31 Days of Horror: "Wild Zero": Perfect Hair Forever

by Sean McTiernan

Guitar Wolf are from Japan and are a garage rock band. Actually, they’re The Garage Rock Band. To say the three members of Guitar Wolf (Guitar Wolf, Bass Wolf and Drum Wolf) perfectly replicate the garage rock sound of The Sonics, The Readymen and The Gories is actually to do them a disservice. What Guitar Wolf actually manage to do is replicate what you’d imagine these bands would sound like if you believed every breathless hyperbolic piece of enthusiastic press written about them. Their combination of blown-out distortion, lethally snotty vocals, immaculate biker outfits, unflappable pompadours and writing the same great song over and over make them a too perfect throwback to an era of music that only existed in fanboy fantasies. It’s appropriate then that their movie, “Wild Zero,” is also exactly that.

The film opens with Guitar Wolf super-fan Ace watching the his favourite band burning it down on stage. Sad to say, not everyone is appreciative and the manager of the club, wearing the first of the many hot-pants-and-wig combos he sports throughout the movie, has some bad news. He’s decided he’s going to put on J-Pop, thus putting Guitar Wolf out of some work. If this wasn’t bad enough, he also tells them: “Rock ’n’ Roll is dead.”

There’s a lot of things you shouldn’t say to three angry Japanese greasers, all of whom are called Wolf and “Rock ’n’ Roll is dead” still tops that list.

A tense stand-off breaks out (is that what stand-offs do?) when both parties pull guns. The tension is quickly broken when Ace fumbles in and causes enough of a disturbance to give Guitar Wolf (the dude, not the whole band) a chance to blow away a henchmen and a couple of managers’ fingers off. In gratitude to Ace for helping out, Guitar Wolf pauses to cut his own and Ace’s fingers, make them blood brothers and then gives Ace a whistle to use if he ever needs help. I don’t know what your definition of Straight Gangsterism is, but taking time out from escaping to make a blood pact before sauntering away from a maniac with easy access to a pump action shotgun is pretty close to mine.

So the manger sets out in pursuit of Guitar Wolf while Ace sets off on a road-trip on which he meets the girl of his dreams. Guitar Wolf (the band, not the dude) give the impression that everything is business as usual. As often happens in these situations, aliens come to earth and cause the dead to walk again. Ace does his best to handle this situation but eventually has to call in the help of the still-completely-unfazed-by-any-of-this Guitar Wolf.

Getting Cool right in movies is a difficult thing. There are plenty of awesome, fantastic and heartbreaking movies but few really Cool ones. And fewer still set out to be Cool, do not try to hide their aim and still accomplish it. “Repo Man” is, of course, the ultimate and undisputed Coolest movie. Everything about “Wild Zero” is straining to be as cool as possible and shockingly, it is one of the rare success stories.

Everything from the washed out grindhouse visuals to the scorching soundtrack (a perfect selection of garage rock) just seems to fit into place and justify every pair of sunglasses at night this movie has to offer.
The special effects are just cheap enough, managing to look both awesome and grindhouse with seemingly awkwardly expensive (what’s up, “Planet Terror”?). Guitar Wolf aren’t the only guys with great costumes: the lady arms-dealer inexplicably spends most of her time in a Burberry catsuit while horror at the evil manager’s short shorts collection grows exponentially with every new pair. The actual zombies are a great throwback, more the painted-faces of the Romero “Dawn Of The Dead” as opposed to the Zach Synder version’s squishy, gritty zombies that are currently in vogue.

One of the best choices made by the film makers here is to make it Ace’s story. Guitar Wolf, Bass Wolf and Drum Wolf are righteous dudes but one suspect their acting chops mightn’t have carried a whole movie. Perfect then for them to be cyphers who turn up, sneer in every direction at once and then either play loud and excellent music while singing into microphones that spit fire (obviously) or murder zombies with guitar picks and whiskey (obviously). I would say they borrowed this device from The Clash’s movie “Rude Boy,” which is about a super-fan’s efforts to befriend his favorite punk band, but that would require me admitting I’ve seen that movie and since it’s nothing to do with horror I’m unaware of its existence.

I could go into further detail about dialogue and little touches that make “Wild Zero” fantastic but I don’t want to spoil it for you. You see, “Wild Zero” is such a cool insane movie that any of the oddly paced plotting and sometimes weird editing choices just seem like part of the plan. It is a rare thing: a schlock movie that’s much more fun to watch than it is to read someone pontificate about. Also, unlike “Feast,” for example, it is a movie that builds. Each scene is better and weirder than the last and the movie ends with about four awesome things happening at once with almost zero effort made to justify any of them. Because when you’re this cool, who needs logic?

Courage and Rock ’n’ Roll.

Sean Mc Tiernan has a blog and a twitter. So does everyone, though. He also has a podcast on which he has a nervous breakdown once an episode, minimum. You should totally email him with your questions / insults/ offers of tax-free monetary gifts.