This movie seems like it’s going to be a slasher, yet much like Eaten Alive, it exudes a level of real fear, sleaze and menace that few films reach. Yet it has a heart and joy to it that makes me love it. It’s also one of Becca’s favorite childhood films!

We open on Amy (Elizabeth Berridge, Amadeus) as she showers, but the killer isn’t a killer. It’s her little brother Joey, which is troubling on a few levels. He’s a horror film fan who loves practical jokes. And he goes along with Amy and her boyfriend Buzz, Liz and Richie to a traveling carnival.

They don’t follow any of the rules as they go to the event. Of course, they smoke weed. And then look at naked women. And heckle Madame Zena (played by Sylvia Miles, who was the original Sally on The Dick Van Dyke Show and earned Oscar nominations for Midnight Cowboy and Farewell, My Lovely before becoming close pals with Paul Morrissey and Warhol). And then sneak in and spend all night inside the Funhouse.

They decide to ride into the funhouse when they watch a man in a Frankenstein mask have sex with Zena. He comes too fast and then tries to get out of paying, at which point Zena makes fun of him. He goes crazy and murders her as the teens are trapped. And Richie is dumb enough to steal money from the carnival after all of that!

It turns out that the man in the mask is really Gunther, the son of the owner Conrad Straker. He’s hideously deformed, with long fangs and white hair. He’s played by The monster was played by Wayne Doba, a professional tap dancer and former mime who was also the otherworldly Octavio the Clown in Scarface.

His father riles him up and he kills Richie and goes after the rest of the kids. Liz is killed with an industrial fan. Buzz kills Conrad, but Gunther offs him. Finally, Amy is able to kill the monster with two gears. She barely escapes with her life as the robotic fat lady laughs at her. After all, it ain’t over until the fat lady sings.

There’s a book version of the film by Owen West (Dean Koontz) which adds plenty of back story. As the film was delayed in post-production, it came out a long time before the movie.

Interestingly enough, Hooper would Tobe Hooper reuse several props when he directed the music video for Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself.”

My favorite scene here is the reveal of Gunther. And I almost forgot that William Finley from The Phantom of the Paradise shows up as a magician! This is a near-forgotten piece of horror film that is worth you finding and watching for yourself. You can grab a copy from Scream Factory or the Arrow UK import at Diabolik DVD.

Between Hollywood Shuffle and his HBO specials, Robert Townsend was a major force in comedy in the 1980’s and 90’s. This early attempt at showing what an African-American superhero would be like is sorely overlooked.

Jefferson Reed (Townsend, who also directed, produced and wrote the film) is a high school teacher who dreams of playing jazz, stuck in a neighborhood ruled by the Golden Lords gang and drug lord Anthony Byers (Frank Gorshin, the Ridder from the 60’s Batman TV show). After he stops them from raping a girl, the gang, led by Simon Caine, chases him into a dumpster. That dumpster is then hit by a meteor. Days later, he awakes in a hospital where his major injuries have already healed.

The meteor also gives him powers, like x-ray vision, flight, improved strength and hearing, super speed, invulnerability, telekinesis, dog communication and the power to absorb the knowledge of books. His power set totally seems like someone rolled him up at random in the old Marvel Super-Heroes TSR role-playing game.

With the help of his parents (Benson‘s Robert Guillaume and The Jeffersons’ Marla Gibbs) and neighbor (James Earl Jones in a hilarious, wigtastic performance), Meteor Man stops 11 robberies, destroys 15 crack houses and brings the Crips (Cypress Hill!) and the Bloods (Naughty by Nature!) together. He even plants a garden in the middle of the food desert that his neighborhood has become.

The Golden Lords learn who Meteor Man is, as well as the fact that his powers are fading. The community even wants him to leave to keep the gang from attacking them, but he takes the fight to the gang, despite the fact that he has no powers. He’s saved by Marvin (Bill Cosby), a homeless man who has also found part of the meteor.

Meteor Man finally defeats the gang, but not before his dog is fatally hurt. Marvin comes and uses the last of his powers to save the dog. Then, a gang of hitmen all attack the community — led by Luthor Vandross, no less — before Cypress Hill and Naughty by Nature come back to save everyone. Sometimes guns really do solve everything!

