Sometimes horror movies are so crazy that in order to truly process them, one must go back over them in detail. I really want to tell people about this movie because it is crazy and I believe that a lot of my friends would not watch it on their own. If you are inclined at any time to watch this movie, I would suggest that you do and join me in the experience. Those who want to save yourself 96 minutes are free to stick around and let me regale you. I’m thinking of doing this with other weird movies because the Internet needs to have a comprehensive record of the strange.
We start with a convertible cruising down a rural highway with some great eighties rock and roll playing not from the stereo but as background music. I like to imagine that they are actually driving in complete silence. These rocking dudes are in the car and obviously having a great time, though. We have no idea what their names are because they have zero lines in the film. The dudes see a young and leggy blonde woman on the side of the road and slow to a stop to pick her up. She excitedly gets in the car.
We cut to a small lake or pond where three men in suits are cavorting around. Two of them are little people and one is tall. The tall one is looking around through binoculars. The driving trio stops at that same watering hole and they strip down. This gives us some cheap full frontal nudity as the lady does a quick striptease and gets into the water. She and one of the vaguely interchangeable guys swim about for a bit until she decides to playfully dunk him and then not so playfully hold him under until blood comes to the surface. The three men love what they see. The tall man is taking pictures. Somehow, the other guy did not notice what happened to his friend as the lady swims up to him. Without any preamble, she pushes him under the water and holds him down until blood rockets to the surface again. The opening song ends.
Back on the shore, the men have helped drag the bodies out of the water and haphazardly wrapped them in plastic. The men excitedly try to move the body but the woman grabs a knife and lops the body’s hand off at the wrist in one swing. She holds the hand up to her cheek dreamily and softly sings one line of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”.
Because there has been almost a full minute without rock music blaring, we cut to a concert in progress. This is where we first see the heroes of our movie who are singing a pretty great tune. The band is made up of a bass player/singer/frontman, a drummer, a guitarist, and a keyboardist. The frontman is named Jessie and he is the creative and sensitive one. The rest are mostly interchangeable goofballs.
A few minutes later, the song is over and we see the band getting changed backstage after their gig. They are tired but their manager/roadie tells them that they have to mingle with the groupies outside so that the wild pictures can make it into the magazines. In what must be a first, the guys vehemently argue against having to flirt with young ladies who already think they are cool. The manager states that if they won’t go out to the girls, he will just have to let them in the dressing room. The ladies flood the place and climb all over the four rockers whose protests seem to evaporate. The guys begrudgingly sign breasts and thighs as flirting continues.
Jesse pushes his way through the crowd and finds peace in the hallway. He also finds a young, nervous girl. Jesse softens and asks if she wants to come in and meet the band. She instead warns him to not bring the band to their next gig in the town of Grand Guignol. The town does not want them there. The girl scurries away as Jessie is once again swarmed by groupies.
Cut to the band in their tour bus on the way to the gig in Grand Guignol. Jesse is noodling with a song that nobody else recognizes that sounds vaguely like Latin. He says that it is from a book written in the Middle Ages when people used it to bring the dead back to life. As he sings it, their manager repeatedly smacks the same mosquito which repeatedly comes back to life each time it dies.
They look ahead on the highway and spot the same woman from the opening who is more obviously hitchhiking. She climbs into their van and they start talking to her about the town of Grand Guignol and the warnings Jesse received the night before. The woman shrugs off the questions by being vague. The woman does not introduce herself immediately but her name is Elsa.
She invites the band to stay at her family’s home for free as it beats staying at a motel. The band agrees and they drive to the manor. We hear a howling sound as they pull up and see a female-presenting werewolf kind of wiggling as she howls. One of the little people from before walks up and asks if the band needs a hand. When they agree, he holds out a hand out for a handshake and it is the hand they cut off the body from earlier. This and the howling freaks the band out but Elsa smooths it over by calling the hand a toy and the howling her mother’s primal scream exercises. We briefly cut to Elsa and the little person putting the severed hand in a jar as Elsa once again sings. This time it is one line from “One Hand, One Heart”.
We get another music video as the band parties it up in the town and has fun with the local teenagers (?) and people their age (?). Jesse spots the girl from the night before and chases her as she literally sprints away. He catches up to her just as she bumps into her father. Her father takes one look at Jesse and tells his daughter to go home. We learn that her name is Cassie. Jesse gets a little too big in his britches and boats a little about the concert scheduled for the next night. The father tells him that the concert will not happen.
Jesse returns to the band just in time to get arrested by the local sheriff for parking their van illegally. The band panics about their upcoming gig. Record executive Don Madson is coming to their gig and this is their big break. Cassie throws an envelope from outside into the cell and smiles at Jesse as he flirts with her. They continue on until her father chases her off. She tried to give them bail money but it is a pitiful 37 dollars.
We cut to an old German main schtupping a woman elsewhere in the house. She says something about him being over ninety but still virile. The little people pop up and beg to watch. They are allowed.
Meanwhile, Elsa has bailed out the band. One of the band members gloats and they invite everybody to the show. The sheriff says that there will be no show. Jesse spots Cassie and goes to talk to her as Elsa watches disapprovingly. Jessie gives Cassie a keepsake and runs to catch up with the band.
