WILD ZERO (2000)

Trailer:

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s It About: The coolest band in the universe and one of their biggest fans must battle hordes of zombies with the power of ROCK ‘N ROLL!

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

• This movie comes with its own drinking game! Let’s do this!

  Drink every time:

  • Fire shoots out of something.
  • Somebody says “ROCK AND ROLL!”
  • Someone combs their hair.
  • Somebody drinks.
  • Something explodes.
  • A zombie’s head pops.
• I can’t fucking keep up already. 
• Guitar Wolf consist of Guitar Wolf, Bass Wolf and Drum Wolf. Former members include Keyboard Wolf Blitzer, Lone Lute Wolf McQuade, and Matt Guitar Wolf Murphy. 
• Aliens have landed and are resurrecting the dead! Fuck it, let’s rock!
• The first Guitar Wolf song is Jet Generation and it’s fucking astonishingly awesome. 
• Guitar Wolf is essentially Ramones: Japan. In fact, they even have a song called “Kung Fu Ramone” that basically sums it up.
• So our hero is Ace, a Guitar Wolf superfan, and our villain, aside from the aliens and zombies, is Captain, a dandy club owner who wears shorts that Miley Cyrus would find in poor taste. You can clearly see his fandangler, just like Miley Cyrus. 
• With Ace’s interference, Guitar Wolf blows off Captains fingers in a dispute, and takes his golden egg. Then, Ace and Guitar Wolf become blood brothers, and Guitar Wolf gives Ace a whistle for when he’s in trouble. This movie is the absolute tits. 
• ROCK ‘N ROLL!!
• It is not easy writing notes for a subtitled movie. 
• Welcome to Asahi. I’ve had your beer. Eh. Japanese beer is subpar in general. Most of it tastes like Coors Light. 
• Ace is on top of the fucking world now that he’s boys with Guitar Wolf. That was just how I felt when I became blood brothers with Eazy-E in 1994. 
• Afroed bad boy Masao has had enough of his dating traveling companions, who become somewhat not important later on in the film.
• Ace bumps into Tobio after saving her from Masao, and it’s literally love at first site because there are giant heart frames on the screen. 
  
• The zombies in this flick have to be some of the slowest I’ve ever seen. They walk about a ladybug’s dick per minute. 
• I’m not far off from a mid-life crisis, and when it happens my motorcycle must shoot flames out of the tailpipe. Of course, with my weakening digestive tract the only tailpipe that will be shooting flames will be mine. 
• Masao was surprised and ripped apart by zombies, but they move so god damn slow, how?
• I mean, Ace fights off a dozen of them with a fucking mop. 
  

  Wyatt, your zombies are blue.

• This is some of the worst zombie makeup I’ve ever seen, but in a charming way. 
• Hey, boobs! Unexpected in this movie. 
• Another Guitar Wolf song, and even the fucking microphone is shooting flames. I think I’m in love. The chorus to this song is “Roaring blood. Exploding blood.” YES. 
• Hmmm, Tobio has some mighty big hands…
• This zombie threat seems to be severely localized. Maybe Ace and Tobio should’ve just run farther. 
• Ace is a little freaked out to discover that Tobio has a disco stick. 
• Guitar Wolf materializes like Ben Kenobi and says, “Ace! Love has no borders, nationalities, or genders! Do it!” Wow, deep stuff from a punk rock zombie flick. 
• Jesus christ, the front of Guitar Wolf’s motorcycle looks like a motherfucking wolf. Unreal. 
• Flames shoot out of everything in this flick. I wouldn’t be surprised if they shot out of Tobio’s dick. 
• Guitar Wolf dispatches a horde of zombies with mystical picks. This movie may have the greatest script of all time. 
• There’s a sexy military woman involved in all this, and she, the two surviving thieves, and Guitar Wolf go to a cache of weapons to blow out zombie brains with, but Guitar Wolf’s weapon is brain-blasting coolness. 
• One of the freshly turned zombies is intelligent, which goes against everything that happened before. 
• Guitar Wolf pretends to pull the golden egg from before out of a zombie’s neck, which is the first uncool thing he’s done because it makes no sense. 
  

  “Oh you want an explanation for this egg? It’s actually quite simple, it’s ROCK ‘N ROLL!!”

• I’ll admit, the dialogue would be a lot worse in English. It just sounds cooler in Japanese. 
• Bass Wolf and Drum Wolf sit in a car surrounded by zombies and take drugs. Just when you think these guys can’t get any cooler. 
• Hey, there’s Ace fighting zombies. We haven’t seen him in like 25 minutes. Tobio is still just wandering the streets. 
• I think Guitar Wolf just blew up the car with his bandmates in it? The casualties of ROCK N ROLL!!
• For some reason, Guitar Wolf and Captain are electrocuted with Captain dying, for some reason. 
• Now Captain is a sort of zombie who can shoot lasers from his eyes, for some reason. 
• Oh no, there are the other Wolves. My bad. They blow Captain up with a bazooka. A rock ‘n roll bazooka, I assume. 
• Ace has yelled, “TOBIO!!” 97 times in the past 30 seconds. 
• Guitar Wolf slices the giant alien mothership in half with his guitar sword. BECAUSE OF COURSE!
• Ace swears on his leather jacket and rock n roll that he loves Tobio. That’s actually pretty touching.

Scare Volume: Maybe if you have a phobia of screeching guitars and shooting flames and ROCK ‘N ROLL!

Gore Volume: Dining on guts, plus many exploding zombie heads, as the drinking game implies, but they’re cheap CGI.

Nudity Volume: One surprise set of nice boobs. One clearly defined penis through Captain’s shorts. No little Tobio. 

Best Scene: Honestly hard to pick, but if I had to pick, I’ll say Guitar Wolf killing zombies with picks is my pick.

Worst Scene: There has to be at least three or four deleted scenes explaining everything about that god damn golden egg, because it really has no purpose or reason in the final cut of the movie. 

How ’bout the Tunes: If you don’t mind getting your brain blasted through every bit of your genitals, this movie’s soundtrack is for you (there are also other, non-Guitar Wolf bands on the soundtrack too, and they kick almost as ass as our boys, and some even sing in English!):

Band Rating: Even though I can’t understand their lyrics, Guitar Wolf is one of my favorite rock-punk bands ever. And definitely the best jet rock ‘n roll band of all time. Not to be confused with Joan Jett.

Overall: Wild Zero is one of the most fun zombie flicks you’re apt to see. It keeps the throttle down on its wolf-shaped motorcycle the entire time. While it’s not entirely wall-to-wall zombie-killing action, especially in the beginning, it’s never boring, and most scenes end before they can get a chance to drag. The only bad part is the tale of the golden egg, which goes nowhere, but it doesn’t really matter in the end. The romance between Ace and Tobio is sweet, but more time probably could have been spent on them, and a little less time on the other weird love story with the thief couple. Again, the music really is awesome and rarely ever stops. It’s best to watch this movie while in a power guitar stance. ROCK ‘N ROLL!!

Score: 9 Golden Eggs (out of 10)