Vicious Lips is a new-wave sci-fi musical directed by Albert Pyun. If that sentence isn't enough to loosen your bowels with fear, you either have no idea of who Pyun is, or you're a fan of really, really bad films.
For those not familiar with the director, allow me to enlighten you...
Pyun works mainly in the science-fiction and action genres, churning out low-budget straight-to-video garbage. His work includes mediocre sword and sorcery film The Sword and the Sorcerer (his first and probably best film), the atrocious action thriller Down Twisted (1987), the mind-bogglingly bad Journey to the Center of the Earth (1988), early Van Damme vehicle Cyborg (1989), a long forgotten version of Captain America (1990), the Nemesis series of sci-fi films (good luck watching them all), and countless other low budget efforts that, being a glutton for punishment, I will no doubt subject myself to at some point.
Pyun is not the man I would choose to make a futuristic rock opera. But here it is anyway.
Dru-Anne Perry plays aspiring songstress Judy Jetson, who is given the chance to perform with the band Vicious Lips at a make-or-break show at Maxine's Radioactive Dreams club. Manager Matty Asher (Anthony Kentz) 'borrows' a spacecraft to ferry the girls to the gig, but a close encounter with an asteroid leaves them stranded on a barren planet. Worse still, the girls find themselves menaced by a ferocious beast that has escaped from the ship's cargo hold.
What follows is a sloppy mess of scenes that seem to have been made up on the fly, with the occasional musical interlude. To be fair, the songs in this film aren't half bad, but everything else is more than terrible. After lots of dull conversation between the girls on board the ship, a strange meeting between Matty and two almost naked blonde women, the band being chased by the monster, and Judy (now named Ace Lucas) meeting some bizarre mutant cannibals, the film pulls the old 'it was all a dream' trick, cutting to Judy at Radioactive Dreams, the band having arrived safely.
Not one of the characters is likeable, several are extremely irritating, the direction is unfocused, the acting is awful, the editing is erratic, and the whole things tries to cover up its lack of budget with those '80s visual clichés, smoke and neon lighting. Because I liked a couple of the songs, I won't give this one the 1/10 rating I awarded to Pyun's Down Twisted and horror/western Left For Dead (2007) - but it was a close call.
For those not familiar with the director, allow me to enlighten you...
Pyun works mainly in the science-fiction and action genres, churning out low-budget straight-to-video garbage. His work includes mediocre sword and sorcery film The Sword and the Sorcerer (his first and probably best film), the atrocious action thriller Down Twisted (1987), the mind-bogglingly bad Journey to the Center of the Earth (1988), early Van Damme vehicle Cyborg (1989), a long forgotten version of Captain America (1990), the Nemesis series of sci-fi films (good luck watching them all), and countless other low budget efforts that, being a glutton for punishment, I will no doubt subject myself to at some point.
Pyun is not the man I would choose to make a futuristic rock opera. But here it is anyway.
Dru-Anne Perry plays aspiring songstress Judy Jetson, who is given the chance to perform with the band Vicious Lips at a make-or-break show at Maxine's Radioactive Dreams club. Manager Matty Asher (Anthony Kentz) 'borrows' a spacecraft to ferry the girls to the gig, but a close encounter with an asteroid leaves them stranded on a barren planet. Worse still, the girls find themselves menaced by a ferocious beast that has escaped from the ship's cargo hold.
What follows is a sloppy mess of scenes that seem to have been made up on the fly, with the occasional musical interlude. To be fair, the songs in this film aren't half bad, but everything else is more than terrible. After lots of dull conversation between the girls on board the ship, a strange meeting between Matty and two almost naked blonde women, the band being chased by the monster, and Judy (now named Ace Lucas) meeting some bizarre mutant cannibals, the film pulls the old 'it was all a dream' trick, cutting to Judy at Radioactive Dreams, the band having arrived safely.
Not one of the characters is likeable, several are extremely irritating, the direction is unfocused, the acting is awful, the editing is erratic, and the whole things tries to cover up its lack of budget with those '80s visual clichés, smoke and neon lighting. Because I liked a couple of the songs, I won't give this one the 1/10 rating I awarded to Pyun's Down Twisted and horror/western Left For Dead (2007) - but it was a close call.