Wild Zero

What happens when you get a a pinch of the Ramones and the Stooges, Earth Versus the Flying Saucers and Night of the Living Dead - shoogle them all up with just a touch of bad ass craziness? Well, what you get is the truly bizarre and brillant 'Wild Zero'.

The story opens with a shot of a big bunch of B-Movie flying saucers heading towards Earth then we cut to our hero rock 'n' roll wannabe Ace slicking back his quiff whilst listening to a news report that an asteroid has landed! Ace then heads off to check out his fave band Guitar Wolf playing and inspired by the garage rock frenzy he heads to the managers office to declare that he should be the next big thing. When he gets there he accidentally gets involved in a ruckus between the clubs manager and the band where he oafly saves the bands necks. Lead singer Guitar Wolf gives him a special whistle to blow upon whenever he may need help and boy will he need it...

Kick ass groovy tunes, hapless zombies and the coolest band of rock 'n' roll heroes are the recipe here for one of the most fun movies I've seen in quite some time! 'Wild Zero' rates also as one of the most bizarre viewing experiences I've had since first checking out Repo Man all those years ago. Major kudos to director Takeuchi Tetsuro for delivering a very stylish slice of genre entertainment. The film has bags of class and should have any self respecting genre fan grinning in disbelief at this great piece of pure quality trash cinema.

As well as the great performance by our hero Ace and the supporting cast, the band themselves really do steal the show. All three members of this garage rock trio (Bass Wolf, Drum Wolf and of course Guitar Wolf himself) are the epitome of cliched cool throughout. The fact alone that Guitar Wolf never removes his guitar at any point (even when exploding from a third floor window only to check that it's still in tune) should have you grinning at the crazy coolness that just drips from this movie!

The zombie make ups look great (in that Night/Dawn of the Dead sort of way) and even though the bulk of the gore effects are actually CGI driven (boo!), I still got a kick from this outrageous tip of the hat to the genre. The print of the film is a lovely clean letterbox print with a rockin' dolby stereo Japanese audio mix. And gratefully there's a very fine optional English subtitles available for us non Japanese speakers (hooray!) I did though have a fair bit of hassle finding my way around the menu screens, but persistence will find you a few trailers for the film and a nice short behind the scenes clip also.

The only other problem folk may find is that this can be quite a pricey disc for some folk to purchase (as can be the case with some Japanese releases). Let's hope a shrewd company here in the West will pick this cracker up for release? That said though, if you can afford it then do track it down. A crazy ride of B-Movie fun that should please folk no end. I loved it - go check it out!