Being a child in Canada in the 80’s ruled. Why? ‘cause Canadian television would show anything. Weekday late night television was always good for a T & A high school epic, weekend late night television was perfect for lost horror movies that would never come out on DVD and anything that was animated was programmed as “Children’s programming”. It’s because of the CBC, I discovered what is still my favorite animated film of all time: "Rock N Rule." The film was released in 1983, and had the honor of being the first full-length animated feature to ever come out of Canada. Before it hit video stores in the mid 80’s it was all over Canadian television, and taught 10 year olds like me that in order to get the girl, you need to be into sex, drugs and rock n roll…or something like that.

Often compared to the less exciting “Heavy Metal”, "Rock N Rule" tells the story of a post-nuclear world inhabited by animal-like creatures (rats, dogs, etc.). The world revolves around (and lives in fear of) an egomaniacal shock rocker named Mok Swagger (Don Francks) who has found a way to summon a beast from hell, which he plans on unleashing upon the world during one of his concerts. Apparently, he is really pissed off that his last tour didn’t completely sell out and plans to take revenge. After deciphering the code he needs to summon the demon he finds out he needs a particular voice to sing a series of notes. Mok then goes on a search across the world for the “special” voice, and comes across a down on their luck unnamed bar band, lead by singers Angel (Susan Roman) and Omar (Paul Le Mat). Mok’s decoder ring tells him that Angel’s voice is the “special” voice he needs to summon the beast. Mok then kidnaps Angel, breaks up her band, drugs her, nearly kills her band mates, unleashes a demon upon the world, sings some Iggy Pop & Lou Reed songs then gets dragged to hell by the very demon he summoned after Angel & Omar perform a duet together, showing the world that love conquerors all.

I know that sounds really fucking cheesy, but the story is presented in such a heartfelt way, that you can tell the animators were in love with the project and not just doing a “job”. The animation is nothing to get crazy about – it shows its age for sure, but looks better than “Heavy Metal” or most other animated releases from the early 80’s or late 70’s. There are some early computer generated effects along with slide effects, and even the usage of raw meat for the flesh of the demon (see the bonus materials on the double-disc release from Unearthed Films that was released in 2004). For an animated film, it pushes many limits; there is foul language, a lot of drug usage, cartoon nudity, and an excellent soundtrack. As you can imagine with a title like “Rock N Rule”, the film relies heavily on the soundtrack…Omar’s singing voice is provided by Robin Zander from Cheap Trick, Angel’s singing voice is provided by Debbie Harry of Blondie and Mok’s singing voice is provided by both Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. On top of the excellent songs provided by said artists, there is also a great “Earth, Wind and Fire” track, a terrific score presented by Patricia Cullen, (that sounds like a Canadian version of Dario Argento’s often used band Goblin), AND a crazy pseduo-punk song written by Patricia Cullen called “Hot Dogs and Sushi”.

As I stated earlier, Unearthed Films released an excellent restored version of Rock N Rule in 2004 (a single DVD version AND a double DVD set-which I recommend) to fans who had been clutching their old VHS copies-which were selling for around $100 on ebay. When the DVD was announced they talked about including a (much needed) soundtrack to go along with the film but sadly an official soundtrack has yet to be released. Lame. Either way, soundtrack or no soundtrack, pick this film up, devour it, and thank me later.

Charlie “My name is Mok, thanks a lot” Brown.