The film is packed with stars, like Eddie Griffith as one of our hero’s friends; Sinbad; Another Bad Creation as the Junior Lords; Big Daddy Kane; Don Cheadle; Tiny Lister (Zeus from No Holds Barred and Deebo from Friday); Biz Markie and Wallace Shawn (The Princess Bride).

Meteor Man even got a six-issue series from Marvel where he’d meet Spider-Man and Night Thrasher (who at the time was one of Marvel’s most prominent African-American heroes). The comic used the original ending of the film, where Jeff discovers a larger part of the meteor in Arizona, as a plot point.

I wouldn’t say this is a great film, but it’s entertaining and the runtime flies by. Numerous re-writes led to a script filled with plotholes and subplots that go nowhere, like Jeff being in love with his ex-girlfriend Stacy, as well as his numerous phobias. But don’t let that stop you from enjoying this slice of pop culture from the early part of the 90’s.

If a movie is a great film, does it matter who made it? I come from advertising, where it’s hard at best to figure our credit and uncouth to loudly demand it. So the controversy about this film — whether Spielberg or Hooper directed it — doesn’t really matter to me Because the important thing is that it’s a great movie.

Steven and Diane Freeling (Craig T. Nelson from TV’s Coach and the voice of Mr. Incredible from The Incredibles and JoBeth Williams, Stir Crazy) are living the American dream. After all, Steve is a successful real estate developer. They have three great kids. And they’ve recently moved into a planned community called Cuesta Verde. Sure, the newer houses in the plan look much better. And you can’t even watch a football game without losing what channel you’re on because the houses are so close together. But it’s the American Dream, right?

That TV is the fixation of America in this movie, starting with the National Anthem and continuing with the people inside the TV that fascinate their youngest daughter, Carol Anne (who would sadly die at the age of 12 of cardiac arrest and septic shock caused by a misdiagnosed intestinal stenosis). The connection between the hand that emerges from the TV and the young girl is so powerful that it shakes the entire town before she announces the film’s best-known line, “They’re here.”

All hell breaks slowly loose over the following day. A glass of milk breaks out of nowhere, drenching daughter Dana (Dominique Dunne, daughter of writer Dominick and brother of Griffin, she would be killed by her stalker ex-boyfriend John Thomas Sweeney at the age of 22). The son, Robbie (Oliver Robins, Airplane 2), has his silverware twist and turn after he uses it. Furniture slides and rearranges at will, even in front of more than one person.

Here’s the beauty of this film. These teases start slow and you expect the Val Lewton jump scare model, where the pressure will be let off after a minor scare. But once a tree emerges from the backyard to crash through the window and pull Robbie outside, the movie jumps onto a rollercoaster track. While saving their son, Carol Anne disappears into the closet and can only be heard through the TV set.

They turn to parapsychologists Dr. Lesh (Beatrice Straight, Chiller), Ryan (Richard Lawson, Scream Blacula Scream, Sugar Hill) and Marty, who discover that there is more than one ghost. That info is confirmed when Steven finds out from his boss Lewis Teague (James Carren, The Return of the Living Dead, Invaders from Mars) that Cuesta Verde was built over an Indian cemetery.

Dana and Robbie are sent away and Tangina Barrons (Zelda Rubinstein, Teen Witch, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon), a spirit medium, is called in for help. She explains how they have to get Carol Anne back from spirits that are not at rest. There’s also another ghost, the Beast (which uses the same sound effect as the MGM lion roar), who has their daughter restrained. Diane enters a portal to the beyond to bring her daughter back and they both emerge covered in ectoplasm as the house is said to be clean.

Steven believes that it’s anything but, so he gets the family ready to move. On their last night there, he goes to quit his job while Dana goes on one last date before leaving town. The Beast attacks, turning Robbie clown doll into a demon and pushing Diane all over the walls of her room before throwing her into the backyard hole that is due to be a swimming pool. The bodies of the dead begin to explode from the ground, some in coffins, some just covered with filth and rot. Steven screams into his boss’s face that he may have moved the cemetery’s headstones, but the bodies were left behind. Finally, the house collapses within itself as the family drives away. As they stay in a Holiday Inn, unsure of their future, the TV is pushed outside.

