"Hot Wax Zombies on Wheels" is nothing more than cheesy entertainment.
**SPOILERS**
In the town of Daneport, Sharon, (Jill Miller) Sven, (Trevor Lovell) and Mick, (Jon Briddell) bemoan the lack of activity in town, but she is immediately put off when Yvonne Wayne, (Gwen Somers) comes into town with a new business venture. Opening up a hair-removal waxing salon, the other members in town are initially cold to the concept but are soon under her spell and mantra for a hair-free world. Not buying into the spell, she decides to investigate the salon, and finds that the process involved turns the recipient into a ravenous, sexually-uninhibited zombie made out of wax, and that she has plans to turn the whole world onto the treatments, giving her control over a vast army of the dead. Fearing that the rest of the town has undergone the process, she gathers who else remain and launches an attack to stop her from carrying out her diabolical plans.
The Good News: This one did have a few good parts to it that did make it somewhat watchable. The first, and perhaps best part of the film, is that this is so cheesy and goofy that it starts to become enjoyable after awhile. There's a constant influx of jokes, most of them coming from the citizens in town at the reaction to the newcomers, but then there's the propensity to add a slew of sight gags or visual jokes throughout that are somewhat funny at times. The inclusion of military-archive footage of massive guns being fired to coincide with them firing guns in the film is pretty funny since it isn't a large number, the sound effects of the zombies groping flesh also works as well, and there's a slew of others throughout the film also gets some laughs from time to time. The general premise of the film is also enough to get some laughs, with a woman bringing a waxing salon to a small town to turn them into sexually-insatiable creatures, that it's somewhat cheesy on it's own but then the constant references to being unfit with pesky-body-hair that there's some downright cheesy feelings to come along from the film. It's one of it's best parts, as well as the fact that the film actually manages to feature some action in the film. The different confrontations with the couple in the headquarters are quite fun, as well as a big confrontation in the salon at the end. The best one, though, is the sequence at the public-access show that turns into a comedic sequence involving cat-fight brawling, ballroom dancing, lesbian grappling and more in a really funny, enjoyable sequence. The last plus is the fact that there's some really decent nudity on display from a variety of different areas, and it's quite fun. These here are the film's good points.
The Bad News: This one did have a couple of flaws to it that do keep it down. The first one is the fact that this one really has so little horror it seems more like a comedy than a straight-up entry. It's so hard to be able to find much fear in a premise based around an evil hair-removal company, which isn't that threatening based on what's been done about it to begin with, but to be able to use that to suck all the energy out of the film and not provide anything worthwhile to horror fans at all. The zombies here not only behave outside the normal realms of what happens to zombies, and it manages to make them seem boring and non-threatening as well, which must be a first for these movies, but it's the fact that here they're wise-cracking people who have shiny skin and don't even get to chow down on anyone. There's nothing to indicate that they're different except for the shiny skin, no make-up, no ravenous tackling of others to get to flesh, nothing at all, and it's sometimes hard to call them zombies because of that. That there's so little screen-time with them is another big problem, maybe it's biggest, since it's almost forty-five minutes into the film before anything slightly close to being a horror scene, which means that there's only slightly more than a half-hour to get anything in, and coupled with everything else, it doesn't offer up much either way. These here are the film's problems.
The Final Verdict: While it's got a really cheesy atmosphere and a couple good points, the fact that there's still a couple of problems keeps this one from being higher. Give it a shot if you're up for this kind of cheesy film or find it interesting, though the more hardcore zombie fans should take caution.
Rated R: Nudity, Language, several sex scenes and Mild Violence
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