Hard Rock Zombies

Hard Rock Zombies is a rare jewel among movies - its like two (if not three) movies in one. And this greatness is only muliplied by its extremely low price of seventy-seven cents. However, its placement in the discount bin at Pathmark is beyond all comprehension because this film is pure genius, intertwining various different plots and subplots with other subplots even more complex than Lost.

Ok, so it starts out with a kick-ass rock concert at the local bar with THE BAND. The name of the band isn't mentioned and therefore isn't important. They're too hard rock for band names! Fittingly, the members of the band are also basically nameless except for the lead singer/bassist Jesse:


He's on the right. And oh yea, he's a pedophile but we'll touch on that later.

 So anyway, they're like the most rocking-est band ever, kicking over drums and jumping around stage and what have you and then have a super rad backstage autograph session with their tween fans (Hey, its the Eighties, kids could go to bars!)

After the gig they head to Grand Guignol, where their next event is scheduled to take place. En route, Jesse plays a few notes on the bass and remarks "This song is supposed to bring people back from the dead." (Hopefully if you're watching, you didn't sneeze or shift positions on a squeaky couch or you missed it and you'll be totally lost later on in the movie.) The only problem is that the townspeople HATE rock and roll music. Why? Because its a well -known fact that all adults hate glam rock and roll and everything related to this music is both evil and satanic. Just look at these hooligans!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l-scmdpfp8

Look at them! Dancing! Drinking Soda! Skateboarding! Panto-miming at the bus stop!! It's no wonder those adults are so displeased, their town can do without such deviance! The Band end up in jail and a young girl named Cassie tries to free them.

Notice how she's like 14?

She warns them about how the townspeople hate them, and how the people who bailed them out of jail are bad people, but Jesse is too busy falling in love with the minor. And to worsen the deal he even admits to his pedophilia by writing and singing a song entitled "I'm so in love but you're so young"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQsGLuIEe2s&feature=related

(sure this is a lot of videos, but hey - its a musical movie isnt it?! BTW the song doesn't start until about 2:30 into the vid)

OK so now we have The Band in Grand Guignol staying with a mysterious family that bailed them out of jail. And the band is struggling to practice for this gig and fighting against the town to have their concert. Sounds like your typical Rock and Roll movie right? Well this is where you're WRONG, because during practice, the family electrocutes them! Begin movie #2 - The Horror!

Turns out they're all freaks: two midgets, one with an eye patch and one with a melted face, a guy with a camera, a temptress with a knife, a creepy groundskeeper, and a werewolf grandma in the attic. I know what you're thinking: "Wait, did you just say a WEREWOLF? I thought it was Hard Rock Zombies?!" Well keep your pants on I'm getting to that!
The Band survives the electrocution and ends up being killed one-by-one by the freak family. Luckily Cassie shows up just in time to take the tape of Jesse's revival bass track just before he gets weedwackered to death.

At this point we learn that the freak family is led by none other than Adolph Hitler, and he has been in disguise since the end of World War II.

Begin Movie #3 - The Historical What-If! It's almost as if Hitler was actually taking over the movie with his new plot to begin taking over America with his mountain cave gas chamber, and he just had to get rid of the Band cast members to do it.

Meanwhile, the townspeople have just outlawed Rock and Roll to stop their concert. But that's not important because Movie #1 has been over for a long time now. Now its a movie about Hitler's secret plan! Except Cassie played the tape and now the band is re-animated as the Hard Rock Zombies! Actually they look more like Kiss than Zombies but thats just cuz their HARD ROCK Zombies. Begin Movie #4 - the Zombie Film!

And this is where the chaos begins, because all 4 of these movies are happeneing simultaneously and interacting like its the Great Movie Ride. The band gets their revenge on the freak family by murdering them all before heading to town to perform their concert. That's right, the zombie band from movie #4 is now acting out the plots from the first movie as well.

Back at the freak mansion, the dead freaks are now zombies and have begun to kill townspeople and turn them into zombies. And a chain reaction commences until only a handful of survivors, the band manager, and Cassie remain human. With their concert complete, the band has no more movie plots to follow and disappears from the film while the survivors try to figure out what the f--- happened to Movie #1 and cope with Movie #4 (The Zombies). Eventually they devise a plan to tie Cassie to a tree and let the zombies rape her, which will somehow solve everything.

