Voyage of the Rock Aliens

It started innocently enough, with a Russian website that streams A-MAZING '80s videos (to give credit where credit is due, I didn't find it on my own, but via the entertaining RetroCrush) ... and Pia Zadora.

The Russian site didn't work for me for some reason, but I shot the URL over to Billy, who rubbed it in regaled me with all the fun he was having watching assorted Italian pop and '80s gems.

And then he found ...

the video for "When The Rain Begins To Fall." Billy, being the thorough sort, researched this bizarre duet and discovered that it was featured somehow in a movie called Voyage of the Rock Aliens.

Of course we had to watch it. Badly.

So badly, I bought it off Half.com.
So what if I also bought the Jermaine Jackson video collection, which not only contains that video but "Dynamite" as well (Jermaine in a women's prison movie-style video? Jooooy)?

Billy and I popped the movie in on several occasions, but always at the most inopportune time; namely, when we were so drunk the ADD had kicked in hard and we couldn't watch anything for long. Besides, the movie opens with the video. And what a video! Post-apocalyptic, yet '80s-chic ensems. Headbands. Face paint and BIM-style bindis. Goons on Vespas. Redolent of KISS' video for "All Hell's Breakin' Loose" (one of their best.) So for the longest time, we figured the movie couldn't get any better. We were so very, very wrong.

I won't go on about how I dote on Pia, as I hope to devote a post to her ouevre in the near future (my odd fascination with her is on a par with mine for the previously discussed Ms. Doherty and another eventual visitor to this blog, if I have anything to say about it: Steven Seagal.) If a picture describe a thousand words, you can sum up her "acting" "career" thusly: If you're shuddering, just you wait for Butterfly. Or The Lonely Lady.

It'll be hard to describe Voyage of the Rock Aliens because it makes almost no sense. I don't know what the budget was, but it doesn't show up onscreen so I'm guessing it all went up the creators' noses.

To (try to) sum up:
Pia is Dee Dee, a perky teen (Butterfly was shot in 1982; The Lonely Lady, 1983. In both movies, she challenges our suspension of disbelief as a "teen." Voyage was shot in 1988*) to make it big as a singer in a dullsville town. The main challenge to her career aspirations is her meany-pants boyfriend, Frankie (Craig Sheffer.) He sort of plays in and sort of manages this (absolutely C-grade Stray Cats-style) band and, for reasons known only to the screenwriters who desperately needed to manufacture some conflict, refuses to let Dee Dee sing with them.
*[Although IMDB uses 1988 as the release date, I've also seen dates as early as 1987 and even 1984 attributed to this film. Judging by Craig Sheffer's appearance, I'm leaning towards the latter--he looks a bit more nubile and slender than he did in 1987's Some Kind of Wonderful. I imagine this one sat on the shelf for a while. --Billy]

What's a girl to do? Take out her frustrations with a beach party dance number, of course! Granted, it's on the shore of the town's toxic lake, but you get the idea.

At this point, Billy and I looked at each other, mouths agoggle.
"What is this choreography?" Billy moaned.
"I'll bet ... Pia's responsible!" I whispered.

[Turns out the dubious honor goes to "Dennon and Sayhber Rawles" whose previous credit was the Travolta turkey Staying Alive and actually worked again in Bugsy and a film that will soon be treated in this blog--Jailbird Rock. --Billy]

There's a lot of the "Pony" ... a lot of Jazz Hands ... not to mention the giant fuschia-and-blue squid tentacle (no, really) that pops out of the lake and trips up at least one of the dancers ... I'm sorry, I can't go on.

So there are "rock" aliens - who are really more like DEVO aliens, but hey, semantics - whose mission - besides singing bad DEVO ripoff "songs" - is to find one intelligent being on Earth. Or something. Same thing all movie aliens do, right?
This, incidentally, is the only time the movie vaguely even nods to the Jermaine-Pia video, as the aliens also sport BIM-bindis.

They beam down to Earth in a phone booth, steal clothes so as to blend in (hijinks! especially since by the next scene they're in their stylin' pink-and-black coveralls again) and, of course, meet Pia, Frankie, and all the other peripheral characters. At a '50s malt shop.

Look, the main alien falls for Pia, despite having had his emotions "removed" and explodes. In the malt shop.
Ruth Gordon is the town's inefficient sheriff who bumbles about after the aliens, eventually hijacking a tank.
Michael Berryman is an escaped mental patient and serial chainsaw murderer who terrorizes the town (between musical numbers, of course) until Pia's wacky friend (Alison LaPlaca), who happens to be an excellent mechanic - for a girl - wins him over by fixing his chainsaw when it breaks mid-attack.
After Pia breaks up with Frankie, in part because she's intrigued by this snappy, if stilted, dresser and in part because Frankie and his band / gang keep beating people up (though, to his credit, Frankie is one of those awesome gang leaders who makes everyone else do the dirty work) - not, you'll note, because he won't let her sing in the band - Frankie gets an extended solo bemoaning his broken heart, which also cannot be tamed.
Remember that picture, thousand words analogy?

His inner beast, or whatever cannot-be-tamed bits of him ... is a mountain lion. Granted, mountain lions are fierce and are capable of mauling and killing.
But a mountain lion? They couldn't scare up a real lion? What about good old-fashioned back-projection of a cat painted up to look like a leopard or something? ANYTHING!

Oh that's right. Blow = budget blown.

[Hey, Gidg, don't forget how noticeable the mountain lion's paunch was. I think we estimated him at about 55-60 in human years. Kind of like the Ernest Borgnine of mountain lions. --Billy]

Long story short (too late), though Dee Dee swoons at the idea of joining the rock aliens', um, band (oh, and lest I forget the "cotillion" with a battle of the bands between Frankie's and the aliens' bands), she cannot live on a far-away planet where emotions are forbidden.

Yada yada yada, she takes Frankie back, the giant squid attacks and is bested ... by Michael Berryman and his chainsaw and, finally, her erstwhile alien lover decides to brighten her life before leaving her forever (sniff - those were my barely-repressed tears, not the producers) by cleaning up the lake, sending Ruth Gordon parasailing (whaa?) and turning Frankie's band / gang into Boy Scouts - literally, uniforms and all.

The end. Whew.

Billy will be adding to this. It's a doozy.

Fast forward rating: 0%, if only because you'll want to see what the hell else the producers throw into the mix
Drinks: Skip the drinking and make like Scarface

Incidentally, no, Jermaine is not in the movie. At all. In fact, Craig and Pia "sing" (I believe Craig's vocals were supplied by the hardest-working voice in showbiz) the duet at the end of the movie.

Billy's take:

I think you covered it pretty well, Gidg. Some other highlights:

--Pia's numerous costume changes in the first half, which peter out as the budget was depleted.

--Craig Sheffer's ubiquitous abs (yummy!)

--The dance number in the ladies' room that starts with close-ups of the women's feet tapping beneath the doors of the stalls complete with various types of panties around their ankles (that's realism, folks!)

--The fat chick jogging and jiggling at the beach in the first dance number. She is wearing a necklace of "emergency" candy bars around her neck. What wit!

--Ruth Gordon, phoning it in for a paycheck. Her scenes are mostly alone or with the supporting cast. They probably only got her for a couple of days.