Rock and Rule ...Old School Cartoon 1983

• Report rights infringement
• published: 14 Apr 2016
• views: 3974

Rock & Rule (known as Ring of Power outside of North America) is a 1983 Canadian animated musical science fiction fantasy film from the animation studio Nelvana. It was produced and directed by the company's founders, Michael Hirsh, Patrick Loubert, and Clive A. Smith. The film features the voices of Don Francks, Greg Salata, and Susan Roman. It was the studio's first feature film and the first English language one produced entirely within Canada. Centering on rock and roll music, the film includes songs by Cheap Trick, Chris Stein and Debbie Harry of the pop group Blondie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, and Earth, Wind & Fire. The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic United States populated by mutant humanoids. With John Halfpenny, Patrick Loubert, and Peter Sauder at the helm of its screenplay, Rock & Rule was a heavily derived spin-off of Nelvana's earlier TV special from 1978, The Devil and Daniel Mouse. Its distributor, MGM, acquired United Artists at the time and the new management team had no interest in it. As a result, it was never released in North America except for a limited release in Boston, Massachusetts. It received minor attention in Germany, where it was screened at a film festival. it was funded in part by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which had obtained the Canadian TV rights. A hard-to-find VHS was released at that time, followed by a laserdisc release. The film developed a cult following from repeated airings on HBO and Showtime and the circulation of bootleg VHS copies at comic book conventions booths (with Ralph Bakshi named as director). In 2005, Unearthed Films released a special 2-disc edition DVD of the film. Rock & Rule was Nelvana's first animated feature film, and also the first Canadian animated feature to be produced in English. (Le Village enchanté, a 1956 production from Quebec, was the country's first overall.[1]) The film spent several years in production and underwent many changes from the original concept, which was titled Drats! and aimed for children. The cost of production, $8 million in studio resources, nearly put Nelvana out of business. Over 300 animators worked on the film.[2] The animation was of unusually high quality for the era (it began production in 1979), and the special effects were mostly photographic techniques, as computer graphics were in their infancy. Computers were used to generate only a few images in the film.