Alright. Let’s get into that discussion of who really directed this film. Going the whole way back to a 1982 Fangoria article, there were rumors that the film wasn’t really Hooper’s. And Spielberg didn’t help Tobe’s case when he said, “Tobe isn’t a take-charge sort of guy. If a question was asked and an answer wasn’t immediately forthcoming, I’d jump in and say what we could do. Tobe would nod agreement, and that became the process of collaboration. I did not want to direct the movie-I had to do E.T. five weeks after principal photography on Poltergeist. My enthusiasm for wanting to make Poltergeist would have been difficult for any director I would have hired. It derived from my imagination and my experiences, and it came out of my typewriter (after re-writing the Grais/Victor draft). I felt a proprietary interest in this project that was stronger than if I was just an executive producer. I thought I’d be able to turn Poltergeist over to a director and walk away. I was wrong. If I write it myself, I’ll direct it myself. I won’t put someone else through what I put Tobe through, and I’ll be more honest in my contributions to a film.”

The Directors Guild of America investigated the film, checking to see if Hooper’s official credit was hurt by Spielberg’s comments, which seemed to claim some level of ownership.” Frank Marshall, the co-producer, told the Los Angeles Times that Spielberg was the creative force of the film and designed every storyboard. Plus he was on the set for all but three days.

Finally, an open letter from Spielberg to Hooper was sent to The Hollywood Reporter, which stated, “Regrettably, some of the press has misunderstood the rather unique, creative relationship which you and I shared throughout the making of Poltergeist. I enjoyed your openness in allowing me… a wide berth for creative involvement, just as I know you were happy with the freedom you had to direct Poltergeist so wonderfully. Through the screenplay you accepted a vision of this very intense movie from the start, and as the director, you delivered the goods. You performed responsibly and professionally throughout, and I wish you great success on your next project.” He also sent a letter to Time where he stated, “While I was creatively involved in the entire production, Tobe Hooper alone was the director.”

Over the years, this controversy has gone back and forth. Zelda Rubinstein claimed that Spielberg directed every day that she was on set, with Tobe working almost as a DP who would set up the shots.  Assistant cinematographer John R. Leonetti (who would go on to direct Annabelle) reported that due to an upcoming strike, he was trying to get every movie he wanted to film done (he was also working on E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial at the same time). Hooper was happy to be there, had some input but it was basically not his film.

Jo Beth Williams stated that “Steven was there every day. He had very clear and strong ideas about what he wanted done and how he wanted it done. Even though Tobe was there and participating, you felt Steven had the final say on everything. Sometimes Steven would tell us one thing and Tobe another. But they soon realized that was doing us more harm than good, so they stopped. Later on, whatever discussions Tobe and Steven had, they held in private and then came to us with their decisions.”

At the time of filming, Hooper said, “I don’t understand why any of these questions have to be raised. I always saw this film as a collaborative situation between my producer, my writer, and myself. Two of those people were Steven Spielberg, but I directed the film and I did fully half of the storyboards. I’m quite proud of what I did. I can’t understand why I’m being slighted. I love the changes that were made from my cut. I worked for a very good producer who is also a great showman. I felt that was a plus, because Steven and I think in terms of the same visual style.”

He’d grow tired of the controversy in later years, claiming that “the genesis of it came from an article in The L.A. Times: When we were shooting the practical location on the house, the first two weeks of filming were exterior, so I had second-unit shots that had to be picked up in the front of the house. I was in the back of the house shooting Robbie [actor Oliver Robins] and the tree, looking down at the burial of the little tweety bird, so Steven was picking those shots up for me. The L.A. Times arrived on the set and printed something like, “We don’t know who’s directing the picture.” The moment they got there, Steven was shooting the shot of the little race cars, and from there the damn thing blossomed on its own and started becoming its own legend.”

Composer Jerry Goldsmith and casting agent Mike Fenton claimed that they worked directly with Spiegberg as if he were the director.

However, others were more upset than Hooper let on. Craig T. Nelson said, “Tobe gave me a lot of direction. It’s not fair to eliminate what Tobe did. He gave me a tremendous amount of support because he’s a warm, sensitive, caring human being. Tobe was simply pushed out of the picture after turning in his cut.”

You can read even more in-depth analysis in the three articles I referred to for this article, “Who REALLY directed Poltergeist?” at the Poltergeist Fan Site.

The film did get an R rating, which was eventually changed to PG. It would have definitely got an R if the original draft was filmed, where Carol Ann was going to get killed in the first act and subsequently haunt the house in the second. As it stands now, only one death occurs in the film: the bird who gets buried in the beginning.

