Also Known As:
Star Rock
Plot:
In the far-future year of 1994, gold lamé, helmets, and underwear-as-outerwear are everywhere, and disco—which apparently merged with glam rock and Rollerball during some lost night in the Studio 54 men's room—is plowing ahead, stronger than ever. Enter a pair of Canadian innocents (Catherine Mary Stewart and George Gilmour), first seen performing an unbearably treacly ballad called "Love, The Universal Melody." Their act brings them into the shadowy orbit of satanic super-agent Mr. Boogalow (Vladek Sheybal), around whom orgies and/or Vegas-style production numbers (featuring clowns, little people, and/or magicians) are constantly threatening to break out. Of course, an epic battle between good and evil ensues.
Key scenes:
Sheybal takes the young lovers to what appears to be a Broadway version of hell, where Stewart is serenaded by a strapping, g-string-clad fellow who sings the immortal couplet "It's a natural, natural, natural desire / To meet an actual, actual, actual vampire." Gilmour experiences a psychedelic disco freak-out after his drink is drugged and he encounters scores of homely transvestites rendered in trippy kaleidoscope vision. Then he falls in with a tribe of cave-dwelling hippies, reunites with and impregnates the chastened Stewart, and is led into an extraterrestrial paradise by a white-suited supreme being, in what's either the best or worst ending of all time.
Can easily be distinguished by:
This may be the only musical in history that's gayer than Can't Stop The Music and Myra Breckinridge combined.
Sign that it was made in 1980: The strange belief that disco and Vegas would dominate the fashion world for decades to come.
Timeless message:
Before selling their souls to evil incarnate, viewers should contemplate the disadvantages as well as the advantages.
Memorable quotes:
At one point, Stewart sings "America, the land of the free / Is shooting up with pure energy / And every day she has to take morrrrrre—speed!" in what's either a peppy tribute to the nation's vitality, or a bleak warning about its apparent meth addiction.
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