DivaLea: My Name is Mok!

Back in 1983, Marvel released a Super Special of an upcoming film by Nelvana. Nelvana, as all good nerds knew and know, made the animated short that was part of the wonderfully horrible "Star Wars Christmas Special". (The other standout part of TSWCS was Carrie Fisher looking like she was propped up on Chewie, prompting an outbreak of "Guess the Substance.")


C'mon, how COOL is this?

The Super Special was for "Rock & Rule", and promised songs from singers I'd actually heard of: Debbie Harry, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop. It wasn't Disney, and this was a Good Thing in the days of Disney Really Did Equal Bad. The Super Special art was a film comic, using cels from the film, and dayum, it was good. It had a beginning, middle and end. Sass a-plenty. A heroine, Angel, who always knew what was right saddled with a boyfriend, Omar, who would pay for his lack of trust in her. A really disturbing and elegant bad guy in Mok, a Maleficent in Mick Jagger drag.

Pity United Artists decided it'd never heard of it just a few weeks after they promised to send out promo materials to me and a nerd acquaintance. Poor R & R got sent out for R and R pretty much before anyone got to see it. My husband, King, and I taped it off HBO when it made a Brigadoon-like appearance sometime in 1986. Later, we found a laser disc. The rarity of R&R in any form, combined with its disturbing and weird charm, made it a cult film, a legand among animation fans.

Finally, though, horrorcultfilm distros Unearthed Films (beware: Unearthed's site is not work-safe) have rescued Rock & Rule from obscurity and restored it and added a shitload of special features. It's the kind of presentation R&R has deserved from the beginning, and it finally drops on June 7th, almost exactly 22 years after it was suppose to the first time.

A lot has changed in animation technology in one generation, as this "Making of 'Rock and Rule'" clip shows. Be amused by the monochrome computer monitor. Be amazed by people hand-painting cels. In spite of the mostly low-tech traditional methods used for most of R&R, it was innovative in its time for using cgi effects.

More than twenty years on, some of R&R looks hilariously dated, even Ralph Bakshi fugly. But I promise you whippersnappers that it was the shit at the time, and most of it holds up great. Consider what doesn't amusing relics of one generation's rage against the apocalypse.