Poltergeist is really a must see horror film. It sets up so much so effectively and does a great job of paying off each scare. It’d be followed by two sequels and a TV series, which we’ll definitely be getting to.

After Tim Burton’s Batman, producers scrambled to get a comic book movie — any comic book movie — up on the screen. So why not the hero who directly inspired the Caped Crusader (Batman’s first appearance in Detective Comics #27 is a tale that’s directly influenced by The Shadow story “Partners of Peril”)?

The trouble is that The Shadow hadn’t really appeared in anything pop culture related since 1958’s The Invisible Avenger, two episodes of an unaired TV series that were edited together as a movie (it was also re-released with additional footage in 1962 as Bourbon Street Shadows). And explaining to audiences why a character was popular 60 years ago isn’t always easy.

In Tibet, Lamont Cranston (Alex Baldwin, Glengarry Glen Ross) has become the opium dealer known as Yin-Ko. But Tulku, a mystic in the body of a young boy, takes him away from his dissolute life and uses the Phurba, a talking dagger, to begin redeeming the man. For seven years, Cranston learns the physical and mental skills that he’ll need to stop evil — including the power to cloud men’s minds.

It’s a rough conceit to start your film with your hero killing his own men and basically being the villain of the story. It’s why in so many stories of The Shadow, they start with the good side first before revealing his origin.

In New York City, Cranston is a wealthy playboy who is really The Shadow, a vigilante who has created a network of agents to help him battle the forces of evil. He meets Margo Lane (Penelope Ann Miller, Adventures in Babysitting), a woman who gets through his defenses, possibly because she’s telepathic.

Shiwan Khan (John Lone, Rush Hour 2) is Tulku’s fallen student who claims to have murdered the holy man. His powers are beyond The Shadow’s and he claims to be the descendant of Genghis Khan. He’s amassed a large army and has kidnapped Margo’s father Reinhardt (Ian McKellen, Lord of the Rings) to create an atomic bomb for him.

Khan hypnotizes Margo into killing The Shadow, but he stops her as Cranston. She realizes they are one and the same, but there’s no time to reflect. The Shadow has to rescue her father from Khan’s men, who now include Reinhardt’s treacherous assistant Farley (Tim Curry, Legend), who The Shadow hypnotizes into jumping off a balcony to his death.

Inside the Hotel Monolith, Khan and The Shadow have a final battle involving the Phurba, which demands a peaceful mind. Overcoming his past, The Shadow masters the weapon, frees Reinhardt from his brainwashing and defeats Khan inside a hall of mirrors by telekinetically using a shard of a mirror to give him a lobotomy.

Oh yeah — Jonathan Winters shows up as Barth and Peter Boyle plays Moe Shrevnitz, one of our heroes many lieutenants.

Sam Raimi originally wanted to adapt and direct this film, but was supposedly denied the rights to it. You can see echoes of the character in his 1990’s film Darkman.

Russell Mulcahy ended up directing the film. He came from the world of music videos, where his directorial efforts for Duran Duran helped create the image for the band. His first work that got noticed in the U.S. was the Australian horror film Razorback, followed by his work in the first Highlander (we shouldn’t discuss Highlander 2: The Quickening). Today, he’s known for the MTV series Teen Wolf.

The film does a good job getting plenty of references in to past tales of The Shadow, but again, it’s a rough character to sell to modern audiences without explaining why he’s so awesome before you show where he came from.

This was planned to be a franchise, with plenty of tie-ins like an entire line of action figures from Kenner.

The toys are typical of the mid 1990’s Kenner design aesthetic, with limited poseability and action features. They fit in well with the Super Powers and Swamp Thing lines that came out several years before.

The original DVD of the film was out of print for some time (indeed, it goes for around $12 in most used stores, a lofty price) but was re-released on blu-ray in 2013. It’s worth looking for, especially if you’re someone like me that stayed awake late at night to listen to the 1970’s re-airings on the syndicated program Golden Age of Radio.

I often write about movies in the middle of the night, when the rest of the world is asleep. Sometimes, a movie will seem like a dream instead of something real. Imagine a musical gangster movie starring all child actors with music by Paul Williams. Yet, wonder of wonders, this movie actually was filmed.

Sir Alan Parker’s feature-length directorial debut (he also directed Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Angel Heart, Fame and so many more), this is also Scott Baio’s first movie and features a young Jodie Foster.

