Rock & Rule (1983)

In the mess that is memories from my childhood are commercials for numerous strange movies that there was no way I was going to see in the early 1980s.  My parents were pretty lax on what I could see, just preferring that it didn't have a lot of sexual content, and typically that if it was "R" rated that they watch it with me.  Thus I got to see movies like The Thing and Psycho II.  It may sounds strange that I was watching movies like that at an age when a lot of kids would still get nightmares from them, but it's also important to understand that I had friends whose parents were letting them watch stuff like I Spit on Your Grave. 

A movie like the latter was never going to fly, but as soon as I was able I did see it.  Same with a number of other films, both half-remembered and later read about in cult movie magazines and books.  Many I barely remembered seeing commercials for, and one of those was Rock & Rule.  Even at the time I immediately thought about Heavy Metal, but I knew they were both cartoons for adults, and when advertised they were being shown on weekends at midnight along with Pink Floyd's The Wall and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  I filed a lot of this in the back of my mind to see when I no longer had parents looking over my shoulder; unfortunately, by the time I was 18, except for Rocky Horror much of the midnight movie phenomenon had faded.  In fact, I even saw that one at home, on video, simply because of the fact that it was crowd participation - something not easy for a person who wishes everyone at a concert would sit down, shut up and listen to the music. 

Heavy Metal had to wait until 1996, because it was not available commercially on video due to copyright issues with the music.  Rock & Rule should have been easier, since even though it featured Cheap Trick, Debbie Harry, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, the music for it was made specifically for the movie.  However, I forgot it even existed until recently, when I decided to see if it was available somewhere.  Strangely, it was out of print (unless ordered directly from the people who made it) until the 2010s, with the U.S. theatrical print censored (and with a different voice actor for one of the main characters) and the original Canadian version only available in a copy from video cassettes, as the original print was destroyed by either a fire or flood, depending on the story being told.  No matter which version I ended up seeing (it turned out to be the U.S. one, unfortunately, but I can't see the Canadian one being any better) I figured I could check another one of these barely-remembered films off my list.  Turns out that was really about the only reason to see it. 

Decades after a nuclear war has resulted in the world being repopulated by humanoid animals, an aging rock star named Mok (Don Francks) is looking for a female singer who has the right frequency to open up a rift that will summon a demon to destroy the world.  Returning from a worldwide search back to his home in Ohmtown, he catches a show at a bar owned by Mylar (Martin Lavut).  The band is a quartet featuring lead singer and guitarist Omar (Paul LeMat), keyboard player Angel (Susan Roman) and the rhythm section of Stretch (Greg Duffell) on bass and Dizzy (Dan Hennessey) on drums.  The band doesn't go over well, but when Angel sings a song she wrote it turns out that she is the one that Mok is looking for.  

Mok eventually kidnaps Angel, taking her to Nuke York to perform and raise the demon, which ultimately fails but manages to cause a large amount of damage.  Realizing he needs more power, he returns to Ohmtown to perform at the city's power plant.  Eventually Omar cooks up a plan to rescue Angel and save the world. 

The movie comes off like a low-rent copy of Heavy Metal, although it had almost the same budget and a longer production time.  Some of this budget is seen in the backgrounds, as Ohmtown and Nuke York are quite striking in their artwork.  However, the film began as one for kids, and eventually transitioned to being more adult-oriented.  Even worse, it didn't start with a working script, allowing a number of animators and their teams to come up with ideas and slap them all together as the project went along.  

The result is that a movie about a sinister rock singer kidnaping a young girl to summon a demon, rather than either being played straight and producing a movie that did something brilliant with the concept or failed hard enough that the movie was worth watching to laugh at, is often played like a slapstick comedy.  The Rollerskating Schlepper Brothers, Mok's goons, are all played as barely intelligent henchmen.  Stretch and Dizzy are played as barely intelligent sidemen.  The Schlepper's sister, Cinderella, is played as a barely intelligent plot device.  It's all comic relief, and all the same comic relief, and not one bit of it funny, intentionally or otherwise. 

Mok himself is obviously based on Mick Jagger, while Omar and Angel really aren't based on anything.  None of them have personalities other than than "good" or "bad," so it is impossible to care.  Even the demon, when it does show up, is underwhelming, and for all the money spent on this cartoon we see a bit of the aftermath of the failed summoning in Nuke York but not one shot of the concert at Carnage Hall that caused it.  And, yes, those puns get as tiresome as the rest of the film.  There are less nuclear jokes in a Fallout game.  As for the animation of the characters, this comes from Nelvala, who animated the Boba Fett portion of The Star Wars Holiday Special.  While the story it told was one of the few redeeming things about the special, the animation was infamously terrible, and that could be said about much of what we see here, especially the Schlepper Brothers and Mok.  While the Jagger impersonation was obvious, the first thing I thought of when I saw his face was that awful, long face of Han Solo, so I was not surprised to find out some of the same people were behind it. 

The wilted, moldy cherry on top of this crap sundae is that the music is horrible.  Sure, some of it is memorable, particularly "My Name Is Mok" (sung by Lou Reed) and "Angel's Tune" (Debbie Harry's contribution to the soundtrack), and I hope everyone's paychecks cleared, but there is a reason most of it is unreleased or popped up as bonus tracks on box sets and reissues.  It is underwhelming, with Harry's song being a demo of a song she would rework a few years later for one of her solo albums.  In addition to these bands not bringing their A-game, the mix is horrible, with the music often drowning out the dialogue.  

If this provides some sort of nostalgia for some, then so be it.  As stated before, the only nostalgia for me is seeing it advertised, and knowing that I wanted to see it some day.  Unfortunately, adult animation in the United States and Canada has never been taken as seriously as it is in France or Japan, and even when an attempt is made it often fails by dumbing it down.  Rock & Rule is an abject failure in animation, plotting and music.

Rock & Rule (1983)

Time: 77 minutes

Starring: Don Francks, Paul LeMat (Gregory Salata in the original), Susan Roman

Director: Clive Smith