As I've mentioned before here on Shuker In MovieLand, I've long been a fan of the family-friendly sci fi and fantasy movies, sometimes mixed in with a little rom com too, that were released in particular profusion during the 1980s and early 1990s, and as a fan I am well aware that whereas some achieved huge box office success and even critical acclaim, there were others that deserved to do so but for all manner of different reasons did not. Think Hyper Sapien, The Boy Who Could Fly, and Kazaam, for instance, all of which I've reviewed here. Last night I watched another of these potentially huge but ultimately forgotten films – Rockula, directed by Luca Bercovici and completed in 1988, but not released until 1990 (more about which later).
As you may have guessed from its title, Rockula is an entertaining fusion of vampire movie and rock flick, and is enormously enjoyable. This is due in no small way to its overt iconoclastic attitude throughout – cheerfully and deliberately desecrating many of the fundamental tenets of traditional vampire portrayal in films. So, here we have Ralph LaVie (played with great likeability by Dean Cameron), who is 400 years of age but thanks to a curse is a perpetually youthful, handsome 22-year-old in appearance (wait, you call that a curse??). Unlike your typical vampire, however, Ralph does not bite people, has readily visible fangs but which never get commented upon, is shy yet friendly, likes garlic but hates the sight of blood, has no fixation with crucifixes, can turn into a bat only with great difficulty, is wholly able to go outdoors during the daytime simply by wearing sunglasses and sunblock cream, still lives with his ditzy, also youthful-looking vampire mother Phoebe (played with zany zest by American 'Mickey' singer Toni Basil), and as made abundantly clear by the slogan on the front cover of this movie's official English-language video, pictured above, has yet to gain any shall we say tangible experience with the fairer sex – much to the frustration of his reflection.
Yes indeed – in the biggest and most crucial, integral, and thoroughly hilarious taking of a wrecking ball to vampire lore and law, Ralph not only has a reflection when he looks at himself in a mirror or any other shiny surface, but it is a reflection that is fully sentient, much more extrovert, streetwise, and actively lusts after the opposite sex, much to the introverted Ralph's dismay. Nevertheless, his reflection is also Ralph's best friend, always ready to advise, encourage, and admonish him in times of trouble, confidence issues, and confusion, all of which feature regularly in Ralph's life – due once again to the afore-mentioned curse, which can be summarized as follows.
Four centuries previously, Ralph had fallen in love with a young woman named Mona but was devastated when she was killed by a love rival, a pirate with a diamante-studded peg leg who slew her with a hambone on Hallowe'en (happens all the time…). By a weird, accursed quirk of fate, moreover, every 22 years Ralph re-encounters Mona in reincarnated form (although she never has any memory of him or of her previous lives) but never succeeds in preventing her from being killed in precisely the same way on Hallowe'en, and so the cycle continues eternally. Not surprisingly, Ralph becomes increasingly disillusioned, and when the 15th 22-year date with certain failure to rescue Mona comes along in 1990, he tells his reflection that he is going to stay in his room this coming Hallowe'en and thereby avoid having to go through the travesty yet again.
His reflection, however, is far from impressed by Ralph's perceived cowardice and defeatist attitude and tells him so – though it has to be said that this stems as much from centuries of pent-up libidinous overdrive on the reflection's part as it does from kindly altruism! Anyway, Ralph goes for a walk to cool off after arguing with his reflection and becoming further depressed when chatting to some friends in a bar, only to be accidentally knocked over by a car. He's not hurt, but when he looks up to see who the driver is – surprise surprise, it's the latest reincarnation of his long-lost love, Mona! This time, she is a rock singer (played by Tawny Feré), but Ralph promptly flees, determined not to enter the fateful cycle this time. That night, however, following a disturbing dream of Mona's impending demise, he decides that his reflection is right, that he should make yet another effort to save her.
