Wild Zero (1999) 1h 38m

Holy shit, Wild fucking Zero!  I picked this up a few months ago at the yearly anime/J-culture convention.  There's one booth that is 90% anime sets but if you walk around to the side of the table they have a stack of movies and weird shit for you to sort through.  This has been on my list to get for a while now as I never had the chance to see it but I knew about it through the early 00's Pittsburgh punk scene.

Wild Zero has a lot going on in it so bare with me.  We start with a bunch of spaceships approaching the earth.  While that's happening a meteor crashes into a town and zombies begin to overrun it, a la Night of the Living Dead.  At the same time, we meet Ace, a Guitar Wolf fan that idolizes their rock n' roll machismo.  When Ace stumbles into a stand-off between Guitar Wolf and a club manager he stands up for rock n' roll only to get knocked out.  After Guitar Wolf shoots the fingers off the manger (while Bass Wolf and Drum Wolf comb their hair) he creates a rock n' roll blood brother pact with Ace and gives him a whistle to call Guitar Wolf if Ace ever needs them.  The next day Ace inadvertently stops a robbery where he meets his new love interest, Tobio.  Zombies attack, the club manager is attempting to track down Guitar Wolf for revenge, and the alien invasion eventually begins... and it's all turned up to 11.  ROCK N' ROLL!

Fuckin' right on, Guitar Wolf!

After watching Wild Zero, this film is definitely in my top 10 all-time favorites, maybe even top five but I'd have to spend more time than I want thinking about that right now.  For a movie that came out in 1999, it's surprisingly progressive.  It takes all the things that I personally like about punk and rock, n' roll and rather than pushing the say, Motley Crue model of excess, it pushes this acceptance of everyone in the name of rock n' roll.  It's almost like it's a polytheistic lifestyle, elevated above everyday life.  Are Guitar Wolf gods?  Is this their bible?!  I'd go to church if it were just going in and having the word "rock n' roll" shouted at me from a microphone that shot flames!

This movie is hands down amazing.  There's a drinking game on the disc as well if you're into that.  If you are, then just do so responsibly.  Drunk driving is not rock n' roll!

I give Wild Zero 5 copies of Joan Jett's I Love Rock and Roll out of 5:

Deep Blue Sea (1999) 1h 45m

Something that I love with horror is that when it comes to science we have this "bigger, better, stronger  faster" approach to everything.  There's no isolation of a single piece like how real life scientists cloned an ear on the back of a mouse.  No!  It's all or nothing!  If it were a horror film then they would've been trying to clone their dead child on the back of a rat and we would've ended up with something looking like a TMNT villian (I'm talking original cartoon, not this Michael Bay/Nickelodeon stuff).  Don't get me wrong.  I think that there are some crazy labs somewhere out there that are making a real life Bebop and Rocksteady under an ice cap or something, but horror really pushes science above and beyond.  Like with today's film!

I don't know how I haven't watched Deep Blue Sea until now, but strap the fuck in because here we go!  In the middle of the ocean is a marine biology lab where their attempting to grow a specific section of shark brains in order to harvest the tissue and possibly cure Alzheimer's.  It's a valid pursuit, except that they violated certain standards and in the process created super smart murder sharks!  Throw in Samuel L. Jackson and LL Cool J and you get a movie full of murder sharks and those guys!  Don't get me wrong, Mr. Jackson adds a lot, but LL Cool J is just random.

It was nice to see what all the hype was about finally.  My only major issue with this film is that it's very dated.  Granted, it's almost 20 years since this came out, but films from the 1990's just have this weird aura around them.  You know they're from the 90's based on characters, music, filming, or content.  It's like an entire decade had a slime dumped on it that dried and everything just has this odd film to it.

Otherwise, Deep Blue Sea still delivered.  The CGI looks good for the time with a few questionable moments, Sam Jackson is Sam Jackson up until he gets eaten by a shark, and I don't really remember any of the white people in this movie.  They're all kind of forgettable.

I give Deep Blue Sea 3 bottles of Cool Water out of 5:

Day 29: From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter (1999) 1h 34min

Okay, so a sequel that I have some background with.  I've seen the original From Dusk Till Dawn, which was written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Robert Rodriguez.  From Dusk Till Dawn 3 is written by Robert Rodriguez's cousin, Álvaro Rodriguez.  I know that sounds like it's made up, but it's true.  It was filmed by a guy whose credits include unnecessary sequels to films that were already great (such as Lost Boys: The Tribe) and TV shows based off of films (but not the From Dusk Till Dawn TV series).  This gives you an idea of what's going to go on here.

Actually, I'm not entirely sure what's going in here.  Our two groups of characters end up all at the bordello where Danny Trejo serves up tequila and angry looks.  One group is banditos and the other group consists of a pastor, his wife, and the American author/journalist Ambrose Bierce.  Ambrose was a real person that went to join Pancho Villa's army and was never seen again.  That's what happens when a white guy from Ohio does stupid shit.  Equally stupid shit people from Ohio have done, worn a Brown's jersey at the one diner in Pittsburgh and supposedly got stabbed in the bathroom.  I'm pretty sure that's an urban legend, but it's one Yinzer's like.  Also, it's a better story than this film.

This is all pretty much what you expect from a From Dusk Till Dawn film.  Vampires, snake women vampires, debauchery, lots of killing and like a half hour fight scene, and my favorite part where the main vampire woman (that isn't the hangman's daughter) dies.  Dawn comes, she gets caught in the sun and is trying to back into the bordello.  She ends up getting trapped in the door spike/lock things and becomes burnt super crisp for a second.  I half watched the scene and was exhausted from work so I looked over and just said out loud "Whoopie Goldberg?!" before the vampire turned to dust.  The whole movie then ends with some shitty SyFy channel style CGI where the entire screen is just a computer generated shart.

I give From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter 1 plastic vampire fang out of 5: