'Believe in the gift of song.'
Welcome back to my Dark Corner of this Sick World.
‘How you doing?’
Rock and the Alien started as a student project in the 80s, now unofficially restored and remastered check it out here if you really must.
‘You’re gonna regret this.’
It’s dicey reviewing the more amateur films so I always listen for the dialogue cos bad special effects could be budget,
bad writing is incompetence.
‘George, my knees are weak.’
Looks like I won’t be pulling any punches and nor will our hero, Tyler Upshaw.
‘Damn, you should have stayed a boxer. You still have moves.’
You can still knock-out the elderly.
‘I still have the moves, George, but there’s music in this heart now.’
Tyler is a wannabe rock star and his music underpins the whole film.
‘The sky is clear and the moon does appear. Tell me it's true, what does it say about you?'
You know those moments when you can see the next 78 minutes of your life with a horrifying clarity.
‘Hear that guitar no matter where you are.’
in song-writing the first rhyme you think of is always best.
'Thank you.'
Can’t blame the audience for that.
Continuing the vaguely Rocky vibe Tyler also works for local hood, Ritto,
though he is trying to quit.
‘I’m a musician not a bag man for some hood.’
Now come on, have you really given bag man a fair crack?
What is it you deliver anyway; drugs, money?
‘Here’s your delivery from Ritto’ ‘It’s for my new aeronautical act.’
A stripper’s bra definitely would have been my next guess.
But there’s more to Tyler.
‘The world’s running crazy Marilyn and I gotta do something before it destroys itself.’
He genuinely feels his music can make the world better.
'Through the cold night air, and these streets of dispair.'
Tyler is played by Dionysius Zervos who also directs, produces, scripts and writes the songs.
It’s an ego project and from the Astrologer to The Aftermath, these always go well,
as the man in charge convinces himself he’s great everything.
‘Who are we kidding Marilyn?’
Nobody, your singing is so bad that I haven’t even mentioned your acting.
‘What do you play? A 747?’
Now Tyler has a strange visitor.
‘I have been searching for you’
Why?
‘I bring you a gift.’
Is it a key light?
‘You’re the only one who can bring peace to this planet’
And here’s me calling it an ego project.
‘You are very special Tyler’
You don’t have to tell him.
‘I believe you.’ ‘Believe in yourself.’
Yes, if only you could get rid of this damned humility.
‘Listen lady I’m just a rock n roll singer.’
Bag man.
‘When you sing, it is your heart that speaks.’
See a cardiologist, there’s something badly wrong in there.
But how is this gift conveyed?
‘For you to receive the gift we must become one.’
Look how that worked out.
‘Yeah?’
Although the sex scene is conveyed symbolically,
#sexy guitar riffs.#
Just when I thought he couldn’t think any more of himself.
Look at that, she’s a lucky girl.
And now, when Tyler and his band play, the audience don’t throw things.
Frankly I think they’re lucky to get an audience who’ve never heard music before.
'Give me the case.'
And not just that...
'Do you hear that song, like a steady drum beat.'
He can sing away muggers.
'Do you hear it.'
Which doesn’t surprise me, I imagine cats and dogs have fled the area as well.
But alien girl, Lazer, has another explanation.
‘I’ve given you a frequency evolved on my planet, it will sooth your people and help to guide them away from the evil that leads to hate and war.’
You people are basically lab rats to us,
but she’s not the only alien here.
‘It is a parasitic creature that fled my planet after nearly destroying it three centuries ago.’
It feeds on the negativity and hostility that characterised earth in the 80s.
‘The threat of a nuclear strike by the Soviet Union grows, while the possibly of nuclear war is great.’
Thank God things have changed.
Tyler puts his thoughts into song.
‘Don’t wanna be radioactive’
Well that’s told ‘em.
‘Nuclear test, you know the rest’
Another trait of the ego trip movie is a tendency to take your shirt off, Tyler goes one better.
‘What am I doing?’
Good question.
‘I can’t do this! Write a song that will stop war. What’s in my heart.’
Somewhere Tommy Wiseau is feeling pretty smug.
Suddenly Tyler is inspired.
‘You can hear it everywhere as it travels through the air’
That big boys book of rhymes may not be all you need to write to a song.
‘Like a steady drum beat, down a lonely city street’
I really feel like he thought the audience would be going, wow; poetry,
‘Come on society, stop the nuclear improprieties’
and yes he did just refer to the extinction of mankind as nuclear impropriety.
And now the chorus.
‘DO YOU HEAR THE SONG OF PEACE’
Do you hear that you’re tone deaf?
‘Not bad’
Meanwhile Ritto wants Tyler back,
'I came out here on one of your promises and I end up making drops and running from the police.'
The police take underwear delivery surprisingly seriously.
Ritto sends thugs to sort him out.
‘Make it painful’
and it is.
'Moonlight dancing it's quater past two. Moonlight dancing can I dance'
Tyler goes on tour and The Song of Peace quickly fixes the western world.
‘By now your music is affecting millions of people’
asylums are full, hospitals are overwhelmed by people who’ve stuck stuff in their ears.
But they can’t hear it in Russia so war still threatens.
'My music, it can change this.'
‘Music can’t stop no war’
I sort of buy it; sometimes all you need is common ground and - east west - we can all agree this is the worst song of all time.
Tyler contacts his record label.
‘Tim’
Hey Tyler, what can I do for you?
'You can’t do anything?’
What? You haven’t asked me for anything.
'Yeah, thanks’
Tyler? Hey Tyler, you didn’t ask me for…
Ritto maybe able to help.
‘He’s involved in the black market and that only way to get music into the Soviet Union’
I guess their strippers need lingerie too.
The bad alien stops this.
But somehow they get a satellite link and Tyler performs live.
‘Do you hear the song of peace’
And so the Russians stand down their nukes, muttering...
"Wow, those poor capitalists have got problems of their own."
'Do you hear the song of peace?'
Feels like the audience is mocking him by singing in tune.
Okay… route one this is a musical in which the lead cannot hit a note
even his own guitarist tries to headbutt him.
It’s also is like someone put Rocky, Bill and Ted and Cannon film, The Apple in a blender,
mixed them up, then, very carefully, strained out anything that might resemble entertainment.
‘Now defend us there, did I bring my clean underwear.’
But the biggest problem is, like all ego trip films, it radiates an undeserved arrogance.
‘Your gift is the power to remind people of all the good and peaceful parts of themselves.’
I don’t know Zervos, might be a lovely guy, but it’s hard to believe that someone who writes, directs and stars
in a film in which his music is so astonishing that sexy aliens arrive to F@*%, to F@*%
in a film in which his music is so astonishing that sexy aliens seek him out to save the world, doesn’t have a bit of a high opinion of himself.
‘I write most of my music here’ ‘and you write beautifully’
He wrote that!
'I'm gonna sing for you, because my heart is true, and I love you.'
Thanks for watching. For more on this film, and I had more, join us on patreon as an acolyte.
What are the best and worst fictional bands? Let us know in the comments below.
'Now that my purpose is over, I must leave you.'