Title: Rock & Rule
What Year?: 1983
Classification: Runnerup/ Irreproducible Oddity
Rating: For Crying Out Loud!!! (2/5)
As I write this, I’ve been pondering the fact that my count of reviews for this feature has reached 99 reviews (with the Space 1999 reviews included). I finally made the decision that it’s time to finish things up at an even 100. In further considering what to do for a finale, I decided that what was in order is one more animation review. That brought me down to a short list that might have been a lineup if things had gone a bit differently. Of those, there was one that had long interested more than any other, enough that things didn’t feel complete without it. It’s not just an odd movie, but a strange saga of willful sabotage, disastrous mismarketing and enduring fandom, and I myself needed another go to decide whether this had anything to do with actually being good. With that, I present Rock & Rule, a movie that very possibly set back the animation industry by a decade.
Our story begins with storms, lightning, and a text crawl introducing the cities of Nuke York and Ohmtown, part of a post-apocalyptic future where mutated rodent creatures have built a civilization that looks 60% cyberpunk, 30% steampunk and 10% Disney “slash” fan fiction. In short order, we meet the principals: Mok, a past-prime star who has melded technology with dark magic; Angel, a newcomer in a struggling band; and Omar, her boyfriend who thinks he should be the star of their act. Despite his fame, Mok broods over old age, declining record sales and the dark powers of a nihilistic universe, until he turns to a scheme to unleash a new apocalypse by summoning a demon through the power of music, magic and computer graphics. But to complete his plan, he needs Angel’s voice, and so he hatches a further scheme to kidnap her and fracture the already troubled band. With the help of a couple doubting henchmen, Omar and the band escape Mok’s control. Can they put their differences aside and free Angel before Hell is unleashed? Can I come up with a question that makes it sound like the outcome is in doubt?
Rock & Rule was the first feature length film from the Canadian animation studio Nelvana, loosely based on the televised 1978 short “The Devil And Daniel Mouse”. The movie was produced over 5 years for an estimated $8 million, with backing from United Artists. The voice cast was led by Don Francks as Mok and Susan Roman as Angel, with Lou Reed and Debbie Harry providing the vocals for the characters in musical sequences. The finished film was distributed by the newly formed MGM/UA group (see The Plague Dogs), under new management which clearly viewed the project and adult animation in general with skepticism or outright hostility. The studio forced an alternate cut in which Greg Salata was replaced by Paul Le Mat (see Strange invaders) as the voice of Omar, among other cuts and changes that shortened the film from 81 to 78 minutes. Ultimately, MGM effectively withdrew the film from release, allowing only a limited theatrical run of the 78-minute version. The film was subsequently available mainly through bootleg recordings, many of which incorrectly claimed that Ralph Bakshi (oh dear Logos, Bakshi) was involved. The film went on to become a cult/ underground hit. It has most recently received an authorized digital release on Amazon, at one point including free streaming with Prime.
For my history of the film, I first heard of it from online animation reviews. It interested me immediately, so I looked up the 78-minute cut while it was available free. What kept me intrigued was the case-and-point mishandling of “adult” animation, and also the counterintuitive strangeness of ‘80s cartoons. The psychedelic toons of the 1960s and ‘70s were every bit as “weird” as people think, but 1980s animation was as outright random as the field ever was or ever will be. This was a time that brought us a planet-eater with the voice of Orson Welles, zombies on a B-17, a dog being deliberately drowned in the opening credits, a stop-motion White Rabbit made from a real rabbit and a Disney film where cute talking appliances get fed into a garbage masher. (Wait a minute… Did Toy Story 3 rip off The Brave Little Toaster???) What put the brakes on this strange mass speciation was the combination of censorship, mismanagement and too many unquestionably creative films that couldn’t connect with audiences. In these terms, Rock & Rule is truly the one to rule them all, and a symptom if not a cause of the developments that held back the industry for another decade. Which, alas, is still not saying if it’s any good.
