Rock & Rule

Rock & Rule (known as Ring of Power outside North America) is a 1983 Canadian adult animated musical science fantasy film featuring the voices of Don Francks, Greg Salata, and Susan Roman. It was produced by Michael Hirsh and Patrick Loubert and directed by Clive A. Smith from a screenplay by John Halfpenny and Peter Sauder.

Centering upon rock and roll music, Rock & Rule includes songs by Cheap Trick, Debbie Harry, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, and Earth, Wind & Fire. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic United States populated by animalistic humans. The film was a commercial failure due in large part to its extremely small limited theatrical release by distributor MGM/UA, grossing $30,379 on an $8 million budget. Nonetheless, Rock & Rule has developed a cult following, with public knowledge of the film boosted by the Internet.

Mok Swagger, a legendary rock musician, is on the search for a special voice whose frequencies can unleash a powerful demon from another dimension, his dwindling popularity driving him to destroy the world in vengeance and immortalize himself in the process. After travelling around the world looking for the right voice, he returns to his hometown of Ohmtown, a remote, storm-ravaged village famous for its unique power plant. Meanwhile, at a nightclub, Omar, Angel, Dizzy and Stretch perform in a small rock band. Angel asks Omar if he could let her play a song of her own, to which he agrees, but when his song is cut-short by Mylar, the nightclub manager, and he threatens him into letting them continue, he goes back on the promise. Angel starts playing her own song in retaliation, to which Omar storms off. As Angel performs her romantic ballad, Mok hears her sing; he realizes that Angel has the voice he needs when a ring he is wearing reacts to her voice. After Omar makes amends with Angel, Mok invites the band to his mansion outside of town, where the band is formally introduced to him and his assistants, the "Rollerskating Schlepper Brothers": Toad, Sleazy and Zip. Mok incapacitates Omar and Stretch with hypnotic "Edison Balls" as he takes Angel on a stroll through his garden and tries to convince her to join him. Although Angel is unaware of Mok's true intentions, she refuses to abandon her band. Unwilling to admit defeat, Mok kidnaps her and takes his blimp to Nuke York, where his summoning, disguised as a concert, will be performed.

Following their ejection from Mok's mansion, the band find out what happened to Angel, and they follow the blimp in a stolen police car. Before they reach Nuke York, they are arrested by a border guard. Meanwhile, Angel attempts to escape with the unwitting help of Cinderella, the sister of the Schleppers. While sneaking through the ventilation system, Angel overhears Mok confirming his plans with his computer. At this time, the computer informs Mok that the only way to stop the demon is with "One voice, one heart, one song", but when Mok asks who can do this, the computer replies that there is "no one". Angel and Cindy escape the building and head to the zero-gravity dance club "Club 666", unaware that the Schleppers are following them. Dizzy's aunt bails out Omar and his friends, and tells them of the club. Angel and Cindy are intercepted and taken back to Mok's apartment, and the band tries to follow but are gradually captured one-by-one. Omar eventually bumps into Mok, who uses an impersonator to fool him into thinking that Angel has fallen for Mok. To force Angel to agree with his demands, Mok tortures them within a giant Edison Ball. He also brainwashes them to ensure that they stay out of the way. The Nuke York concert turns out to be a disaster due to a power failure. Because the invocation requires a titanic amount of electricity, Mok relocates the summoning to Ohmtown, whose power plant has enough energy. Meanwhile, one of the Schlepper brothers, Zip, expresses childlike doubts about whether their actions are good or evil, and Mok rudely dismisses both his concerns and his feelings. During the concert, a power surge causes overloads all over the city. The shock also brings Omar and his friends out of their hypnosis.

After finding a poster advertising Mok's concert, Dizzy and Stretch intend to save Angel, while Omar, still believing Mok's earlier deception, refuses to help them stop the concert. They go without him in a stolen police car, but crash at the concert too late, as Mok forces Angel to sing and open a portal to the demon's dimension. A massive demonic entity emerges from the portal and begins wreaking havoc on all those present, but Omar has a change of heart and arrives to free Angel from her electronic shackles before the demon can turn on her. When the demon attacks Omar, Zip sacrifices himself to save Omar's life. Angel tries singing to banish the demon, but her lone voice only pushes him back. But Omar joins in harmony with Angel, and thus the creature is weakened, injured and driven back into its own dimension. Mok is thrown into the portal by Toad, avenging Zip's death. As his attempts to climb out prove futile, he realizes that "no one" did not mean that the demon could not be stopped; it meant instead that "no one voice" could, acting alone; two voices and two hearts singing as one were needed for the counter-spell. Mok then plunges into the portal's depths as it seals itself shut. The duo continues their song in triumph as Mylar announces the band as the new super rock band sensation.

Rock & Rule was Nelvana's first animated feature film and it was the first Canadian animated feature to be produced in English. The 1981 Canadian-American co-production Heavy Metal was also produced in English, but was an anthology film. Le Village enchanté, a 1955 production from Quebec, was the country's first overall. The film began production in 1978 as a children's film entitled Drats!. Nelvana used $8 million to finance and produce the film." The premise remained the same, centering on a post-apocalyptic rock band composed of fuzzy mutant creatures who evolved from rats, in a world where the human race was wiped out and only the street animals: cats, dogs and rats survived. However, instead of wiring her to the soundboard, Mok transformed Angel into a guitar, and literally played her to summon the beast. The crew felt that it would be easier to animate cartoony characters but, as the film evolved, they gradually became humans with animalistic features, and Hollywood acquaintances encouraged them to skew the tone towards an older audience.

The film was produced without a well-defined script; so the crew would develop and work on sequences, leaving holes for more layers of the story to be added later.

The cost of production, $8 million in studio resources, nearly put Nelvana out of business. Over 300 Nelvana animators worked on the film. The film went $3 million over budget.