Vicious Lips

Great actor he reminds me of a few different people. Sad to say it was his only film. He in my opinion should have been a big star Lead singer girl has nice teeth

"Vicious Lips" is set in the far future, where a band finally gets the opportunity for That Breakthrough Gig -- if they can make it to an "in" club on another planet in time...

Given that the plot features no major twists, turns or surprises, given that the set is extremely trashy, the number of locations limited and the choice of them not overly inspired, Vicious Lips seems like a longish episode of the original Star Trek sans the familiarity with the characters we all know and love -- so whatever persuaded me to rate it "excellent"?

I'm a sucker for Big Hair, and The Music of the Eighties, both of which the movie has plenty of, since the all-girl band's guitar-and-synth sound is vaguely reminiscent of the early Kim Wilde's, if both "rockier" and catchier (and a lot like that of "Radioactive Dreams", another Albert Pyun-movie of that era with a more coherent plot, but no big hair). Last but not least, the general air of ultra-trash somehow utterly fails to be annoying, lending a certain charm to the movie instead, soon turning the initial impression ("Hey, I could do that!") into a burning desire to phone up all your friends:

"Let's make a movie!"

I was in my 20's in the 1980's and there just wasn't too much to worry about during most of the decade, so films often drifted into sci-fi fantasy territory, just like they did during the 1950's, an also relatively carefree decade.

This is a sci-fi musical about an all-girl group named the Vicious Lips that lands a gig at an interstellar concert event. On their way to the venue, their spaceship crashes on a desert planet, and they bicker and fight with each other in the dark ship wreckage. There's also a monster of some sort lurking around, and the girl's sleazy manager is wandering around the desert looking for help with two mostly-naked blondes.

The girls look like a live-action Jem and the Holograms, and their New Wave rock music is awful. They're shown on stage using fictional musical instruments, kind of partially disassembled guitars with blue bug zappers on the end. Starring no one you've ever heard of, and they are uniformly terrible actors. Written and directed by Z-movie auteur Albert Pyun. Empire Pictures produced it, but from what I read, this wasn't released in the U.S. until the DVD in 2011. Some people seem to have elevated it to cult status, and it is actually on a "Cult Movie Marathon" DVD set, which seems to get pretty good reviews on the world's largest website, probably owing to the viewers' collective nostalgia, not the quality of the film.

I give it 3/10 for originality.

Vicious Lips is like a wild but bad trip - without doubt the movie is one of a few but the reasons why you should watch this movie are not the story nor the acting or that wild mix of a story (a little Rocky Horror Picture Show shining through): watch this wonder if you want 80s hairstyle galore, listening to 80s rock music a la Heart (the band who got some fame in the 80s) and 80s fashion with all its unique but terrible taste. Last but not least, director Albert Pyun is responsible for this "gem" - I know and like mostly his post-apocalyptic trash gems like Cyborg (van Damme!), Omega Doom (Rutger Hauer) and Radioactive Dreams (Michael Dudikoff). My exact rate for Vicious Lips is 3 + 1 for all those happy memories of the 80s evoked by this work of trash and the few moments of horror added.

This is really a film in a weird genre - punk music combined with science fiction. Yet, taking into account the almost total lack of subject and action and the low-cost budget preventing any spectacular effects specific to science-fiction movies the film is not as bad as it could be. First the music is quite could, catches the attention and somehow justifies the events that trigger the story. Then the characters in the future world are quite carefully sketched and even if they remind somehow the intergalactic bar in 'Star Wars' they are quite funny by their own. The film not being too long is quite a quality here, and at the end of the 75 or so minutes of screening the remaining feeling is of a not so complete loss of time.