Why kids? Parker said, “I had four young children and we used to go to a cottage in Derbyshire at weekends. On the long, boring car journey up there, I started telling them the story of a gangster called Bugsy Malone. They’d ask me questions and I’d make up answers, based on my memories of watching old movie reruns as a kid.” His oldest son loved the stories and suggested that when he made the movie, children should play the roles. 

The strangest moment of the film is seeing kids sing with Paul Williams’ voice. Parker agrees today. “Watching the film after all these years, this is one aspect that I find the most bizarre. Adult voices coming out of these kids’ mouths? I had told Paul that I didn’t want squeaky kids voices and he interpreted this in his own way. Anyway, as the tapes arrived, scarcely weeks away from filming, we had no choice but to go along with it!”

The film starts with Roxy Robinson being splurged by another gang. In the film, guns shoot whipped cream instead of bullets and once you get splurged, you’re done.  We meet speakeasy boss Fat Sam and Bugsy Malone (Baio) with a big musical number. Fat Sam is played by John Cassisi, a kid who was selected by Parker after asking for the worst behaved child in his Brooklyn class. Interestingly enough, after he retired from acting, Cassisi became involved in construction, rising to the Director of Global Construction for Citigroup. However, he pleaded guilty to bribery in 2012 and was sentenced to 2 to 6 years in prison, pretty much making him a real gangster.

Then, we meet Blousey Brown, a singer, and Dandy Don, the rival gangster who wants to take over Fat Sam’s rackets and splurging all his men. Meanwhile, Sam’s girlfriend Tallulah (Foster) tries to get between Bugsy and Blousey.

Bugsy helps Sam survive a trap that Dandy Dan sets, drawing Bugsy deeper into the gangster life, despite his budding affair with Blousey. Finally, everyone but our young lovers gets splurged and realizes that they can all get along.

This is a movie that defies my descriptions. You should just watch the trailer for yourself to confirm to me that this is all real and not a dream.

Unfortunately, this movie has never been released on DVD in the United States, so you’ll either need to import the film or turn to gray market sources to watch it.

Becca hates this movie. When I asked her for her review, the words stupid, boring and dumb were used. I asked why and she replied, “It’s just horrible.” Me? I loved it. As Paula Abdul sang, “Opposites attract.” Also, much like that song, I hate cigarettes and Becca likes to smoke!

All four generations of Katakuris live on a house built over a garbage dump near Mt. Fuji. It’s not much to write home about, but they dream of calling it the White Lover’s Inn, a bed and breakfast that will serve the visitors that the road that runs nearby is sure to bring.

Finally, after much waiting, a TV personality shows up and the family is overjoyed. Yet he soon kills himself and they find his naked body. So they do what any family would do: they bury it and move on. A second guest, a sumo wrestler, dies having sex with his underage girlfriend.

In fact, every guest they get dies, whether by accident or murder or suicide. And the backyard is filling up!

Oh yeah — there’s also a con man in love with the youngest daughter, the police investigating all these murders and an active volcano.

Takashi Miike (Dead or Alive, Blade of the Immortal, Visitor Q) has directed everything from light-hearted children’s films to movies so controversial governments have stepped in to block them. Here, he creates a musical that combines Japanese pop, karaoke and traditional musicals to make one of the most legitimately bonkers films I’ve ever watched. The film can quickly turn into flashbacks or claymation at a moment’s notice, sometimes multiple times within the same scene.

The leader of the Katakuris, Masao, is played by Kenji Sawada, who was a crossover pop star at the end of the 1960’s. He was nicknamed Julie for his love of Julie Andrews. He’s one of only two Japanese artists to ever appear on the cover of Rolling Stone and even had Barry Gibb write songs for him!

Shizue’s boyfriend, the sailor who claims to be a British relative of Queen Elizabeth, is played by Kiyoshiro Imawano, who was known as Japan’s king of rock, even recording with Booker T & the M.G.’s. His funeral, dubbed The Aoyama Rock n’ Roll Show, drew 42,000 mourners.

The father, Jinpei, is Tetsurō Tamba, who was Tiger Tanaka in You Only Live Twice. And Naoto Takenaka, who plays a reporter, is the Japanese voice of Batman and Nick Fury.

