- Produced and directed by Krishna Shah
- Written by David Ball and Krishna Shah
- Starring
- E.J. Curcio
- Geno Andrews
- Sam Mann
- Mick Manz
Ah, eighties music. When it was good, it was very very good; and when it was forgettable, it lives on only in artifacts such as this movie.
Two hitchhikers pick up a beautiful girl, who leads then to a lonely lake with the promise of skinny-dipping. As soon as she gets one in the water, she holds him under till he drowns (at which point, blood inexplicably rises to the surface); she then does the same with the other. In the distance, a tall guy takes pictures and two dwarfs caper giddily.
Night club. A four man rock band, whose name we never catch, is playing to an ecstatic if small crowd. (As a side note, how hard is this rock? Certainly not as hard as, say Van Halen of the same period; in fact, these guys are almost soft enough to be pop.) The song is “Shake It Up, Baby,” and boy is this the eighties; these guys have dangly earrings and eyeliner, and they even do te back-to-back guitar solo thing.
After the show, their manager is trying to get them excited about a record exec who will be at their next concert, and even has some groupies come into the dressing room to get their body parts autographed for some photos. Of course, the band does this unwillinging ’cause, you know, they’re artists.
Outside the dressing room, lead singer Jesse meets a young girl who warns them off from their next gig — in a town called Grand Guignol. (Doncha just love subtlety?)
Next day, the band’s in their van. Jesse’s playing some riff on his bass that he picked up in a book from the Middle Ages — supposedly it can raise the dead (as evidenced by the fact that the mosquito the manager just killed keeps coming back to life). They stop for Hitchhiker Girl, who invites them back to her place.
And her place is, of course, spook central. You’ve got the tall guy and the two dwarfs (one of whom has a malformed latex face), plus a bald guy with an axe. And in the attic, someone is howling. (We also get to see Hitchhiker Girl’s collection of hands in jars, collected from previous victims.)
So the guys go into town, and in our second music video sequence, they run around, being crazy on skateboards and posing on classic cars. The kids seem to love it, but the toothpick-chomping sheriff just scowls through his mirrorshades.
Jesse sees the mystery girl again, but when he follows her he runs into her incredibly rude dad (giving the lie to the idea of smalltown hospitality). The sheriff then throws them in jail for something to do with their van, cackling that the concert is cancelled. Oh no! If the concert tomorrow is cancelled, how will the band ever strut their stuff for the exec?
The mystery girl slips some money through the bars to Jesse — it’s only $37, but it might help with bail. Aw, this is just getting sweet.
Meanwhile, out at Spook Central, an old guy and an old girl are getting it on. Both have German accents, and the guy looks disturbingly like Jimmy Doohan. (The nasty, that’s what Jimmy Doohan! Ha! Ha!) Grannie complements him on his stamina for being 97 years old. The two dwarfs show up and want to watch; after initial misgivings, the old guy is persuaded by the old gal to let them stay. (This qualifies as Moment of Inspired Lunacy #1. As there are only two in the entire movie, you should pay attention.)
Well, the boys are out of jail, thanks to Hitchiker Girl. The sheriff naturally swears that he’ll find some way to shut down the concert. Jesse again meets the mystery girl, and persuades her to finally tell him her name. See, he wrote a song about her while in jail, and he needs her name for the song. Good thing her name is Cassie — imagine trying to work with something like “Ethel.” Or better yet, how about a name that’s already taken? “But I can’t do a song about Beth!”
So the band gives a practice performance at Spook Central, and they get almost all the way through their new power ballad, “Cassie,” when one of the dwarfs shorts out their power, giving them all a nasty shock. (Too damned late, runt.)
And in town, an emergency town council meeting is called on whether to permit the band to play. After hearing from the inbred and inhibited locals, the three-person council votes to add rock ‘n’ roll to the list of things inhibited within city limits (along with door-to-door sales of intimate items and stage plays which question American foreign policy). Not just concerts, either; all records, radio signals, and humming of rock ‘n’ roll are also banned. Wheee!!
So Jesse’s sitting around, playing his bass, and it’s that same medieval riff, which causes a recently crushed spider to come back to life, and a hand in a jar to start twitching. HAVE WE GOTTEN IT YET? ‘CAUSE I’M SURE WE’D ALL HATE NOT TO GET IT WHEN THIS MUSIC COMES IN HANDY, YOU KNOW.
Hitchhiker Girl gets in the shower. The drummer follows her in, intending to get cozy. She smiles and knifes him. At the same time, two other band members meet with Granny — who turns into a werewolf and offs them! Jesse and Cassie (who’re just kinda walking around together) get chased by Baldie with a weedwhacker! (Whatcha gonna do, welt them to death?) They split up; Jesse gives Cassie a tape to play in case “anything happens”. Then he gets (ahem) whacked.