Ralph eventually tracks Mona down to a local rock club where she is singing, and joins the audience there to watch her. Also present is Mona's manager, Stanley, who just so happens to be her ex-boyfriend. Stanley is played in full-blast OTT mode by English singer Thomas Dolby, already known to me via his 1982 hit single 'She Blinded Me With Science', whose video featured the wonderfully eccentric arm-whirling UK scientist/TV personality Dr Magnus Pyke – but I digress. When not managing Mona, Stanley is also in the funeral business, and has created a cryogenic coffin-sized chamber – more about which later.
At the end of the show, Mona and Ralph meet up, Ralph lies that he is in a band, and Mona expresses a hope that she'll be able to see one of his band's gigs, at which point Stanley subtly gives the nod to the club's bouncers to throw Ralph out, which they lose no time in doing. Back home, after reminding himself that he actually is a decent musician, Ralph turns his falsehood into fact by convincing his friends, one of whom, guitarist Axman, is played by none other than legendary rock 'n' roller Bo Diddley, to come together and form a band, and so they do. When Ralph reveals this to his reflection, however, it is decidedly unimpressed and underwhelmed by the idea of a vampire fronting a rock band, and sneeringly suggests to Ralph that he should call it Rockula – only for Ralph to consider it an excellent name!
So, as the newly-formed, newly-named, vampire-inspired Rockula, Ralph and his buddies secure their first booking. And with Ralph actually hyping up his hidden-in-plain-sight nature as a real vampire in his front man performance, and singing their own vampire-themed material too, Rockula proves a great success with the audience, who include both a very enthusiastic Mona and a very unenthusiastic Stanley.
Seeking advice as to how best to deal with the evident threat that rocker Ralph now poses to his chances of getting back with Mona, Stanley visits local psychic and fortune-teller Madame Ben-Wa, a mysterious figure who conceals her face with a fan as she informs Stanley to his astonishment that Ralph is in fact a real, bona fide vampire. She also reveals how Ralph and Mona are linked to each other via the 400-year-old curse.
Meanwhile, Ralph's mother Phoebe invites Ralph and Mona for dinner, and regales them with extraordinary stories of how she has met various famous people from centuries ago, including US president George Washington. This greatly perplexes Mona and seriously angers Ralph, who decides that it is time to come clean with Mona, and reveal not only the full story regarding how she reincarnates every 22 years but also that he is a vampire who loves her yet seems doomed never to be able to save her from her deadly fate. Not surprisingly, Mona laughs at such bizarre claims, until Ralph shows some photos of her in previous reincarnations and, as his pièce de resistance, transforms right before her extremely startled eyes into a bat (albeit a very large, pot-bellied, decidedly dazed-looking specimen!). This sends Mona into panic-stricken, full-flight mode, fleeing the scene and a distraught Ralph.
Hallowe'en arrives, and to cut a long story short, after leaving his room at the rock club where Rockula is booked to perform again, Ralph finds himself trapped in the only too familiar scenario of trying to save Mona from the advances of a wild-eyed diamante peg-legged pirate clutching a hefty hambone – but this is no ordinary pirate. In fact, it is Stanley, who, following some additional advice from Madame Ben-Wa, plans to place Mona in his cryogenic chamber where she will be preserved forever and be owned by him always. In the ensuing melée, Madame Ben-Wa is unmasked as none other than Phoebe, who has sided with Stanley so as to ensure that Ralph stays with her rather than finally growing up and leaving her in order to be with Mona in a new, adult-at-last life. However, Phoebe now regrets her selfish attitude and begs Ralph to forgive her, which of course he does. She is, after all, his Mom, and he does still love her.
But does villainous pirate-garbed Stanley succeed in his dastardly plan to steal Mona away from our toothy hero Ralph for all time? Or does Ralph successfully thwart Stanley's evil plan, then begin his long-hoped-for new life with Mona by his side, the age-old curse finally lifted from both of them? Let's just say that Rockula is a typical 1980s feel-good fantasy/rom com movie, so what do you think??
