Vicious Lips (1987)

Sorry, this movie sucks

Don't Believe the Hype

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

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.

I am a big Albert Pyun fan (The Sword and the Sorcerer and Cyborg being my favorites), I will watch anything he does. I just came across Vicious Lips on Netflix, and remembered thinking (as a kid) that this movie was a lot of fun. So I just watched it for the first time in probably 20 years. It's fun, if for nothing else, for the 80's big hair and synth music. The premise is simple (and never gets any more interesting), an intergalactic all girls band (in total 80's big hair style) gets a chance for their big break, if they can make it to a club on another planet in time... Yup, that's the plot! So the girls board a space ship carrying a caged monster (don't get excited, it's not at all as cool as it sounds) and head off to there gig...I remembered this movie being really funny and having lots of T & A, neither is true. I'd classify it as cute (not funny) and it has next to no nudity (except a brief scene with two beautiful ladies on the sand planet). And the caged "monster" is more of Lon Chaney Jr Wolfman than a monster. The all girl band is fun, with all the girls being fun and believable as and 80's hair band. One of the biggest problems is there are only a couple locations in the movie, and it restricts the story immensely (even for a Pyun film!). Once the girls are on their way (about 30 minutes into the film), the ship crash lands on a desert planet, and the rest of the movie takes place here. The films lack of budget shows, and didn't even try to look like it had one. If you are an Albert Pyun fan, check it out, its definitely worth a watch. If you like bad sci- fi or bad 80's movies, give it a try. All others should probably stay away...

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.

"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!"