I was in my teens in the 1980's and love dumb b-movies.
Seemingly, Voyage Of The Rock Aliens should be right in my wheelhouse - in some ways it was - but it was a tough one to get through and even tougher to rank.
Had never even heard of this flick until the 2000's, which indicates how under-the-radar this thing was back in 1984. Came and went virtually without a trace and took a couple of decades before a very small but vocal cult of viewers began to post online about this slab of cheese that had then been seemingly lost to the ages.
Now, I certainly HAD heard of Pia Zadora. She had made a splash in 1982 largely for appearing nude in the movie Butterfly, portraying a Lolita-type nymphette. Butterfly had the imprimatur of being a 'stylish' erotic movie, and with Zadora as the sex object she had to do little more than disrobe. Fortunately, in 1977 Zadora had married an Israeli multimillionaire thirty years her senior. Fortunate in that apparently her sugar daddy husband had pockets deep enough to keep ponying up money to self-finance the early 1980s glut of various Zadora projects. After Butterfly caused a modest stir, Zadora was determined to prove to the world that she was the premiere trifecta in terms of talent, being able to actually act, sing and dance. The truth was that Zadora was a terrible actress and her abilities in both the singing and dancing fields were modest at best. However, there were no shortage of various production companies in the early 1980s willing to take her husband's money and give it a go at making her a star. Zadora followed up Butterfly with an attempt at the gritty 1983 drama The Lonely Lady, which was a laughable neutron bomb in every sense of the word. Within two years of bursting on the scene, Zadora was an industry joke (and not an industry insider joke, either, but a very publicly mocked case of a self-financed, talentless hack), which leads us to Voyage Of The Rock Aliens.
Yet another Zadora-centric flick (financed this time only in part by her husband), this movie is just...all over the place. Supposedly conceived as a spoof of such disparate genres as 1960's Beach Party movies, 1950's Sock Hop Rock and Roll films, early 1980's slasher flicks and low-budget Sci Fi pictures, Voyage Of The Rock Aliens is a mess. Doubtless, the director having dropped out of the thing while it was in production didn't help. However, it is all a case of too much. Too many genres slammed together. Too many jokes which are wincingly unfunny. Too many largely unknown cast members. Too many subplots. Too many songs, none of which are either particularly good or particularly memorable. I read a great review here where the reviewer pointed out that this movie was worse than either Xanadu or Grease 2, and I'd have to agree: at least with Xanadu one had Olivia Newton-John, Gene Kelly, some competency in terms of the dance choreography and a couple good tunes and at least with Grease 2 one had some memorably bad musical numbers and the charm of a young Michelle Pfeiffer. Voyage Of The Rock Aliens had seemingly upwards of 20 different musical numbers (none of which I could recall even ten seconds after hearing them), scene after scene of cast members who were not only unable to dance well but couldn't even dance poorly in synch with one another and for star power outside of Zadora we had the old lady who played Clint Eastwood's crusty old mother in those Every Which Way But Loose/Any Which Way You Can movies, minus the participatory charm of Clyde the Orangutan. Although we DID get to see the debut role of Craig Sheffer, who spends an ample amount of time showing off his chiseled physique and sucked-in cheekbones in an endless series of pouting male bimbo poses, so there's that, I suppose.
All of which just SCREAMS mid-Eighties in ALL the worst ways, with annoying neon-bright colors in both the wardrobe and the lighting, held together by appearances with enough aerosol hairspray to have doubtless caused significant degrees of Ozone layer erosion. Apparently, Zadora's husband was becoming less willing at this point to fully self-finance his wife's career, since the movie also looks cheaply made a la Roger Corman (sadly, minus the low-grade charm of a Corman movie). More than a few of the actors appear to have been...er, 'chemically enhanced' re: the manic nature of their performances (as early 80's icon Rick James once said: "Cocaine is a hell of a drug!").
The thing of it all is, I didn't elicit the sense that the cast were phoning it in via their performances being wryly yet firmly tongue in cheek, or where any of them were particularly self-aware of how awful the film was on either a comedic or musical level. Everybody really seemed to be sincerely trying, which is always a shared quality all the best 'so bad they're good' b-movies have. I couldn't go higher than 7 stars in spite of all this because even with my expectations accordingly lowered, Voyage Of The Rock Aliens was an endurance test to get through. I'd say the high points for me were the opening number with Zadora and Jermaine Jackson duetting (Jermaine wisely vanishes for the remainder of the movie), a number Zadora sings which takes place in a public toilet and a number featuring Sheffer posing in the desert with...a bobcat(?): admittedly, those three segments were jaw-droppingly bad to the point where I couldn't even laugh so much as stare at the screen in dumbfounded awe. Outside of those three segments, though, the rest of it was a mishmash of unfunny jokes, mundane tunes and headache-inducing visuals. Pia didn't even do us the service of disrobing for this particular turkey.
I would say bad movie enthusiasts may well owe it to themselves to see this once. Although it is said that all things are subjected to the tastes of the individual consumer and it therefore wouldn't be for me to say Voyage Of The Rock Aliens shouldn't be someone's fave cult movie to be viewed over and over again, once was more than enough for me.
