Ever since Bill Haley rocked around the clock in the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle, rock ‘n’ roll and movies have existed in a kind of strange symbiosis. From practically the dawn of sound film, cinema has been used to sell records and records have been marshalled into the marketing schemes of hit movies. After all, where would cinema history be without The Rutles, the Max Rebo Band, and Spinal Tap, without Winslow Leach from The Phantom of the Paradise, the Folksmen and Wyld Stallyns? Where would Survivor be without Rocky or Cannibal Corpse without Ace Venture? Where would Celine Dion’s career be without Titanic? (France, that’s where). But some films are so strange it’s hard to imagine they could ever sell anything.
Shane Pinnegar’s new book, Rocksploitation takes a deep dive into the weirder, scuzzier steps in cinema and pop music’s decades long tango. This is not a book about biopics or documentaries. There are no live concert films here (and there is, I promise you, no Celine Dion). But there is plenty of Stillwater, the fictional band Cameron Crowe made up for Almost Famous. There’s The Ramones louchely setting fire to Vince Lombardi High in Rock’n’Roll High School. There’s the Fabulous Stains. There’s Gene Simmons and Ozzy Osbourne inexplicably turning up in 1986 cheapo slasher film Trick or Treat. And yes, there’s also Wyld Stallyns. Most excellent!
Below, Pinnegar picks out ten of the weirdest of the whole bunch for us. Expect haunted amplifiers, stoned Monkees, Guitar Wolf as unexpected superheroes, and some extremely large quiffs.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The Eighth Dimension (1984)
Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) is an overachieving scientist, musician, surgeon and pretty much every other thing, and gets tied up with his late girlfriend’s unknown long-lost twin (Ellen Barkin) and an alien invasion from the mystical eighth dimension, led by the clinically insane Dr Emilio Lizardo (John Lithgow). Jeff Goldblum struts around inexplicably sporting a cowboy ensemble complete with woollen leggings, which is absolute peak-Goldblum and has to be seen to be believed. Banzai tells a heckler at their gig, “Don’t be mean. We don’t have to be mean ‘cause, remember, no matter where you go…there you are.” Weller later noted “I didn’t understand it [the script] actually, and I think no actor in it does understand it… but it was fun.” Weller said. Co-star Billy Vera added, “If you say you understood it, you’re a liar.”
Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls (1970)
Ground zero for rock n’ roll movie weirdness, Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls was written by movie critic Roger Ebert and directed by Russ Meyer (the mazophiliac dodger who almost helmed The Greatest Rock N Roll Swindle) and featured a trans Phil Spector-alike, a plethora of drug addled rockers, and a long drawn out court case chasing royalties for the author of The Valley Of The Dolls, Jacqueline Susann, which her husband won a year after she died. The title referenced uppers and downers – pills which were very much in vogue at the time – and in addition to all the above mayhem, actor John Lazar bemoans his famous line “This is my happening, and it freaks me out!”: “I didn’t like the line; I didn’t think it was hip. It’s the line that’s gonna go on my fucking tombstone.”
Destroy All Neighbours (2024)
The very best film featuring Alex Winter as dismembered Eastern European techno fan Vlad who is haunting William, a guitarist & recording engineer procrastinating about finishing his prog metal epic Epitaph For The Fallen Circus amidst a personal mental health crisis and accidentally killing a succession of his obnoxious neighbours. Best of all, it’s another triumph of budget vs innovation, with fantastically gory old school practical special effects and a lot of over the top fun.
Get Crazy (1983)
Allan Arkush (also director of the Ramones-starring Rock N’ Roll High School)’s hypermanic ADHD fever dream started life as his semi-autobiographical memories of working as an usher at the legendary Fillmore East, then morphed into an amphetamine-fuelled New Year’s Eve concert featuring blues legend King Blues (Bruce Henderson), all-girl new wave band Nada, nihilistic punk Piggy (Fear’s Lee Ving) and flagging rock legend Reggie Wanker (Malcolm McDowell). If that’s not enough, throw in death-like drug dealer Electric Larry, evil developer Colin Beverley (Ed Begley Jr with 60s crooners Fabian and Bobby Sherman as his henchmen), perma-stoned hippy Captain Cloud (Howard Kaplan) and Wanker’s girlfriend Countess Chantamina (Anna Bjorn, currently who-knows-where in the witness protection programme) and it all adds up to a wild ride in this bonafide cult classic and my favourite rock n’ roll movie of all time. Arkush has repeatedly admitted “it’s a movie with 2,000 punchlines, but only 1,500 jokes.”