This is a movie that demands to be experienced. From animated fairies ending up in people’s soup to heroic dogs that surf through lava, this is a demented version of The Sound of Music. Check out the trailer and see if it strikes your fancy, then you can watch this on Shudder. If you hate it, you can share your feelings with Becca.

Streets of Fire is no ordinary movie. It is, as the poster promises, “a rock ‘n roll fable.” It also feels like it comes from a reality unlike our own, a place of perpetual night, thanks to a majority of the film being shot on two large sets that were covered in a tarp 1,240 feet long by 220 feet wide. Outside of night shoots in Chicago, it’s basically a soundstage film, which adds to its otherworldly feel.

The Chicago in Streets of Fire is a world where it rains all the time, where neighborhoods have their own color palette and people speak in an exaggerated tough guy language that led Roger Ebert to say that this was the way “really mean guys would have talked in the late 1950s, only with a few words different — as if this world evolved a slightly different language.”

Director and writer Walter Hill (48 Hours, The Warriors) wanted to create a new action hero, something that felt like a comic book that wasn’t based on any existing character, the first in a new franchise of films about a character called The Stranger (who became known as Tom Cody). Oh yeah. It was also going to be a musical.

Hill’s vision was to create a film that had everything he loved as a teenager: “custom cars, kissing in the rain, neon, trains in the night, high-speed pursuit, rumbles, rock stars, motorcycles, jokes in tough situations, leather jackets and questions of honor.”

He had other rules: no one under the age of 30 and because he saw the film as a fairy tale, the violence was to be stylized. No one was to die.

After clashing with Paramount head Michael Eisner over the film feeling similar to an Indiana Jones film (no one would have that argument after seeing the final product), Hill sold the film to Universal. Named for the Bruce Springsteen song, you’d think that Bruce would be included on the soundtrack. Indeed, music is incredibly essential to the final film, so Meatloaf and Alice Cooper co-conspirator Jim Steinman came in to write the song that closes the film, “Tonight is What it Means to Be Young.” The song was so good — it was written in two days, believe it or not — that it led to a $1 million reshoot, as the film had the Springsteen song already shot as the ending.

Again, the final product is just strange. Co-writer Larry Gross (the writer of 48 Hours, True Crime and Prozac Nation)  had a moment late in the production where he realized that “this movie is somewhat weirder than we thought.” He said the failure of the film was because “our commitment to be stylized was thorough and conscious and maybe too extreme for the mainstream audience.”

In another time, another place, in an unnamed city, rock star Ellen Aim (Diane Lane, known to today’s moviegoers as Martha Kent in the DC Comics movies) returns home to put on a show with her band, the Attackers. However, The Bombers, a motorcycle gang led by Raven Shaddock (Willem Dafoe, The Last Temptation of Christ, 2009’s Antichrist, not the one with the goat licking), kidnaps her.

Reva Cody (Deborah Van Valkenburgh, Mercy from The Warriors) hires her brother Tom (Michael Paré, The Philadelphia Experiment, Eddie and the Cruisers) to rescue Ellen (who also happens to be his ex-girlfriend). He brings in McCoy (Amy Madigan, The Dark Half), a fellow ex-soldier who can drive anything. And Reva brings in Billy Fish (Rick Moranis, Ghostbusters, Strange Brew), Ellen’s manager and boyfriend.

What follows is stylized action with Cody and McCoy breaking into the gang’s base and rescuing Ellen, all while the rock star argues with Cody as to why he saved her. She thinks it was about money and he tells her that at one point in his life, he would have done anything to save her. But now, it’s all changed.

Finally, Cody decides to leave Ellen behind, as he can’t see a future where he can be what she needs him to be. He has a final battle with Raven, which he wins, and Raven is carried away by his gang. After one final goodbye, Cody and McCoy ride off into the neon, rain-soaked night. Basically, the movie ends like Casablanca.

Streets of Fire is packed with great minor characters that populate its strange world. EG Daily (Dottie in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure and the voice of Tommy Pickles on Rugrats) plays Baby Doll. Richard Lawson (Sugar Hill, Poltergeist and the stepfather of Beyoncé and Solange Knowles) plays a police officer who tries to keep Cody and Raven apart. Bill Paxton plays a bartender. And Lee Ving from Fear is even in the film (he also played Mr. Boddy in Clue, which is a great trivia question if you ever want to use it). There’s even a fake band, The Sorels, made up of actors Stoney Jackson, Grand Bush (Balrog in Street Fighter), Mykelti Williamson and comedian Robert Townsend.