Luckily, The Band comes to her rescue and plays one final Kick Ass Rock Show to lure the zombies into Hitler's Secret Mountain Gas Chamber - they played the bass-eriffic tune of course, with some death metal chanting to go along with it. With the zombies trapped inside, they turn on the mustard gas and kill the undead.

At this point its not really clear which movie we finished watching, all we know is that it was a real epic of a love story if ever there was one. Lying at Jesse's grave, Cassie confesses her love for him (so what if they met a day ago?) and a hand bursts through the dirt with a ring clenched in it. Thats True Love right there folks.

BORDELLO OF BLOOD

Chris here and I am writing to proudly present to you the cinematic mastery that is Bordello of Blood. The origin of why we watched this movie is two-fold. As a child, I used to watch Tales From The Crypt with my older brother and my mom, during the short period of time when we enjoyed HBO on the “hot box” that was a staple in the neighborhood homes. I remember we adored the scary shows like Are You Afraid of the Dark, and Goosebumps, and Tales From The Crypt was a more grown-up version of those shows. In Tales, the characters often met a gruesome demise that (unlike the endings of their childish counterparts, which always had happy endings), shocked and amused the three of us for reasons I can’t exactly begin to explain. The added bonus, and the part that kept this show on the air for so long, was the Crypt Keeper, a decrepit-looking muppet zombie, that was always right on key with a golden zinger to coincide with the episode's conclusion. For example, if a guy had his head cut off by his disgruntled employer, the Crypt Keeper would regale the audience with something along the lines of “he just wanted to get A HEAD at work!” We would laugh along with the Crypt Keeper’s ridiculous observations, somewhat uneasy but with unabashed respect for this weird little guy’s twisted sense of humor.

                         "sweet screams, boils and ghouls"...that's us! he means boys and girls!

The second factor that drew us into this movie is Dennis Miller. I doubt Dennis knew who Dennis Miller was, and even today he might not be able to describe him. The fact that they share the same first name will also add to the confusion of putting a name to a face. But I think Ryan’s first exposure to Dennis Miller was on a short lived program on the VS. Channel, wherein Dennis Miller sat on a stool inside a blue room that resembled something from the Matrix. Dennis Miller also is one to make quirky observations and snide remarks, but unlike the Crypt Keeper, no one laughed uneasily at his jokes…..no one laughed at all. We still don’t know if his show was filmed in front of a live audience or not.

 "The Miami Dolphins Special Teams unit is like a girl on a scooter chasing after after a box of squirrels tied to the exhaust pipe of a pickup truck going 40mph down the freeway, am I right?"

This sums up the duration of Dennis Miller's show on VS... him, alone in a room, laughing at his own jokes.

The only laughter we ever heard during his show was when he was ruin his own bad joke by laughing in the middle of it, all the whilst shaking his head furiously to one side, a la Night at the Roxbury. I knew Dennis Miller from his stint as a Monday Night Football commentator, and before that, as a Saturday Night Live cast member. Never once during that span did he do or say anything remotely funny.

The idea to pitch together two of the world’s most awkward and uncomfortable one-liner artists may have seemed like a good idea on paper, but it wasn’t until that plan was put into action that we saw how great of a combination it truly was. The result: BORDELLO OF BLOOD!

Miller plays are sleazy pervert/hero of the film, Rafe Guttman. With in the first three minutes of meeting Rafe, we learn that he is a divorced, alcoholic, deadbeat, private investigator who is struggling to stay in business and who’s office may of may not be in the back of an old movie theater. He stalks/meets Katherine (Erika Elianak, of Dracula 3000 fame) at a local police station, and offers to take her case after the local authorities pass on it. After a few minutes of awkward advances and even more awkward Dennis Miller trademark humor, we are off!

Where are we off to? To find Corey Feldman of course! Corey Feldman plays the role of Katherine’s brother, Caleb, but it looks like he though he was in the sequel to Lost Boys.

Dressing like Edgar Frog didn't pan out so well for Corey this time around.

Anyway, just like most teens in horror films, Corey Feldman and his buddies are just looking to get laid, and, on this fateful night, they believe their best best chance of getting lucky is doing what a crazy, high, strung out Diamond Dallas Page tells them – to go down to the old funeral home after midnight. If a strung out stranger comes up to you at a bar and starts snorting and screaming at you, wouldn’t you trust him?

