Voyage of the Rock Aliens (1984)

 

Director: James Fargo

Screenplay: Edward Gold, James Guidotti and Charles Hairston

Cast: Pia Zadora as Dee Dee; Craig Sheffer as Frankie; Tom Nolan as ABCD; Ruth Gordon as Sheriff; Michael Berryman as Chainsaw; Alison La Placa as Diane; Gregory Bond as Jaklem (JKLM); Craig Quiter as Nopquir (NOPQR); Patrick Byrnes as Stovitz (STUVWXYZ) (as Rhema); Marc Jackson as Aeiou; Jeffrey Casey as F-Gee (FGHI); Jimmy Haddox as Duke; Marshall Rohner as Dino; Jeffrey Cranford as Clyde; Troy Mack as Mouth

An Abstract List Candidate

 

Now I sit at home watching New Wave videos!

Sometimes I look at cinema and wonder how and why films exist as they are. Here, I wonder of how Voyage of the Rock Aliens exists. The director early in his career made The Enforcer (1976) and Every Which Way but Loose (1978) with Clint Eastwood. This is one of the last films made by British cinematographer Gilbert Taylor, who most will know because he shot Star Wars (1977) but also shot A Hard Day's Night (1964) and Dr. Strangelove (1964) among others. The composer of the music, Jack White, is German and was the composer of the Luxembourgish entry in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1976. These people got together among others to make this film. Even when you consider the origins of this film, where this was originally as a script by James Guidotli meant as a spoof of b-movies, making sense of how the film is as it stands, what we get instead still dumbfounds.

The opening alone is something you could only get in the eighties, a time before I even existed thrown onscreen in front of me, where everything has to be gaudy and over the top. The title has to explode in glitter. You have to have a guitar shaped spaceship, a hand built model lovingly created for these shots. A robot appears, for a mission to research the universe, to find a place specifically with rock music for the cryogenically sleeping crew. The film production decided, for this, to crowbar in a music video for star Pia Zadora and Jermaine Jackson, a Mad Max rip-off involving an all white wearing New Wave motorbike gang against a backing dancer trope for an RnB megastar led by Jackson. This leads to a Romeo and Juliet narrative with Zadora and Jackson, leading to a mass dance battle, and all for the sake of a tangent which is never returned to. It is fluff, playful and indulgent in wishing to entertain, all whilst coming off as already batshit insane already and feeling, in vast contrast to cocaine being the drug of the eighties, high on sugar and psychedelics instead.

The rock aliens, who are in cryogenic sleep as micro-models stored in the fridge with the beers and made full size again by being slotted through a tub, are a six man crew named after letters in the alphabet (like JLKM). With a robot who has to disguise himself as a moving fire hydrant, they are to research the human species on their time on Earth. Beyond that, this is film not set in a world but all its own imaginary kingdom of humour, as the aliens land in the town of Spielberg.  There will be too much to write down, as I realised as I watched the film. Very much of the era, this is nonetheless a film which looks back the fifties too, of fifties greasers crossing with New Wave punks, the "Local Teenage Hangout" (as the sign says) a fifties diner of rockabilly on a jukebox and soda bar furniture, and yet where the hairspray used by the cast clearly had to have its own budget, and the aliens look like a DEVO cover band.

In the midst of this is Dee Dee (also Pia Zadora), the girlfriend of musician and gang leader Frankie (Craig Sheffer), who is sick of him refusing to let her sing with his band and catching the eye of the head alien ABCD (Tom Nolan), love at first sight when he explodes in the middle of the diner. Frankie is naturally not impressed by their burgeoning chemistry. Really however this is a string of musical numbers, Voyage... a bizarre film with so much to digest, even in mind of its origins as a b-movie parody. It cannot claim the weirdest musical number in a public bathroom - Tsai Ming-liang's The Wayward Cloud (2006), a very different type of film, topped that in 2006 - but Voyage... could claim awards in other areas. The littlest of jokes stand out, like a man literally burying his face on command in the sand, and return later on, to the point running jokes that seem disconnected to the main narrative have a greater significance, like Spielberg's Lake Eerie being so toxic even a surfboard immediately melts when placed on the water. In that case, it is also a host to a giant orange and blue spotted squid that returns later as a huge plot point.

It is infectious. Also, barring a few jokes, this movie is mostly wholesome in mind to its strange content. Only one plot point dangerously steers towards something problematic, the sexual response stimulator that ABCD tries to use to tempt Dee Dee to him, but thankfully that leads to a one scene joke of it back firing and attracting all the men in the diner, which is never played for any offensive jokes either, just one very newly b-curious male extra we never see again being involved. The film is not attempting anything but a very simplistic plot, more focused on selling Zadora and the music; that in itself is not exactly a catalyst for anything potentially interesting, as that could lead to so many bland music related films, but here the mentality to throw in the kitchen sink was felt significantly without feeling lazy either.

The film, for one later musical sequence for Frankie, will acquire a giant cat to just walk through a high school corridor, and with actor Sheffer briefly, just for a song called Nature of the Beast, which is unimaginable to re-do in the modern day. That is not even taking into consideration an entire subplot, played for laughs, of a chainsaw welding maniac, cult actor Michael Berryman making the perfect entrance in the film by cutting a hole through a wooden fence with a chainsaw. You would presume a film like this would merely focus on Dee Dee, caught between the aliens and Frankie's quiff gang, including a battle of a bands sequence in the high school hall, but Berryman gets to call grenades "pineapples" as he acquires enough firearms to do God knows what with at a gun store with a friend, a fellow escapee on a giant wheel breathing tank. Long before jokes like this would be inappropriate, and never used, we have a shot of him caring them in a shopping trolley in bulk for a frenzy, and he has a lot of scenes throughout as a major side character.  Personally I think it was wonderful to see Berryman get so much fun and weird stuff to do, the thing that won me over with the film, including a fight with a police officer in a school boiler room, egg whisk versus coat hanger, and eventually electric tooth brushing the cop to submission. This even predates the chainsaw as phallic metaphor from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part II (1986), only with a happy ending of targeting a girl who is a car junky and mechanic who can fix the chainsaw, and leading to a bond afterwards.

Naturally, the film leads to Berryman having to fight the giant octopus as a hero, which just emphasises that for all its cheese Voyage... for me became sincerely eccentric and likable as a production in the end. I have not even mentioned the side character of Ruth Gordon as the town's Sherriff, the Harold and Maude (1971) star running the Spielberg police force, spotting the aliens' ship landing whilst spying on a buff shirtless young man and, with arm badges on the uniforms radioactive symbols, believing everything is connected to the aliens and eventually acquiring a steamroller to combat them. Films like this, i.e. weird cult productions, existed before and after, even the same year - Surf II (1984) imagines a beach movie if actor Eddie Deezen wanted to turn punks into zombies with his own chemically mutated Buzz Cola - but we must appreciate the individual titles equally. This one, personally, was fun for all the time I was bemused by it - deeply weird, deeply silly, deeply cheesy, and because of its calibre, actually rewarding whilst also being ridiculous.

Abstract Spectrum: Kitsch/Psychotronic/Silly/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low