You can see the influence of Streets of Fire in some interesting places, mainly in the video games and animation of Japan. Capcom’s Final Fight owes a big debt to the film. And the anime Bubblegum Crisis has featured musical sequences and songs that were taken almost 100% from the film. Here’s a great distillation of the Western influences that shaped that anime:

I can’t speak objectively about this movie. I love it. I love that it’s so completely off the rails, that it is not tied to our real world at all, that it’s a musical, that it appears to be based on something but it’s actually an original story. I remember watching it on VHS as a teenager and wishing that everyone in the film was a real person that I could spend more time getting to know.

There were plans to do two more Tom Cody films — The Far City and Cody’s Return, but the failure of the film ended those plans. However, Albert Pyun (The Sword and the Sorcerer, Dollman) directed 2008’s Road to Hell, an unofficial sequel that has Paré as Cody.

Shout! Factory has finally come to the rescue of everyone who wanted this on blu-ray and released what is the definitive version of the film. I suggest that you purchase it immediately, as I need more people to talk about this movie with!

Nelvana was a Canadian animation powerhouse in the 1980’s, producing the Boba Fett cartoon in the Star Wars Holiday Special, Droids, Ewoks and even the live action Whoopi Goldberg movie Burglar. Along the way, Nelvana’s franchises have been shown on over 360 television stations in more 180 countries, in approximately 50 languages. But their first major film was Rock and Rule.

Based heavily on their earlier animated film The Devil and Daniel Mouse, the film took five years to create and used up all of the studio’s resources thanks to its $8 million dollar budget. MGM never promoted the film and it quickly faded from the U.S. box office. If Nelvana hadn’t started working in kid-friendly TV, they would have gone out of business.

In 1983, a nuclear war destroys the human race and mutated street animals populate the Earth.Mok Swagger is a legendary rock musician (voiced by Don Francks, with Lou Reed and Iggy Pop singing his songs) who is hunting for a special voice that will allow him to release a demon. Why? Well, as he’s lost his fame, he just wants to set the world on fire.

Meanwhile, in a nightclub in Mok’s hometown, Ohmtown, Omar (Paul Le Mat voiced him with Robin Zander from Cheap Trick singing), Angel (Susan Roman voice, Debbie Harry singing), Dizzy and Stretch play a show in a small bar. Mok hears Angel sing and knows that he has finally found the voice that he’s been looking for.

Mok invites the band to his mansion outside of town, drugging the band and escaping with Angel. Taking her to Nuke York, he stages a magic ritual as a rock concert, we learn that only one voice, one heart and one song can stop the demon. Yet the evil rock star convinces Omar that Angel is willingly with him before capturing and torturing the band.

Will Omar get it together? Will Mok unleash a demon on the world? Will we get to hear songs by Cheap Trick, Earth Wind & Fire, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Debbie Harry? Yes. Maybe. Yes.

This isn’t a cartoon for kids. It’s packed with drugs, devil worship, some sex and swearing (there was more before MCA demanded cuts). They pretty much dumped the film with only a Night Flight mention and a Marvel tie-in comic. I remembered waiting for the film to come out and it never did.

The book is really gorgeous because instead of original art being created for the comic, it’s a fumetti style book that takes cel art and creates comic book layouts from it.

Taken from https://blogintomystery.com/2011/11/02/the-comic-that-sends-love-through-marvel-super-special-25-rock-rule/

Taken from http://asteriskpix.blogspot.com/2010/08/marvel-super-special-rock-rule.html

This film is like an 80’s rock and roll version of The Apple. There’s a musical couple that is torn apart by evil big business, but way less camel toe — ironic as many of the creatures in the film look like humanoid dromedaries.

The animation is pretty interesting as well, looking Bakshi-like (indeed, Ralph Bakshi is often credited as the director of this, but Clive A. Smith in the true person behind the film). Even though production started as early as 1978, it really reflects the MTV style of the 80’s. It compares favorably with a more well-known animated film from Canada, Heavy Metal.

Rock and Rule played on HBO and Showtime in the U.S., never showing in theaters. It wasn’t released officially on video until 2005 and a new blu-ray from Unearthed Films was released in 2010.