So we fast-forward to after the funeral. The manager is still staying with the ghoul family. Halfway through dinner, a red light goes off on the table, and the old geezer gets excited, stands up, and — Moment of Inspired Lunacy #2 — rips off his mask and bathrobe, to reveal that he is actually Adolf Hitler, in uniform! The rest of his clan immediately appears in SS attire, and they make some sort of television broadcast in ersatz German!
Gee, do you think the filmmakers were getting as bored as I was?
Meanwhile, Cassie weeps at the four rockers’ graves. She plays the tape, and yup, all four burst up through the light covering of soil. And they’re all wearing KISS-lite makeup. Off they go, doing the zombie stomp through the cemetery. (This is all in broad daylight, by the way; no night shooting for this movie.)
Well, Hitler offers the manager a job dispensing his stockpile of poison gas (kept in a bunker within a cave); when the manager tries to escape, Baldie takes him to chop off his head — but the band shows up to the rescue! They drive a spike through Baldie’s head! They strangle WereGrannie! They drown the tall guy and Hitchiker Girl! They bang the dwarfs together real hard! And they ring-around-the-rosie Hitler to death!
(At this point, I’m thinking, “OK, not the best movie, but at least it’s almost over.” Then I checked the clock; we’re only 56 minutes into the flick. There’s more to come.)
The manager runs back to the town council, where an old Jewish guy reveals a few secrets:
- Yes, that was Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun and their children.
- They’re cursed to be ghouls — they’ll come back from the dead as zombies, and they can turn others into zombies.
Naturally, he then croaks (comically) before revealing how to defeat them. And when citizens go out to Spook Central to inspect the carnage, surprise! All the Hitlerlings come back to life and attack!
And where’s the band? Why, in the concert hall, of course, setting up for their gig! The exec shows up, they play the entire “Cassie” song again (with Cassie watching from a hiding place), and the exec goes inexplicably wild for their sound. Whatsa matter, never heard vapid, derivative eighties rock before? We’re even treated to visions of Cassie and Jesse running to each other in slo-mo, dressed in white — the horror!
The band is in concert for at least three songs, so let’s cut back to the townspeople. One guy finds a Junior Woodchuck’s Guide to Ghouls and determines that because ghouls don’t eat heads, therefore they hate heads. Therefore they get all the large head posters in town (Marilyn, John Wayne, etc.) and try to use them to ward off the ghouls. It works for all of seven seconds.
(Also intercut here are scenes of one dwarf sneaking up on the obligatory lovers in the woods, and trying to eat a cow. The other, malformed dwarf is eating his own hand.)
Well, just to cap off the band’s performance, a bunch of ghouls come and wander around stage for the final act. They also chase Cassie out into the street. She manages to get to the citizens’ stronghold right after someone figures out that, if they tie a virgin to the tree on the hill, the zombies will all ravish her and devour her, then go into their graves for a hundred years. When the townspeople grab Cassie for said purpose, Manager Boy runs out to find Jesse to save her.
The band, meanwhile, is packing up their gear silently, to the great consternation of the exec, who is offering them half a million just to sign. But don’t worry; he gets eaten.
The townspeople take Cassie to the tree in the hill in a really bad day-for-night scene (so bad that halfway through they stop trying to pretend).
Manager Boy arrives at the graves and tries to persuade them reburied band to rise again to save Cassie. He finally gets them up when he pulls out the ring that Jesse had given to Cassie.
The dead come swarming to the hill, making humping motions, and surround the tree… But wait! What’s that sound? Could it be the band, having quickly set up their equipment again? Could they be playing more medieval music? And could they be right in front of the cave that leads to the bunker?
Yes on all counts. The band lures them in to the bunker, Manager Boy locks the door and turns the valve, and the poison gas causes them all to really die.
Cassie says her last goodbyes at the grave (never explaining who went in to a poison-filled room to retrieve the bodies). Jesse’s hand comes back up to give her the ring. Ah, how sweet. The end.
All in all, a bland movie. You can obviously see how the filmmakers were trying to keep themselves interested, with limited results: The Hitler scene (I honestly thought the movie would get better after that); Hitchhiker Girl’s repeated interpretive dance sequences; even the deformed dwarf slowly eating his entire body (in the last scene, he’s nothing but a head — and then he sucks his face into his mouth and chews, leaving only a skull). Despite all that, you could almost hear the director yawning. Or maybe that was me.
Some Notable Totables:
- body count: 28
- breasts: 2
- explosions: 5
- dream sequences: 1
- ominous thunderstorms: 0
- performances that could have been chopped out and used as music videos: 4
- actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
- John Fleck (”Arnold,” don’t ask me which one he was) showed up on TNG, a fourth-season DS9, and a seventh-season DS9
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