Wild Zero (1999)

Unhinged Japanese trash-punkers Guitar Wolf already did everything they could in music by this point. Sonically, they’d put the needle in the red as far as it could go. They made records as raw and loud as possible without causing your stylus to jump like a scared rabbit out of the grooves. They did all that and even took it international, sweating buckets on stage all over the world with their breakneck show and turning kids everywhere into live wires. Where the hell do they go next?

Low-budget zombie movie. Obviously.

And, man, do I wish it was good. I wish it was paced like one of Guitar Wolf’s songs, rather than like a mopey emo ballad. I wish that its camp was more smartass. I wish that its explosions were more about catharsis rather than merely relief from the monotony. And I wish that the gore wasn’t mostly lazy CGI gore that looks more like Super Mario losing a life than someone getting their brains splattered.

With the exception of the pyrotechnics in one scene, everything here feels very safe and easy. Even its unconventional romance was covered better back in the 1950s by Billy Wilder.

I can’t imagine the aloof rock ‘n’ roll creeps in Guitar Wolf earnestly liking this cuddly fuzzball of a movie. And I don’t, either.