Ralph is a sexually frustrated vampire who suffers from a peculiar curse. He's condemned for eternity to watch his one true love, Mona be murdered by a pirate wielding a ham bone. But now? Now it's 1990, and Ralph is determined to break Mona's cycle of reincarnation. His first order of business is winning her affections-- He does that by starting Rockula: a rock band that's sure to stake a claim on her heart.
Rockula - Uma Banda Vampiresca, 浪漫吸血鬼, 락쿨라
USAPG-13
Germany12
Germany
USA
(puts cap on backwards)
My name is Rapula and I'm here to say
I love stupid movies in a major way
Successfully channels the exact tone and energy of Bobby "Boris" Pickett's absurdist masterpiece "Monster Rap." That's no easy feat. Shock the body-body!
I'm a few days late from posting with the crew, so let me just shoot from the hip...
Rockula is a strange film of the cult variety, one that harbors equal quantities of super cringeworthy moments and others of rich charisma. In one moment, Tony Basil may be laying the NYC-Jewish mama schtick on way too thick and then the next she's appropriately balls-to-the-wall and ferocious singing a song after her son's girlfriend comes to dinner. Perhaps a better example is that of Thomas Dolby playing the uber-douche, ex-boyfriend of the girl our main character is after. He happens to be charismatic but also incredibly smarmy. Rockula is a ton of fun however, even if some of the music falls…
March into Madness, Day 3, challenge #31 - Watch a horror movie based on a Universal Monster but it cannot be a Universal or Hammer movie
This movie has nothing to with Dracula, besides that he is a vampire and calls himself Rockula (real name: Ralph. Ralph the vampire). Unless the original Dracula had an annoying mirror-Dracula, pirates and an overprotective mum, idk, I haven't read the book! This also has nothing to do with horror, it's straight comedy, this makes What We Do in the Shadows look like actual damn Dracula. But it's not the sleazy boob-nanigans sex comedy I expected from the description (onoes he's a VIRGIN, however does he function). It's... htf do I describe this thing??…
The best vampire movie to ever exist
- virgin vampire who's over 400 years old and lives with his mother and puts on sun block and can walk around in the sunlight
- many questionable music numbers. virgin vampire preforms a rap song
- his reflection can talk to him and is like his own person. no reason for this. at the end his reflection breaks out of the mirror dressed as elvis and preforms a musical number
- he also has the ability to turn into the most horrifying little bat man creature that's like 2 feet tall and shows it to a girl (reincarnated version of his lover) to try to make her believe he's a vampire and she's so freaked out she wants to run away
- thomas dolby is here trying to throw a girl into a coffin to freeze her
This movie is weird as hell but still a great hang. Any movie where Dean Cameron fronts a hybrid gothbilly/hip-hop band that counts Susan Tyrrell and Bo Diddley as members is going to get an automatic 3 stars from me, regardless of the quality of their music.
Extra 1/2 star for Toni Basil's show-stopping song and dance number. She is absolutely killing it here (there's a jump cut right after to one of the movie's funniest lines; I laughed pretty hard at that one).
Hat tip to Nick Langdon for convincing me to free this one from the watchlist.
Rockula is a false flag operation. The music isn't rock and it isn't good either. The story is incomprehensibly boring. I admit I tried to make Rockula a thing but let's be honest, there's zero fun to be had here. Yes I know there are 80's pop stars and he becomes a fat little vamplet. It still totally sucks! Crazy.
I wish the Cannon Films Group hadn't dissolved the way it did, especially now that I realize they must have had a plan to funnel their energy into an embarrassing B-musical once every ten years. Tell me you aren't even a little curious as to what we would have gotten for the year 2000! To its credit, Rockula is certainly more self-aware than The Apple was, but there's only so many excuses that can be made for the lyric, "There was this girl named Mina, she wanted my weena," while dressed in Slim Shady garb.
Coincidentally, I loved every cringe-worthy second of it.
Happy Halloween, everybody!
'Rockula' is a vampire music comedy starring Dean Cameron (who I was happy to see in the lead after loving him as Chainsaw in 'Summer School') and is perhaps the single most 80s movie to come out in 1990.
The supporting cast is made up of Thomas Dolby, who is fully camping it up as a villain of sorts, Toni Basil as Cameron's vampire mom, the always great Susan Tyrrell, Rick Zumwalt of 'Over the Top' fame playing a character named Boom Boom and even Bo Diddley for some reason.
It also has at least five full songs, three of which are called 'Rockula' (with one sadly only being 'Rapula').
This is the kind of magical and ridiculous thing you expect from the director of 'Ghoulies' and I kinda love it.
Waitaminute, people don’t like this movie? This is pure bizarro cocaine 80’s weirdness and I had a great time watching this. I never knew I wanted a Dean Cameron, Susan Tyrrell and Bo Diddley new wave vampire band before, but here we are
Super weird musical horror romcom about a self-loathing vampire musician cursed to watch the woman he loves be repeatedly reincarnated and murdered every 22 years. It features goofy vampire themed rock and rap performances and has one hit wonders Thomas Dolby and Toni Basil in supporting roles. The movie largely gets by on the likability of both its leads, particularly Summer School's Dean Cameron, but never really rises above being only slightly amusing.
I should like this more than I do. It's weird, it's got a bizarrely intricate plot involving forced reincarnation, highly specific murder plots, vampires, illicit cryonics, a mortician who does hilariously awful local commercials and a perpetually horny doppelgänger that lives in the mirror dimension.
That sounds like fun! And it is... kind of.
The music's great. The actors are generally good, though Dean Cameron, Thomas Dolby and especially Toni Basil stand out as really embracing their material. But something about how it all comes together doesn't really merit me bumping up my rating.
With Rockula and Night Children, I have accidentally watched two Tawny Fere movies in five days. Probably not a unique situation, but certainly an uncommon one.