Seemingly, Voyage Of The Rock Aliens should be right in my wheelhouse - in some ways it was - but it was a tough one to get through and even tougher to rank.
Had never even heard of this flick until the 2000's, which indicates how under-the-radar this thing was back in 1984. Came and went virtually without a trace and took a couple of decades before a very small but vocal cult of viewers began to post online about this slab of cheese that had then been seemingly lost to the ages.
Now, I certainly HAD heard of Pia Zadora. She had made a splash in 1982 largely for appearing nude in the movie Butterfly, portraying a Lolita-type nymphette. Butterfly had the imprimatur of being a 'stylish' erotic movie, and with Zadora as the sex object she had to do little more than disrobe. Fortunately, in 1977 Zadora had married an Israeli multimillionaire thirty years her senior. Fortunate in that apparently her sugar daddy husband had pockets deep enough to keep ponying up money to self-finance the early 1980s glut of various Zadora projects. After Butterfly caused a modest stir, Zadora was determined to prove to the world that she was the premiere trifecta in terms of talent, being able to actually act, sing and dance. The truth was that Zadora was a terrible actress and her abilities in both the singing and dancing fields were modest at best. However, there were no shortage of various production companies in the early 1980s willing to take her husband's money and give it a go at making her a star. Zadora followed up Butterfly with an attempt at the gritty 1983 drama The Lonely Lady, which was a laughable neutron bomb in every sense of the word. Within two years of bursting on the scene, Zadora was an industry joke (and not an industry insider joke, either, but a very publicly mocked case of a self-financed, talentless hack), which leads us to Voyage Of The Rock Aliens.
Yet another Zadora-centric flick (financed this time only in part by her husband), this movie is just...all over the place. Supposedly conceived as a spoof of such disparate genres as 1960's Beach Party movies, 1950's Sock Hop Rock and Roll films, early 1980's slasher flicks and low-budget Sci Fi pictures, Voyage Of The Rock Aliens is a mess. Doubtless, the director having dropped out of the thing while it was in production didn't help. However, it is all a case of too much. Too many genres slammed together. Too many jokes which are wincingly unfunny. Too many largely unknown cast members. Too many subplots. Too many songs, none of which are either particularly good or particularly memorable. I read a great review here where the reviewer pointed out that this movie was worse than either Xanadu or Grease 2, and I'd have to agree: at least with Xanadu one had Olivia Newton-John, Gene Kelly, some competency in terms of the dance choreography and a couple good tunes and at least with Grease 2 one had some memorably bad musical numbers and the charm of a young Michelle Pfeiffer. Voyage Of The Rock Aliens had seemingly upwards of 20 different musical numbers (none of which I could recall even ten seconds after hearing them), scene after scene of cast members who were not only unable to dance well but couldn't even dance poorly in synch with one another and for star power outside of Zadora we had the old lady who played Clint Eastwood's crusty old mother in those Every Which Way But Loose/Any Which Way You Can movies, minus the participatory charm of Clyde the Orangutan. Although we DID get to see the debut role of Craig Sheffer, who spends an ample amount of time showing off his chiseled physique and sucked-in cheekbones in an endless series of pouting male bimbo poses, so there's that, I suppose.
All of which just SCREAMS mid-Eighties in ALL the worst ways, with annoying neon-bright colors in both the wardrobe and the lighting, held together by appearances with enough aerosol hairspray to have doubtless caused significant degrees of Ozone layer erosion. Apparently, Zadora's husband was becoming less willing at this point to fully self-finance his wife's career, since the movie also looks cheaply made a la Roger Corman (sadly, minus the low-grade charm of a Corman movie). More than a few of the actors appear to have been...er, 'chemically enhanced' re: the manic nature of their performances (as early 80's icon Rick James once said: "Cocaine is a hell of a drug!").
The thing of it all is, I didn't elicit the sense that the cast were phoning it in via their performances being wryly yet firmly tongue in cheek, or where any of them were particularly self-aware of how awful the film was on either a comedic or musical level. Everybody really seemed to be sincerely trying, which is always a shared quality all the best 'so bad they're good' b-movies have. I couldn't go higher than 7 stars in spite of all this because even with my expectations accordingly lowered, Voyage Of The Rock Aliens was an endurance test to get through. I'd say the high points for me were the opening number with Zadora and Jermaine Jackson duetting (Jermaine wisely vanishes for the remainder of the movie), a number Zadora sings which takes place in a public toilet and a number featuring Sheffer posing in the desert with...a bobcat(?): admittedly, those three segments were jaw-droppingly bad to the point where I couldn't even laugh so much as stare at the screen in dumbfounded awe. Outside of those three segments, though, the rest of it was a mishmash of unfunny jokes, mundane tunes and headache-inducing visuals. Pia didn't even do us the service of disrobing for this particular turkey.
I would say bad movie enthusiasts may well owe it to themselves to see this once. Although it is said that all things are subjected to the tastes of the individual consumer and it therefore wouldn't be for me to say Voyage Of The Rock Aliens shouldn't be someone's fave cult movie to be viewed over and over again, once was more than enough for me.