And it is at this funeral home/bordello where we meet a bevy of undead prostitutes, led by Lillith, the undead vampire madam (Angie Everhart). Lillith needs to drink your blood to keep herself young and alive, and she does just that throughout the movie. This post is getting pretty long and I don’t want to spoil too much of the fun, so here is just a short list of things you can expect when you make one of the smartest moves of your life and watch Bordello of Blood: A Fender guitar-shredding televangelist (played awesomely by Fright Night's Chris Sarandon!), a midget excavator, CGI effects that would trump anything you'll ever see on SyFy Channel, Dennis Miller having a Super Soaker fight with a bunch of half-naked vampire chicks, a nod to the other Tales From The Crypt movie, Demon Knight (starring THE Billy Zane!) and of course, plenty of playful banter from both Dennis Miller and the Crypt Keeper that will keep you laughing (or looking around in uncomfortable silence) all night.

"Is it just me, or is that broad in the photo above me completely Bazzoo Bazzoo? You dig what I'm sayin?"

The Phantom

One word comes to mind when one thinks of The Phantom. BADASS. Just look at this movie poster. The Phantom doesn't wanna just fight crime or prevent muggings. He wants to "SLAM EVIL". Just full out body slam the crap outta Evil. All of it. Every Evil thing he can find. If you're Evil, he's gonna put on his purple pajamas, find you, and punch you in the face with his skull ring. Of course, that could take forever so instead he sits in his Skull Cave on the island of Bengalla until Evil comes his way.



"As soon as someone does evil, I'm gonna slam the crap outta them. Just wait."

 The villains are BADASS. Before we watched it, we trusted Treat Williams. Ok, we only knew Treat Williams from some movie we watched for 6 mins where Meg Ryan loses her kids and we were SURE that Treat Williams was gonna beat Meg Ryan at the end of the movie... Regardless, he sounded like a nice guy. "Treat" is usually something good. Brace yourselves. Treat Williams plays the villain! He's Xander Drax a meglomaniac and he proves just how BADASS he is by killing people in insane ways. He kills one guy with a trap microscope that shoots knives outta the eyepieces when you turn the focus knob. It's a lotta set-up but it's supremely BADASS. When a member of his organization tries to leave, Drax hurls a spear at him. A spear! Now he's questing for the Skulls of Toguanda: three magic skulls that when assembled, produce a force 1000x greater than a bomb! 1000x!!! This is a most BADASS weapon. Unfortunately one is on Bengalla and you know what that means. Only one man can stop Treat Williams now.... Billy Zane.

Billy Zane fails to stop Drax from uniting the Skulls

The Phantom is played by the only man born for the job: Billy Zane. Let's face it. Billy Zane is the greatest actor of all time and he knows it. That's why in all his movies, he plays the role like he's doing the world a favor. Just look at the way he nonchalantly saves Kristy Swanson from Catherine Zeta-Jones http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOMsiHwYg6Y&feature=related

"You're Welcome"

Catherine Zeta-Jones plays Drax's henchwoman and Kristy Swanson plays the Phantom's love interest, Diana Palmer. She ends up in Bengalla when her uncle sends her there to collect information about Drax's acitivities. Also she knows Billy Zane from college but doesn't realize he's the Phantom. Either way they're both pretty hot and they're into the Phantom. Who are we kidding? Of course, they're into the Phantom. It's Billy Zane. He was in Titanic. We haven't seen Titanic but we would if Billy Zane slammed Evil in it. Maybe towards they end, he fights the Titanic? That'd be worth watching.

 Now we know what you're thinking. You're saying "Ryan, Dennis, Chris Film Appreciation Society, this movie is so BADASS I can't take it. Please just let me watch 'Slumdog Millionaire' before I implode". And when we say it gets even more BADASS, you're pleading for us to stop. Well we won't stop because we can't stop. We used to be like you. We guffawed at The Phantom when we saw the DVD, laying there in a 2 for $5 bin at Wal-mart. But we watched it and now we're spreading the word so you'd better listen up. Ok here it goes... towards the end of the film, Drax (with the Phantom pursuing) head to the Devil's Vortex, a most BADASS place, to find the final skull. As you watch the film, you're thinking "Oh this is where the film wraps up I guess". Heck no. HECK NO. Drax can't get his hands on the skull cuz freakin' Shang Tsung shows up. That's right. The guy from Mortal Kombat.