Back at the family manor, the band gears up for a sound test/private show for the family. The family watches with amusement as their gear malfunctions and the band collectively receives a massive electric shock. They console the band members and apologize.
We cut to an emergency meeting of the town council. They bicker about the arrival of the band and how it is affecting the youth in town. Ronnie is in attendance, apparently being the only one smart enough to see the trouble brewing. The clearly corrupt and insane town leadership votes to enact Statute 6969. Because rock leads to premarital sex and has demonic messages, the new statute will effectively ban it. All rock and roll materials in town are to be destroyed forthwith. Ronnie tries to speak up but is chased out of the meeting.
We cut to Jessie who is once again experimenting with the song that raises the dead. He smashes a tarantula and brings it back to life. We also see the human hand from earlier come alive in its jar.
As music plays, we go through a montage of two things: The first is the Family murdering the band members one by one. It is revealed that they have done this for a long time and keep photos of the murders and trophies from their victims. The grandmother turns into the werewolf we saw earlier. The other thing we see is the town destroying all manner of rock and roll paraphernalia in the middle of town. The violence from both is frenzied.
Cassie arrives to try and save Jessie. The two run through the woods and then hide. Jessie tells Cassie that he loves her and hands her a cassette tape to play if they catch Jessie. The two get split up and one of the Family catches Jessie and kills him with a weed whacker.
We cut to Family dinner which is also attended by the Sheriff and Ronnie. The Family thanks the Sheriff and the town council for supporting them. Now that Ronnie is out of a job, they offer him a job. Ronnie objects, saying his friends’ funerals were literally a few hours ago. Apparently, he has not found out how they died. A red light starts flashing and the grandfather excitedly jumps to his feet and unmasks. He is Adolf Hitler, hiding under a mask for decades. Nazi flags are unfurled and everybody is celebratory. He is filmed for a satellite feed where he says that he will be taking over California and tomorrow the World.
We cut to Cassie sitting at the graves of the band members. She softly tells Jessie that she loves him and then plays the tape. The song causes the band to rise as zombies in corpsepaint and they march off, leaving Cassie behind.
We cut back to Hitler who is giving a stunned Ronnie a tour of his facility which includes a working gas chamber and furnaces. An increasingly unhinged Ronnie turns down Hitler’s job offer and he is tied up to be killed. He is saved at the last moment by the zombie band. In a montage, Ronnie watches horrified as the band slaughters the entire Nazi family.
Ronnie runs back into town and bursts in on members of the town council sitting around. Out of breath, he explains what happened. The eldest member of this small group (who is obviously Jewish) starts protesting how horrible that is. They approve of Nazi death, of course, but Hitler and his family become ghouls upon their death and their bite can create more ghouls. He also reveals that Hitler made a secret deal with Harry Truman to spare Hitler and Eva Braun’s lives. They snuck off to America to create a family. They need to act to stop a Nazi ghoul outbreak.
Back at the Manor, the Nazis rise where the band members killed them. They begin to murder anybody they run into, creating more ghouls.
Meanwhile, the band climbs into their van and heads off to do their concert. They arrive at the theater and set up and start to play. Cassie follows them. The record producer arrives but is oblivious to what is going on. He is the only one in the audience but shrugs and says it must be a tough town. He loves the band. The band sings a song apparently directed at Cassie and it is intercut with music video footage of Jessie and Cassie dancing in period costumes.
We cut back to the ghouls killing people. We also see Ronnie and the townspeople trying to prepare for an assault on the Manor. Also, one of the little people finds himself tasty and starts eating his own extremities. We cut back to the band still playing and the record producer on the phone doing comedy schtick. The ghouls have invaded the town. The townspeople start dying because they misinterpreted old wives’ tales about the ghouls. The town is now overrun. The ghouls burst into the theater and chase off the record producer and Cassie barely escapes.
Back in town, Ronnie and the remaining townspeople are frantically trying to figure out what to do. One of them speaks of a tale that says that if they let the ghouls ravish and devour a live virgin, the ghouls will rest for 100 years. At that point, it’s somebody else’s problem. Cassie arrives at the shelter.
The record producer offers the band a contract but they tiredly get back into their van and drive off leaving the producer to get devoured by ghouls. The one little person is still eating his own body. The band returns to their graves.
The townspeople tie up Cassie as an offering to the ghouls. Objecting, Ronnie frantically goes to the band’s graves and begs them to get up for one more show. They begrudgingly rise from their graves and listen to their manager one last time. The band starts to play the magic song again, this time summoning the ghouls to them just as they are about to reach Cassie. Ronnie frees Cassie. The band leads the ghouls into the underground of the Manor. The horde follows them into the gas chamber which Ronnie activates from outside. The ghouls are all utterly destroyed by the gas. The one little person finishes eating himself, leaving behind only a skull.
Cassie and Ronnie mourn their friends once again at the cemetery. As Cassie leans down and tells Jessie that he will always be the only one for her and that she will return to visit him often. Jessie’s hand rises from the grave and she rubs her cheek against it.
The end