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 hen he set out to make what would later become a horror
film classic, George Romero, through sheer will and the acquaintance of some
foresighted investors, managed to frighten up (forgive the pun) somewhere around
$114,000 in order to make Night of the Living Dead. I suspect director
Tetsuro Takeuchi, the man responsible for the unbridled chaos that is Wild
Zero, had even less money than that. Considering that Romero's $114,000 was
in the 1960s, the actual budget in today's terms would probably be around 1 or
maybe 2 million. Takeuchi and writer Satoshi Takagi, on the other hand, probably
had about $50,000 U.S. dollars in the bank and a small team of dedicated and
talented computer graphic artists at their side. Which might explain why Wild
Zero is more insane than creative, more "let's see what we can do
without killing our actors" than "let's write a great script and film
it."
You might already have guessed that Wild Zero is a
low-budget horror production with nonprofessional actors and a lot -- and I mean
a lot -- of extras, mostly local people in the role of green-skinned (?)
zombies. Trying to explain Wild Zero's plot is a futile effort, since I'm
hard pressed to find one within this mess of a film.
Anyway, for those who
absolutely must know: Yellow, frisbee-sized flying saucers have arrived
on Earth and are somehow turning the citizens of a small country town into
zombies (are the zombies originally dead? Who knows). Enter Ace, a would-be
greaser and rock-n-roller, whose biggest goal in life is to comb his hair every
couple of seconds and worship his idol, Ramones-wannabe Guitar Wolf. A slew of
other insignificant characters appear, are eaten, and other stuff happens. See?
I told you it was stupid, and you still wanted to know!
Wild Zero is not, if you haven't already guessed, a
very well-written film. It's not even a very well-conceived film. What passes
for story was obviously lifted from dozens of other classic horror films. It's execution of plot, characters, and
situations are amateurish and leave a lot to be desired. Even for a film with a
shoe-string budget, Wild Zero is grossly incompetent in almost every
respects. The film also has no clear time frame and seems to be a mishmash of
eras, although this was the least of its problems.
Wild Zero is what we in the States would call a
Grade-Z film (the 'Z' standing for 'zero budget'). Its actors are novices and
nonprofessionals, and rather they're shooting at zombies or attempting dramatic
interaction with each other, they look foolish and ill-prepared for the thespian
field.
Direction by Takeuchi is one of the movie's main problems. Continuity
doesn't seem to be a word in Takeuchi's dictionary. There is little rhyme or
reason for anything to be or for anyone to do anything (or in some cases, not do
anything). One gets the feeling
there never really was a "script," just a group of filmmakers
wondering what they could do that would look "cool." This, of course,
breaks the first rule of filmmaking: The script comes first, stupid!
On the plus side, for a Grade-Z film, the movie had very
nice "splatter" effects -- scenes of zombie heads literally
splattering into goo when shot by bullets. This was all done with computer
effects, and is most likely the product of creative graphic artists in
conjunction with CGI equipment that is getting cheaper and cheaper every day,
allowing anyone with a desktop to add some class to a classless film. The UFO
Mothership at the end is also very well done, although the gunshot squibs were weak
at best and the appearance of a condemned tenement building that was used over
and over for different locales practically screamed
"low-budget."
The trick about making a low-budget film is to not let
people know that you have no money. In fact, the trick to making a good film (in
general) is to fool the audience into thinking you have more money than
you actually did. After all, rather a movie is a Grade-Z film or a big-budgeted
Hollywood film means very little when someone pays $7 to see your film in a
theater or $4 to rent it from Blockbusters.
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