Ghostroads: A Japanese Rock n Roll Ghost Story (2017)
A cautionary tale about not buying haunted amps from strange dark and dingy Japanese music stores, especially when warned: “That amp has history – no returns.” Sure enough, Tony plugs it in and an ‘amparrition’ of a long-dead blues musician appears, and in time honoured Faustian tradition offers Tony fame, musical ability and the perfect song to help him best his arch-rival – but it’s going to come at a price. Pamela Des Barres, author of I’m With the Band, commented, “Get ready for some groovy rockin’ and rollin’ with large doses of spooky intrigue, steamy jealousy, ribald rivalry, backstabbing betrayal, the perfect black leather jacket, sultry groupies, a strummin’ specter and even a miniature stripper as lead guitarist of [a] Japanese rock group.” Fun Fact: Ghostroads was co-written and co-directed by Mike “in Tokyo” Rogers, who – as well as becoming the first foreigner to hold a senior position at a major Japanese TV station – was (as Nigel Nitro) lead singer of L.A. underground punk outfit The Rotters, a group whose main claim to fame was the song ‘Sit on My Face, Stevie Nix’!
Head (1968)
When The Monkees’ TV show was canned they were still determined to prove themselves not only as talented musicians (which they were) but also talented on screen. So, they did a bunch of drugs with Jack Nicholson, who then wrote this wildly analogous film whilst stoned on dope and tripping on acid. With enough understanding of the backstory you can see what they were trying to do and appreciate how profound it all is, but watched cold it is an acid trip without much context at all. Some see Head as sub-Warhol arthouse fare – a collision of real Pop Art and pop masquerading as art. It takes more than being stoned to create a stoner epic, you might say. There’s actual footage of the execution of a Viet Cong prisoner, which prompted Mike Nesmith to storm out of an early screening. And watch out for Frank Zappa leading a cow on set apropos of nothing.
Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989)
Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki conceived The Leningrad Cowboys in a bar with his friends Sakke Järvenpää and Mato Valtonen, both members of the Finnish comedy rock band Sleepy Sleepers (or, in Finnish, Sliipparit), as a joke about the disintegration of the Soviet Union. We get to follow the adventures of a band of heavily quiffed, pointy winklepickered, besuited rockers who undertake a road trip through the United States with one of their dead bandmates in a wooden crate atop their limo. It only gets weirder from there.
Sapphire Girls aka Hard Rock Candy (2003)
A band of girls who literally can’t even pretend to play their instruments and insist on getting their breasts out for no reason, a half-plot which barely makes any sense involving mind-control drugs (or something like that), and a supporting cast who make the stars look half competent for all the wrong reasons, Sapphire Girls appears to be a porno with all (almost all) of the sex scenes cut out. Some films are so bad they’re good. Sapphire Girls is so bad it’s so, so, so bad and the only good thing about it is wondering what the heck is going on – and taking the mickey out of it.
Referenced artists
Roger Ebert
Short Fiction: ‘Roger Ebert’ By Oliver Zarandi
Wild Zero (1999)
When Japanese punk legends Guitar Wolf are the only thing standing between aliens taking over Earth with an army of zombies, you know you’re in for a wild ride – in this case one which includes mob goons, a trans heroine, and Guitar Wolf’s superpowers! Director Tetsuro Takeuchi enlisted the Thai military and their families to play the zombie hordes, while Guitar Wolf are so cool they play themselves and probably actually have superpowers. The soundtrack is cram-packed with gonzo mayhem, and the DVD comes with a game which dares viewers to drink every time they see a flame or explosion, or a zombie’s head explode. Good lord… surely nobody can drink THAT much!!
Young Einstein (1988)
Hailing from the Australian island of Tasmania, young Albert Einstein invented the electric guitar, discovered the theory of relativity, invented surfing, fell in love with Marie Curie and achieved his greatest feat by splitting the atom to put bubbles in beer – at least, that’s the way it happened in Yahoo Serious’s alternate reality comedy classic Young Einstein. Suspension of disbelief is essential in engaging with this wildly imaginative and brilliantly realised, frantic combination of absurdist comedy, rewritten history, slapstick and clever cinematography, and it’s well worth the ride.
Rocksploitation: Celebrating 69 hits, flops and cult favourite rock n’ roll movies by Shane Pinnegar is available now
