I give it 5 stars you ask? Well, call it nostalgia....nostalgia for renting ratty looking VHS tapes from the local "Mom & Pop" video stores that no longer exist. This movie brings back great memories of those wonderful old days when I would rent ANYTHING with the words "zombie", "horror", or "splatter" in the title. The actual movie is crap, the DVD quality is crap...but the memories are great, and forever(now thanks to DVD).

Hard Rock Zombies is a pretty good movie, but it could have been great if the DVD quality would have been better. The first half is okay, but most of the second half of the movie is too dark. This is a film that could definitely use a special edition DVD to clear all of that up.

This movie is not a grabber for the nomal kind of movie watchers..i liked it cause it was so silly , and i liked the songs . The video quality itself , well is not too good, but it is still fun to watch..it puts you in mind of something a bunch of ppl did in a small town , without any hollywood help. It takes me back to the 80's for some reason, i mean the really happy 80's.