The “Rock Aliens” are of an undisclosed species from an unmentioned planet and travel the galaxy in a spaceship shaped like a guitar. The instrument panels on their craft are musical keyboards. Their robot buddy (who strongly resembles a gigantic Pez dispenser) awakens the crew from suspended animation by removing them from a refrigerator - in miniaturized form, mind you - and then puts them in a pneumatic tube, where they are dragged crudely using fishing wire until they plop out, full-sized, out of a children’s slide. Why even bother to continue? That’s your fifty cents worth of entertainment right there!

But, no there is far, far more to VOYAGE OF THE ROCK ALIENS. The aliens descend on a strange town in America named “Speelburgh” (I swear!) that seems completely devoid of adults, save a decrepit Ruth Gordon as the sheriff. They are drawn to the synthesizer heavy sounds of The Pack, a terrible rock and roll group led by Frankie (Craig Sheffer). Frankie does not say relax, nor does he go to Hollywood. Frankly, Frankie is a bit of a jerkwad. He demands The Pack only perform where and when he wants, even though he never seems to want to play with them. In fact, he only sings one song with the band in the entire picture.

The leader of the aliens, played by Tom Nolan, falls hard for Frankie’s girl, played by Pia Zadora. He indicates his arousal for the girl by exploding, literally. Nevertheless, the brain-dead denizens of Speelbergh has no idea these guys dressed in bright pink jumpsuits are aliens. Then again, maybe they just assumed they were a Devo cover band or something.

Eventually a rivalry develops between the aliens’ band, and The Pack, who sound and look an awful lot like the Stray Cats, and that leads to even more terrible 80s rock songs in a movie filled to the brim with them. The film even kicks off with a full-fledged music video totally unrelated to the plot, save that Zadora is the female lead in it. There she sings a duet called “When The Rain Begins to Fall” with Jermaine Jackson. In the credits, Jackson is credited as “Rain” which means the song is about him going bungee jumping or something.

The movie is terribly lame, though I give it credit for not taking itself too seriously and for attempting, though failing, to provide its audience with some intentional humor. Unfortunately, its only genuine laughs are the ones at its own expense, like how the aliens disguise their robot buddy as a fire hydrant so as to not draw suspicion. But they make it a walking, talking, fire hydrant with a floppy lid; not exactly the most inconspicuous public works project. Oh hey, guess how long it takes for a dog to go to pee on it! Anyway, VOYAGE OF THE ROCK ALIENS is about half as classy as public urination, and a whole lot more fun. Check out a good old video store for a copy to rent.