At this point, I have long wavered over whether I am the person to talk about this one. I actively blacked out 1980s rock in the actual ‘80s. Even now, I still have only found a handful of artists I really like, though one of them is Ms. Harry aka Blondie. The already retro psychedelic vibe, the insider references and stone-age CGI resonate with me even less. Where I rally is that there are plenty of films with all these things that I like or at any rate can tolerate. With that frame of reference, I can absolutely say that this movie is not as good. The deeper problem is that this movie consistently feels stuck between too much and not enough. It’s not as “in your face” as Heavy Metal, not as surreal as Allegro Non Troppo, not as subtly subversive as Phantom Tollbooth, not even as “how did this get made?” bonkers as Transformers. And yes, I absolutely am standing up for the Transformers movie. As far as the rating goes, this movie still isn’t “bad” in and of itself, but for the level of talent it was trying to compete with and especially the money invested in it, the bar is much higher than normal. After going pretty hard on Plague Dogs in particular, I have no qualms whatsoever giving this movie a lower rating.
Moving on to the details, my single biggest issue is with the characters. To start with, far too many of the characters, including Omar, are awkward or flat-out ugly, a problem that also cropped up with the studio’s Star Wars cartoons (the less said about that, the better). This isn’t an automatic strike, but it’s far too often a warning sign of undeveloped or uninteresting characters, which is the pervasive problem here. That brings us straight to the biggest issue of all: The central conflict is between Mok and Angel, who are already by far the most interesting and well-animated characters, yet the story never quite concedes the point. By comparison, Omar, whatever the voice, just feels like a supporting actor who won’t take a hint, which is admittedly about right for his character. Even compared to the “minor” characters, particularly the reluctant goon Zip, he isn’t as interesting and doesn’t do much more for the story outside the final act. All of these issues compound already serious story problems, enough that I find substantial sections nearly intolerable, especially in the middle act when the movie tries the hardest to be “adult”. In this respect, it anticipates all too well the much more recent crop of “adult” cartoons that conflate being crude with actual maturity. We were already hitting that dead end in the 1920s; pursuing novelty and shock value at the expense of story and characters usually fails even at that.
Now it’s time for the “one scene”. Of all the material in the film, the one sequence that satisfied me as living up to the movie’s aspirations and reputation is a musical number around the transition to the middle act. While Omar and the bandmates are held hostage by Mok, the goons leave them to watch what seem to be the superstar’s greatest hits, until they seem dazed or hypnotized (which gives a more sinister angle on Mok’s success). As we walk in, a holographic light show is playing on a theater-sized screen, accompanied by an actual chorus, “The Glory Of Me!” (In the course of the review, I confirmed there is a full version out there.) The constantly morphing images are easily the most effective of their kind, offering an intriguing bridge between 1970s psychedelic and 1980s vector-graphics chic. It’s all still only a companion to the outlandish lyrics, so laughably narcissistic that one would expect the vocals by Reed to be hamming it up. In fact, the arrangement and performance are easily among the most impressive in the movie, with a cleverness that hints at irony on Mok’s own part, and perhaps an undercurrent of despair common to the true narcissist. It’s a great moment, yet it sets off in my mind one more train of thought how the movie could and should have been better. If Mok is set up to represent self-centeredness, then his defeat should have been brought about not just by Angel and Omar but the whole band united. It’s a missed opportunity typical not just of the movie but 1980s animation, astonishingly imaginative yet unaccountably impersonal.
In closing, I have a final word not about the movie but the whole feature. As I write, it’s a little over a year since I started Space 1979. It’s been a wild ride, sometimes rough, but always fun. I still don’t feel like I’ve done nearly all the material that I planned on or wanted, which just goes to show how prolific the genres and eras I’ve covered really are. I’m certainly not done with movie reviews, and I’m sure there will be more reviews in the theme and spirit of the feature (not to mention the ratings scale). All in all, I’m happy to have done this, and happy to be done. Crash and burn!
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