Six-String Samurai and Wild Zero inject indie voltage
These unusual contenders hot-wired both niche cinema and popular music. Each brought much that fans of nonconformity could relish. Neither garnered stauettes from Hollywoodland high-hats, a reality that only further recommends them.
Six-String Samurai (1998)
Were Sonny Chiba and Alan Freed to collaborate on a screenplay, after huffing Carbona and telephoning L. Frank Baum...
In a 1957 America that had been devastated by Russian nuclear bombing, one DJ sounds a siren for musicians to travel to Lost Vegas and seek the title new king of Rock'n'Roll.
Guitarist and swordsman Buddy heeds the call. The name, and the black-frame eyeglasses he wears, communicate symbolization of Buddy Holly. The character is animated by Jeffrey Falcon, a martial-arts phenom who'd previously made Hong Kong fight films.
Buddy is a soul of scant verbiage; when he does speak, it's generally with deadpan cynicism. Words are bitten off.
Among the film's action sequences are his acrobatic leaps, mid-air revolvings, and flying fist-and-foot-forward defenses. Plentiful are the battles that erupt throughout his sometimes motorcycled quest.
Note: When challenged, Buddy draws a sword strapped behind his guitar. This calls to mind the rifle barrel that extended from the acoustic guitar Roy Orbison's protagonist carried in 1967's The Fastest Guitar in the West. A similar concept was that of Robert Rodriguez's1990s El Mariachi / Desperado main figure routinely carrying a guitar case packed with weaponry.
The landscape across which Buddy treks is predominantly empty -- save for the wreckage of commercial civilization -- swept by sweltering gusts, and sporadically populated by murderous, ragtag bandits.
Igor and the Red Elvises play 14 songs. Included: "United States of Russia," "Good Golly Miss Molly," "Love Pipe," and "Boogie On the Beach." (Also pivotal to soundtrack construction was composer Brian Tyler.)
The former real-life buskers seem somehow apt in the dystopian circumstance. As can no others, they roll out kaleidoscopic and technicolor Rock and Roll, Funk, Polka, Surf, Reggae, and Disco.
Traditional Folk airs, too, clap hands, throw back laughing heads, and jitter bop into hysterical fracture.
Buddy and an unnamed "Kid" he's rescued persist across unforgiving terrains. Along their way to Lost Vegas, they encounter a bowling bandits gang. A Slash-like Death challenges Buddy to guitar battle, pitting his Heavy Metal against Buddy's style.
When Death goes down to ignominious defeat, the villain lord's followers attack with guns and archer's bows. (Buddy turns aside incoming arrows with his sword. The gambit is not unlike Wonder Woman deflecting bullets via wristlets.)
Though Buddy rallies after taking a bullet protecting the Kid, he ultimately succumbs. The Kid dons the deceased adventurer's attire and glasses. He transmogrifies into Buddy.
And Rock'n'Roll forges ahead.
Six-String Samurai trailer
Igor and the Red Elvises: "Love Pipe" "Boogie on the Beach"
Wild Zero (1999)
Wild Zero's extensive footage of Punk bunker-buster Guitar Wolf's onstage blow-ups alone is sufficient to warrant acquisition. But the narrative featuring the trio as enigmatic, superpowered saviors -- not bound by time and space constraints -- in a time when zombies have risen, also merits regard.
During opening credits, director George Romero is acknowledged as an inspiration. As was so in Romero's Dawn of the Dead series, gore of such cartoonish quality as to be shrugged away crosses the Wild Zero screen in vomitous explicitness. Similarly acknowledged are NYC legends the Ramones. That foursome's influence -- both trenchant and Pop-aware -- is apparent in Guitar Wolf's hyper-detonations.
The invasion of lurching zombie legions is preceded by a meteor strike, and was seemingly engineered by a mysterious fleet of sky-hurtling saucers.
While the doings of would-be King of Cool Ace are uninteresting, one bit is noteworthy: After an early zombie onslaught, Guitar Wolf gives Ace a whistle, advising him that tooting it when danger looms will summon the trio.
Fans of vintage Japanese sci fi flicks will recall 1964's Prince of Space. The titular hero gave one youngster a handheld device. "If you ever need me again, just turn the dial," the masked starman counseled. Wild Zero's producers surely remembered.
The splatterings of zombie conflicts and neat shots of swooping UFOs excite, but it's the Guitar Wolf performances that inject electric adrenaline. Camera angles tilt and zoom, and multi-colored lights flash, as the sunglassed agressors lean 110% into ear-battering thunderation.
Remarkably, no accounts attributing third-degree burns to the pyro-provocateurs have populated headlines. Theirs has always been a shatteringly loud and vehement Punk onrush that bombards with Link Wray and (again) Ramones-provoked bellicosity.
Gang-leader Seiji snarls and jackhammers with uni-dimensional purposefulness; his shaded and leather-wrapped accomplices detonate precision furiousness.
(I have it on reliable imaginary authority that jagged-toothed Rock'n'Roll of incalculable velocity is the audio equivalent of Ponce de León's diving pool.)
In 2024, Guitarwolf Records announced a sequel was planned. Wild Zero 2: The Strongest Blood of Humanity was to be crowd-funded. To date, though, it has not been marketed.
Wild Zero trailer
Guitar Wolf: "Hoshizora Jet" "Jet Generation"
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