Wild Zero

Dir: Tetsuro Takeuchi
Starring: Masashi Endo, Kwancharu Shitichai, Makoto Inamiya
and the members of Zero Wolf

In which we discover that rock 'n' roll is undead. This wildly uneven movie veers between inspired brilliance and absolutely lame self-indulgence, with the members of Japanese punkabilly band Zero Wolf fighting off UFO-resurrected zombies. I fell asleep on my first attempt, in a first half that makes no attempt at sense and features the slowest moving zombies I've seen since my copy of Night of the Living Dead got stuck in EP mode. Startlingly-good headshot FX - these zombies should come with a warning like that on aerosol cans: "contents under pressure, and may explode if punctured" - are the only relief to the tedium, and I won't be rushing out to find the soundtrack CD either. When all the characters finally link up, things improve: the zombie love story is a nice touch, and the dispatch of the invaders is pure genius. If that level of inventiveness had been seen earlier on, instead of an odd cross between a pop video and sub-Fulciesque nonsense, this could have been a true cult classic. As is, it's a curio, certainly, yet probably requires a liking for the music or an appropriate number of beers to succeed.

D+

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