Rock & Rule Will Never Die
On this day in 1983 the animated film Rock & Rule opened in the United States: This was the first film produced by the Canadian animation studio Nelvana and it’s a bit of a lost classic — for starters it features voice acting by Deborah Harry, Lou Reed AND Iggy Pop! The film had been in production since 1979 and the quality of the animation is pretty high, plus this was one of the first feature films to use computer graphics (although in a very limited way).
Sadly the film attracted a bit of controversy because of scenes involving devil worship, light sexuality and drug use (as shown in the video clip above) — which limited it to a adult market which was a death knell for an animated film in the early 80s. I’m surprised that it never became a midnight movie, in fact it was very hard to even come by on VHS for years. In fact the film did so badly that it nearly put Nelvana out of business: In fact many animators who worked on the project left the studio to find work in Hollywood. However Nelvana would make a huge comeback with the very G rated Care Bears which made them into the animation powerhouse they are today.
Below: Scenes from Rock & Rule.
Below: The poster for Rock & Rule.