On a side note, when Shang Tsung gets mad in the film,
he becomes impossible to understand. It's a lotta "puh" sounds.


There's a lot of spoilers in the above paragraphs but we feel no remorse. The film came out in '96. It's time the rest of the world caught up. Besides there's plenty of BADASS scenes we haven't even mentioned. Here's one: "No smoking in the Skull Cave". See? What's that about you wonder? Who's smoking in the Skull Cave? Shang Tsung (or whatever his name is in The Phantom)? Just trust us. There's no possible way you can go wrong with this masterful achievement in American cinema.

Introduction and FEAR CITY

Before we delve into the masterpiece that is FEAR CITY, let's introduce ourselves a bit.

Ryan- Will watch anything as long as there's popcorn. He is very good at knowing actor/actresses and the roles they've played in various films. Always on the lookout for bad 80s movies.

Chris- Oldest member and largest supplier of the films. Seriously this guy will blow money on any movie without even knowing what it is. Proved that John Cusack wears a Hawaiian shirt in every one of his films.

Dennis-the youngest member and most naive. Can watch "Batman" and then "Johnny Dangerously" and not realize both are Michael Keaton. Biggest concern in movies is that the military is accurately portrayed. (He's usually dissappointed). Hates Ryan and Chris.

And now that we've established our players, let's begin with a personal favorite, FEAR CITY

How did we choose this film you ask? Well for one, Billy Dee Williams. Flipping through OnDemand's free movies, we discovered this nugget of gold. When we saw it starred Billy Dee we almost jumped on it BUT Tom Berenger was also in it! The three of us... we just don't trust Tom Berenger. Ever since he shot Willem Dafoe in PLATOON, we lost all faith in Tom Berenger. Of course, Billy Dee in a city of fear sold us and we put it on.

You just can't trust Tom Berenger.

From the description Comcast provided, we believed Billy Dee and Berenger to be two detectives trying to find a serial killer targeting hookers. That's not the case. Billy Dee's a detective alright. Berenger's a...well we don't actually know. He's not so much a pimp as a stripper dealer.

"Don't rock and roll with me, Rossi!"

The Goals of RDCFAS

Hello all. We're new at this but it seems like anyone with a thought in their head can write a blog. That said, imagine all the thoughts 3 heads can create. As you may have guessed, we here at the Ryan, Dennis, Chris Film Appreciation Society enjoy movies a great deal. They make us laugh, inspire us, and ultimately motivate us to create our own poor movies. That said, the RCDFAS is not an ordinary movie review blog. At no point will we share our opinions on Avatar, rave about Cloverfield, or discuss any movie worthy of an Oscar. It's not that those movies don't deserve to be talked about, it's just we're just not that sophisticated. No, no we here at the Film Appreciation Society serve a greater purpose. We realize today's moviewatcher is comfortable in reaching for the flavor of the week, safely betting their money on a Johnny Depp film directed by Christopher Nolan (Seriously. How could that movie not be awesome?). Today's moviewatcher isn't a risktaker. If he or she hasn't heard of a film, there's no way they're watching it. Not us. Chris, Dennis and myself have spent our lives searching for one thing, committing feature-lengths of time questing for our Holy Grail: the worst movie ever made. That's right. If a movie sounds bad, we'll watch it. If a movie sounds hilarious, we'll watch it. If it takes place in the 80s and it centers around break-dancing, we'll watch it. There's no way in Hell an 80s break-dancing movie can be the worst movie ever made though. Seriously, watch Breakin'.

And so, the RDCFAS will watch these unheard of movies and report to you why you should watch them. For you see, if we were to find the worst movie ever made, we'd be out of a quest. Thus, we find even the smallest grain of hope within the worst films. For example:

-Dracula 3000? Coolio was in it.

-Theodore Rex? That dinosaur FLIPS OUT when he eats cookies.

-Transylvania-6-5000? Jeff Goldblum AND Ed Begley Jr.

The three of us at the Ryan, Dennis, Chris Film Apprecitation Society look forward to expanding your movie scope and hopefully you'll be willing to enjoy some of these films yourself. Until next time!