“Love has no borders, nationalities or genders! DO ITTTTT!”
Every great band needs a movie to immortalise their exploits on the silver screen. The Beatles have A Hard Day’s Night, the Spice Girls have Spice World, and garage punk power trio Guitar Wolf have 1999’s sci-fi shlock horror masterpiece Wild Zero. Guitar Wolf certainly need no introduction to readers of this site. One of Japan’s most consistent touring bands, they’ve been unleashing their patented brand of jet rock n’ roll for almost 40 years now with absolutely zero signs of slowing down. In between tours, the band sprung upon the idea of shooting a feature film during their downtime. The end result was one of the most batshit insane horror movies ever committed to celluloid that essentially functions as a feature-length promotional video for Guitar Wolf’s entire ethos.
Wild Zero was helmed by longtime Guitar Wolf collaborator Tetsuro Takeuchi. Prior to this, Takeuchi was primarily known for directing music videos and commercials, with his working relationship with Guitar Wolf stretching back to the mid 90’s. To this day, it remains the only feature film he’s directed by himself. Clearly, once was all he needed to make his mark on cinematic history. The plot centres around Ace, a leather-clad, pompadour sporting young fan of Guitar Wolf. After a chance encounter with the band after a show, the band’s frontman bequeaths him with a whistle telling him to blow it if he ever needs their help. Not long afterwards, UFOs are seen flying above earth while a meteorite lands in the nearby town of Asahi. A zombie outbreak quickly follows, leaving Ace and a slew of other survivors to fend for their lives. Ultimately, it’s up to Guitar Wolf to rescue the survivors and save the day with the power of jet rock n’ roll!
Tonally, Wild Zero is a very campy and irreverent affair. Tetsuro Takeuchi is no George Romero and he knows it. But Wild Zero is clearly going for a much more comedic bent than the zombie movies of yore. It’s more in the vein of something like Return of the Living Dead or Peter Jackson’s Braindead, a deliberately silly pastiche of zombie movies with the added bonus of starring Japan’s all-time greatest rock n’ roll trio. It’s not really something you chuck on if you’re looking for biting social commentary. Wild Zero was notably shot on location in Thailand, with Bangkok doubling for the city of Asahi and members of the Thai military notably cast as the zombie extras. The production design is very inspired. I love all the background little details like how the manager’s office is emblazoned with posters for Guitar Wolf’s previous albums Planet of the Wolves and Jet Generation, or how Ace’s room is decked out with various punk rock paraphernalia during the opening credits.
Now for the negative aspects. The special effects are admittedly pretty hokey, even for the time period. The zombies all look like they got lost on the way to a Homestuck cosplay meetup while the PS1-quality CGI for the flying saucers is hilariously unconvincing. While the film’s budget was never officially released, I wouldn’t be surprised if most of it went towards the band’s wardrobe and the comically large amount of pyrotechnics. Seriously, Michael Bay would be crying tears of joy at the amount of explosions in this. Amusingly, the DVD release of Wild Zero features a drinking game in the bonus features where one of the rules is to drink whenever something explodes. The fact movies don’t come with their own built-in drinking games anymore is a sign we’ve truly regressed as a society.
Peppered throughout the story are several musical numbers from Guitar Wolf, which are all insanely fun to watch. The band’s performance of Bakuonblood features a memorable image of Seiji screaming into the mic while flames are continually bursting out from the end. There’s one shot during the band’s performance of Jet Generation where lightning starts inexplicably shooting out of their guitars which gave me major Burst City flashbacks. You could argue the concert footage feels somewhat shoehorned in and has little to do with the overarching plot, but I personally disagree. Wild Zero just wouldn’t hit the same without Guitar Wolf providing the soundtrack to the chaos onscreen.
Front man and founding member Seiji receives the most amount of screen time, with bassist and drummer Billy and Toru reduced to glorified extras. Fittingly, he’s the only member to get any amount of characterisation. Granted that characterisation mostly amounts to throwing guitar picks like shuriken while screaming “ROCK ‘N ROLL!” at the top of his lungs, but it’s the thought that counts. As someone who’s had the joy of seeing Guitar Wolf live several times, this depiction isn’t much of an exaggeration of Seiji’s onstage antics. None of the Guitar Wolf members are particularly talented actors, but are you honestly sitting down and choosing to watch Wild Zero expecting Oscar worthy performances? All they need to do is stand around in those sick shades and leather pants and they get the job done nicely.
As expected, the soundtrack to Wild Zero is phenomenal. In addition to Guitar Wolf themselves, we’re treated to the tunes of Teengenerate, Oblivians, S.D.S. and various other Japanese and international punk bands. I appreciate that Guitar Wolf were keen to spotlight other bands they loved in this movie, the song choices are all great and fit the tone perfectly. The funniest needle drop in the entire movie is when Ace is fending off a horde of zombies to the tune of Bikini Kill’s riot grrrl anthem Rebel Girl. That’s honestly the last song in the entire world I’d ever expect to hear in a movie like this, but I’m not complaining!
The pacing is a little slow at first, with the film taking a while to really kick into high gear. Guitar Wolf themselves have such little bearing on the plot for the first hour, it’s not until the third act where we finally see the band spring into action and begin gleefully gunning down zombies. There’s a subplot where an aggrieved manager known only as The Captain is out for revenge against Guitar Wolf, after a chance. This eventually culminates in Seiji facing off against the Captain during the climax, before the other two members blow him to smithereens with a rocket launcher. It’s genuinely one of the funniest death scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie.
One of the film’s most iconic moments is ironically one of its most subdued. After hiding from the zombies in a club, Ace and his love interest Tobio share a tender moment together where Tobio proceeds to strip her clothes off whereupon Ace discovers that she’s a trans woman. Most movies from this era would’ve played the scene for laughs, and sure enough Ace’s initial histrionic reaction makes you think the scene is heading that way. However moments later, Ace is visited by an apparition of Guitar Wolf front man Seiji, where the latter chastises him before delivering the immortal line “Love has no borders, nationalities or genders!” It’s a welcome subversion of the usual trans panic gag so typical of this era that even today feels astonishingly progressive.
Wild Zero is not high art, but it’s very clearly not trying to be. The tongue-in-cheek B-movie tone and melodramatic acting make it apparent this isn’t something meant to be taken seriously. As someone who’s sat through countless awful horror comedies in his time, Wild Zero is honestly pretty damn good compared to some of the garbage I’ve suffered through. It’s the kind of trashy shlockfest you’d watch with your mates over a couple of beers, pausing every now and then to laugh at a certain line delivery or half-assed special effect. I can practically hear Tom Servo and Crow cracking wise at certain points. It’s a real “turn your brain off and enjoy the ride” kind of movie, which I’m always in favour of. Any self-respecting Guitar Wolf fan owes it to themselves to give this a watch someday.
ROCK ‘N ROLL!
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