THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: ROCKULA (1990) *

Luca Bercovici is mostly known as an actor, but he’s probably best remembered in this household for directing Ghoulies.  He had to wait six years to make his follow-up feature, a vampire-rock n’ roll-comedy-musical called Rockula.  He should’ve waited longer.

Dean Cameron stars as Ralph, a 400 year-old-virgin who still lives at home with his domineering mother (Toni Basil).  He’s cursed to perpetually look for the reincarnation of his lost love (Tawny Fere) and save her from a menacing pirate (Thomas Dolby).  Every time he’s tried to rescue her, something’s gone wrong, causing him to be stuck in a centuries-long dry spell.  When Ralph meets his true love in the present day, he freaks out and lies to her, saying he’s in a rock n’ roll band.  To woo her away from the pirate once and for all, he makes the band a reality, christening himself “Rockula”.

If you can’t already tell by that description, there’s a LOT going on here, but nothing ever really happens.  The endless exposition dump in the early going pretty much stops the movie on a dime and it never recovers.  On top of that, the movie adds a bunch of new, needless, and odd “rules” to the traditionally accepted vampire lore that just don’t work at all.  (Like Dolby’s quest for an “emerald peg leg” and Cameron’s ability to communicate with his mirror image, who has a life of his own.) 

If Rockula was nothing more than a collection of lame comedic vampire shenanigans, it would be one thing.  Add in a bunch of terrible musical sequences and you have a recipe for disaster.  The music is too new to work as nostalgia and it isn’t cheesy enough to be camp.  It’s just plain bad.  I mean would it surprise you that Cameron sings a song called “Rapula” that contains the lyric, “He’s the DJ, I’m the vampire”?  Not only is the music bad, but the staging and choreography is awful too.  The only passable dance sequence belongs to Basil, who (no surprise here) did her own choreography.  (Who could blame her?)

I loved Cameron in Summer School and Ski School, but in those films, he was playing characters that had a bit of an edge.  Stuck with such a wishy-washy nerdy character, he’s just kind of there in this film.  I will say he’s slightly more successful as his mirror reflection than as his Rockula persona.  (The scene where he sings a song dressed like Elvis is particularly dire.)

Bercovici manages to waste a talented cast of musicians too.  I’m not sure if it’s because they’re musicians and not really actors, but even their music isn’t even very good here.  I mean what the Hell is Bo Diddley doing in this?  At least give him something worthwhile to do.  Dolby’s particularly annoying as the villain.  It’s probably not entirely his fault considering the material he was given.  (There’s a scene where he does a local commercial for a funeral home that offers a rotisserie coffin “to keep you turning over in your grave!”)  Only Susan Tyrrell manages to make an impression as one of Rockula’s band members.