Voyage of the Rock Aliens (1984)
Voyage of the Rock Aliens is as hilariously incompetent as the title suggests – a film made from the spare parts of disparate genres that have no business being forced to share the same space. It shows not the slightest indication that anyone involved was ever trying. In a strange way, that’s also the film’s redeeming quality; to see it is to understand why B movies tend to develop cult followings, with their notorious reputation for weak storylines, bad dialogue, awful acting, and low-grade special effects being fair game for widespread mockery. Sometimes, movies like that can be a great deal of fun. I submit Xanadu as evidence. But in the case of Voyage of the Rock Aliens, it just didn’t have that extra something special … for want of a much more appropriate phrase.
The film is essentially a series of MTV-style music videos strung together by the loosest of plots. When it comes to genre, it freely alternates between a musical, a Flash Gordon-esque sci-fi spoof, a ‘50s-style teen love story, and a horror comedy. Among the visuals are select instances of shabby special effects, which should have been more charming and nostalgic than they were allowed to be. Take, for example, the appearance of a monster squid tentacle; setting aside the fact that its very inclusion in the film is barely explained and attached to a creature never once shown, it looks every bit like the foam rubber it was made from, and one can easily tell that its movements are made possible by off-camera assistants shaking it violently.
The plot – and please forgive me, because I giggled a little as I typed the words “the plot” and had to stop for a second – involves a race of very human-looking alien beings on an intergalactic search for rock music, and indeed, their spaceship is shaped like an electric guitar. These all-male beings, dressed in gaudy pink-and-black costumes, have names that are just consecutive letters of the English alphabet strung together. The leader is ABCD, or, when pronounced, Absid (Tom Nolan). His blonde hair and built arms make him look like Rocky Horror’s beefier twin brother. After determining that other planets just don’t have what they’re looking for musically, the aliens head for Earth and land in the town of Speelburgh. No, I’m not making this up. If you don’t get the joke, for God’s sake, have you been living under a rock?
Speelburgh appears to be almost entirely populated by high school kids that look every bit like the twentysomethings that play them. One exception is the town sheriff, a UFO nut played by Ruth Gordon. Yes, Oscar-winner Ruth Gordon is in this movie. Anyway, as he and his away team survey the town, ABCD falls head-over-heels in love with a girl named Dee Dee (Pia Zadora, no stranger to cult classics thanks to Santa Claus Conquers the Martians), who only wants to sing with the rock band The Pack. Unfortunately, The Pack is run by Dee Dee’s boyfriend Frankie (Craig Sheffer), a leather-clad, cigarette-smoking punk with the possessiveness and temper of a 1950s hoodlum who wants to rumble. He has made it clear to Dee Dee, in no uncertain terms, that she cannot perform in his band. In turn, ABCD offers to let her sing with his band. Needless to say, Frankie becomes very jealous, and with the help of his cronies, he does everything he can to keep ABCD and his crew from hanging around.
There are several things one has to wonder. If Speelburgh’s lake has been polluted to the point that a mutated squid lives within it, and if the high school kids already know this, why would they be introduced as having a beach party, where a musical number is performed? How did a squid end up in a lake in the first place? Speelburgh must also be the only place in the world where the criminally insane are allowed to keep their weapons, even after being committed. Such is the case with an unnamed deformed man (Michael Berryman) who’s able to escape from the local asylum by cutting through a wooden fence with a chainsaw. Although this character is introduced more than halfway through the film and doesn’t fit into the narrative at all, he is given one funny moment; at the high school, his chainsaw stalls, and his intended victim uses her garage-shop skills to help him fix it.
I can muster praise for the musical numbers, which have an electronic New Wave sound I’m a particular pushover for. My favorite song, which features Jermaine Jackson and Zadora in a different role, plays at the very beginning. However, you can tell that its inclusion was the result of an editorial hack job, simply because, once the song ends, its characters and storyline are never brought up again. It’s as if an entirely unrelated five-minute music video was tacked onto the film at the last minute in a desperate attempt to pad it out. It’s that level of narrative incompetence, I have no doubt, that will ensure an audience for Voyage of the Rock Aliens. For my money, even B movies in midnight theaters should have better standards than this.