For me, the best scene of all in this fun-filled movie comes right at the end when Ralph's reflection, wondering what is happening but tired of waiting for Ralph to return to his room at the rock club, finally loses its patience and smashes through a tall looking glass there, exiting from its mirror world into the real one, but emerging as an Elvis Presley lookalike resplendent in a rhinestone-decorated white catsuit and accompanied by a bevy of mirror-world rock chicks. As Ralph has left the building (see what I did there??), his reflection makes its way onto the stage as Rockula's new front man, the King, and vibrantly performs an Elvis-inspired version of one of their songs as the movie's end credits roll. Awesome!
Incidentally, if I have one (exceedingly minor) criticism of Rockula, it is that the original songs penned for it, and sung variously in it by Mona and by Ralph's band Rockula, are in my view less than memorable. Certainly, they do not appear to have ever become hits in the real world (or even troubled the lower reaches of any music charts) in the manner of so many other songs that made their public debuts in movies.
Never mind, Rockula is still one of the best movies from this 1980s fantasy/rom-com genre that I have ever seen – I absolutely loved it! Not only that, it instantly ties with The Lost Boys as my all-time favourite vampire movie. Consequently, I was greatly saddened to discover that both of the companies responsible for its production and release, New World Pictures and Cannon Films, were filing for bankruptcy at the time of Rockula's completion in 1988. As a result, it was not released until 1990, and even then only to a small number of cinemas, after which it went straight to video and was almost entirely forgotten thereafter – a tragic fate for a movie that had so much going for it and which, had circumstances been different, would assuredly have been a major success. How ironic that a film whose plot was based upon a curse found itself cursed in reality too.
If you'd like to check out Rockula, click here to watch its fun official trailer. Alternatively, click here to view (at least at this current time of writing) an upload of the entire movie for free on YouTube; or if you're a Spanish speaker, click here to view (ditto) a visually superior upload of the entire movie for free dubbed into Spanish.
Speaking of which: nowadays the official video of Rockula is very difficult to find, whereas its DVD is exorbitantly expensive, so as yet I don't have either (though I fully intend to obtain one or the other when one becomes available or affordable). Consequently, the only option readily open to me if I wanted to watch this movie has been to watch it on YouTube, so that what I did last night. The problem with this, however, as I knew straight away (having watched a small section of it beforehand), was that the visual quality of the English-language version available there was very inferior to that of the Spanish-dubbed version, but unfortunately I don't speak Spanish. Then I had an idea, which worked perfectly.
What I did was open YouTube in two separate windows, with the English-language version of Rockula in one of them and the Spanish-dubbed version in the other. Then I played the two versions simultaneously and in synchrony, but with the better-quality Spanish-dubbed version in full-screen picture format while muting its audio, and with the visually inferior English-language version in minimized-screen picture format but with its audio playing. It took a few attempts to get the Spanish version's video and the English version's audio perfectly synchronised, but once I did it worked beautifully.
To quote Bugs Bunny: "Every little problem has an answer all its own". Or as a certain family of meerkats would rather more succinctly say: "Simples!"
UPDATE: A few days ago, after waiting for what has seemed like a very long time (principally because that's exactly what it has been!) for one to appear anywhere online, and following up a greatly-welcomed alert from a fellow ex-rental big box video devotee, I not only found but also won the auction for an extremely good quality example of the official UK ex-rental big box videocassette of Rockula as released by Cannon Video. It arrived today (13 February 2021), so I lost no time in playing it in order to determine if the videocassette itself was in as good a state as its case and cover sleeve, and I'm delighted to say that it was! Consequently, I no longer need to juggle about trying to synch two different YouTube versions in order to obtain a watchable English-language one - instead, I can now directly rock with Rockula straight away, whenever I choose. Awesome!
To view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE!
No comments:
Post a Comment