Are you ready for a super wacky Japanese rock and roll zombie love story? That’s Wild Zero! And man, is it wacky! Think I am overselling it? Then just wait until you see how thick the actual movie piles it on.
It stars the ultra-cool band Guitar Wolf and a fan of the band named Ace, who really wants to be Guitar Wolf. A meteor brings the dead back to life as flesh-hungry zombies, Guitar Wolf is pursued by a double-dealing club manager, there’s a hot arms dealer and a transvestite who wins the heart of Ace. And it is so wacky.
I didn’t love this. It was too much rock-and-roll fantasy posturing and self-conscious wackiness and not enough zombie movie. It amounted to a long, self-indulgent music video in the vein of the old Beatles movies. It was still sort of entertaining, though. Just don’t believe the hype that this is anything special. It’s a mildly amusing, overly long, jokey music video for an overrated Japanese rock band — with zombies!
The Japanese have done interesting zombie movies such as Stacy and JUNK. The forgettable Living Dead in Tokyo Bay, however, is not one of them. After a meteor causes the dead to come back to life, a badass Japanese woman in a tight, futuristic jumpsuit has to rip off the plot of Escape from New York and rescue her scientist father, only instead of gangs, she faces zombies. And some super zombie Power Ranger-esque villains created by a corrupt military dude. And right now, if you are imagining something cool, stop. It sucks. It could have been fun, given better direction and a slightly more coherent plot, but it’s really lifeless (ha!) and slow and pointless. The zombies don’t get enough screen time and manage to underwhelm even low expectations when they do. The gore is gutless, the super-zombie villains are ridiculous and even a hot girl in a skintight jumpsuit manages to bore. Apart from being the oldest Japanese zombie movie I know of (1992) I can’t think of a single reason to even acknowledge this film’s existence.
