Got to see this last night playing in a theater, which is kinda weird because it was originally only released to video. Very basic 80s werewolf movie, with some fairly decent transformation scenes, thanks to director Ted Bohus, which are inspired by AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, mixed with an almost SAVED BY THE BELL plot involving a struggling up and coming rock band and high school kids all played by folks who could easily be in their 30s or 40s. Michael J. Fox and TEEN WOLF get name checked and our mysterious werewolf gets to slashing. Maybe worth a one-time watch if you're a werewolf cinema completist.
This one's a pretty early Roger Corman-directed teen epic involving just what the title says, a carnival that has some rocking' acts play. The Platters are the biggest names featured but being a big fan of rockabilly myself I really dug seeing Bob Luman & His Shadows. The film itself is a weird mix of highly melodramatic scenes dealing with the owner of the carnival(David J. Stewart) losing his business along with his girlfriend and boppin' parts with teen dancing and bands tearing it up. It's all really drawn-out for such a shallow story so unless you really dig 50s music give this a pass.
Director Jess Franco takes real-life band THE KILLER BARBIES, changes the spelling of their name slightly so he doesn't get sued by Mattel, and then throws them into a horror movie that has about the same plot and intensity as a typical episode of SCOOBY-DOO. The main evil monster here is an over 100-years old Countess(played by Mariangela Giordano, who is best known to me as the lady who gets her tit bitten off by her weirdo zombie son in the classic zombie flick BURIAL GROUND) who stays young thanks to her drinking the blood of young people. There's also a seemingly retarded henchman and a couple of midgets thrown in for extra fun. Not the best thing in the world but lead singer Silvia Superstar is nice to ogle and this is one of the last amusing films made by Franco before the 2000's hit and he veered into straight-to-video hell. AKA VAMPIRE KILLER BARBYS
There is a terrible sequel to this that's barely worth mentioning.
HARD ROCK ZOMBIES is a film that on the surface I feel like I should hate. It's a really dumb 80s film that doesn't take itself very seriously. Unlike the majority of other stupid 80s flicks though I find this one really entertaining and I've rewatched it so many times over the years that I have long ago lost count. I think it's the fact that they just throw everything into the mix that I find so appealing. Of course you get the zombies of the title, who do rock out after being turned into flesh-chomping ghouls, but in addition to that there's an old-lady werewolf, a couple of midgets, a bald Nazi weed-whacker killer, a pervy peeping-Tom, a sexy slasher-lady and to top it all off Adolph Hitler himself shows up. The music itself, while perhaps a bit too on the soft and poppy side to be truly called "hard rock" is still catchy enough in that bubblegum-rock kind of way(or maybe that's just because I've heard these songs so many times that they have ear-wormed themselves into my brain!). There's boobs, blood, a Nazi monster-faced midget eats himself down to just a skull, there's an "homage" to PSYCHO and Thing from THE ADDAMS FAMILY gets zombified and kills a guy, what more could you want from a stupid horror flick designed to be viewed whilst drunk and in a partying mood?
Known in France as just regular ROCK ZOMBIES which I suppose is a bit more accurate:
The great kewpie doll-faced Arch Hall Jr. was in only 6 movies back in the 60s and this is his first starring role. While his fleeting stardom was due to his dad, Arch Hall Sr., being the producer on these films I feel he still had enough talent, especially when compared to more modern so-called actors, to get by. In this one young Arch plays a naive hick named Bud Eagle who travels to Hollywood to make it as a singing star. He hooks up with an unscrupulous record producer, played by Arch Sr., who exploits our not-very worldly hero. Where does the line between reality and movie-fantasy storytelling blur together? Well allegedly Arch Jr. wasn't all that interested in being a big Hollywood star and was pushed into that role by pops so it's hard not to feel that at least some of this movie wasn't totally acting and that's what makes it an interesting watch. Also just on the surface, even if you don't care at all about any of the back-story, the movie is a pretty breezy, quick-moving tale about the dangers of the star-system with some cool 60s tunes and a love story thrown in to move things along. Director Ray Dennis Steckler turns in his usual ominous performance under his Cash Flagg pseudonym as the record company's tough-guy enforcer and he was nice enough to throw in his Lemon Grove Kids(Steckler's version/rip-off of The Bowery Boys) for some stupid comedy scenes. They would return in his goofy-ass LEMON GROVE KIDS MEET THE MONSTERS and Arch would be back in his greatest film THE SADIST. While Arch's films are remembered now as being classic bad movies they have some great clunky 60s charm to them.
Being a child of the 70s it was kind of the law that you had to be into Star Wars and Kiss, unless you were some kinda weird mutant kid, so I first saw this film when it originally aired on TV under the KISS MEETS THE PHANTOM OF THE PARK title and I was 7 years old which is really the perfect age to watch this since the plot is basically a SCOOBY-DOO episode done live-action and with rock n' roll. Getting to see it again last night with a crowd of Kiss fans after seeing a Kiss cover band play may have been a bit less exciting but it now has that nostalgic kitschy-value going for it. The story concerns a mad-doctor-type who designs realistic robots for an amusement park that Kiss is giving some big shows at. The band, I believe, is taken from their Marvel Comics incarnation because they possess special talismans that give each of them magical powers and kung-fu abilities that they use to battle a variety of robot assailants including a fake-Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman and a whole army of white sorta-Ape/sorta-Lion faced creatures. Very dumb fun that is vastly helped by actually liking Kiss' music or being 7 years old in 1978 or maybe a few beers.
Being a fan of the Japanese punk-a-billy band Guitar Wolf I've been wanting to see this movie since it came out but haven't had the chance. So when it got a showing down at the local artsy-fartsy theater over the weekend I couldn't pass it up. It was definitely worth the trip since this one is a great Asian mash-up of insanity where you get a rock 'n' roll band that are basically superheroes who look like the Japanese Ramones taking on zombies who come from flying saucers. There's also some baldie bad guys lead by this one snazzy fellow who wears extra tight hot pants and crazy wigs. There's also a strong pro-tranny message which I wouldn't've thought would be in a movie from '99 but I guess the director(Tetsuro Takeuchi) was a little ahead of the times. This film might not be very serious and there's cgi exploding heads but I still found it to be more entertaining than most American films made in the 90s and it made me love Guitar Wolf even more
This movie has got to be the peak of 60's teenagers vs. monsters on the loose films for me. You get a surf-rock band(The Del-Aires) doing tunes like "Zombie Stomp", quite a bit of blood spilled for a film from 1964, a stereotypical black maid who seems like she stepped right out of the 40's, overacting drunks, horrible jokes, girls at slumber parties, bikers and most importantly a bunch of rampaging beasts on the loose seeking human blood. Now these monsters are quite a sight to see, they're described as zombies(original working title= INVASION OF THE ZOMBIES) throughout but are really more like CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON-rip-offs with what looks like a pack of hot-dogs stuck in their mouths which must make it difficult to suck blood but somehow they manage. A Mystery Science Theater 3000 favorite that you can actually watch without those silly robots. Good times!
There was a sort-off comic picture-book put out for this flick which looks awesome!:
Director Del Tenney(whose name also sounds like it should be a surf band) shot THE CURSE OF THE LIVING CORPSE at the same time as this but unfortunately it's not nearly as fun and energetic as PARTY BEACH. They both played together often:
The Del-Aires song Zombie Stomp was eventually released in 2012 on a single(about time):
