| Rock Odyssey | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Joseph Barbera William Hanna Additional director: Robert Taylor (uncredited) [1] |
| Written by | Robert Taylor Joseph Barbera Neal Barbera |
| Produced by | Joseph Barbera William Hanna |
| Starring | Scatman Crothers |
| Edited by | Warner E. Leighton Margaret Webb |
| Music by | Hoyt Curtin |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Worldvision Enterprises |
Release date | July 13, 1987 (Los Angeles International Animation Celebration) |
Running time | 72 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Rock Odyssey is an animated feature film produced by Hanna-Barbera for a television release in 1987.[2] Directed by Robert Taylor (but credited to William Hanna and Joseph Barbera on the final print),[3] with storyboards by Pete Alvarado.[4] This features Scatman Crothers in his final film appearance, released following his death. The film was dedicated to his memory.
Scatman Crothers provides the voice of a living jukebox who narrates the story. Laura is a mysterious female idol who seeks out to find her one true love after being separated as children through the history of music.
In the 1950s, she quickly meets a greaser named Billy. Their relationship is born out of a love for dancing and rock and roll. However, Billy gets into trouble with a street gang who beat him up. Laura helps him get back on his feet by giving him a prize she won at a carnival game. Billy’s car becomes out of control, which worsens the relationship despite attempts to make things better such as going to a drive-in movie and prom. At prom, Billy crashes his car, and later that night, Laura decides to break up with him. Billy tries to win her back by singing, but inadvertently floods the venue with a tidal wave of punch. The singing alerts a string on monsters, which quickly catch on to Billy and chase after him, resulting in the prom being a complete disaster and ending with him all alone.
In the 1960s, Laura quickly meets Bob, a piano playing hippie, while at a peace rally. The two of them hit it off after Bob is quick to save Laura from being chased by a swarm of police officers with siren heads. Upon heading to Bob’s apartment, Laura learns about Bob’s past as a musical activist and begins to recall traumatic memories. To get his mind off, he and Laura read a storybook titled Sir Gleam Fights the Evil Tooth, however despite the book being cartoony in nature, both Bob and Laura are shocked by the book’s depiction of warfare. While Bob recounts how he got his ways to Laura, a police officer begins rapping at his door. Upon opening, the officer turns into an undead soldier who delivers Bob a draft notice which in turn transforms into a death certificate for Bob. To get their minds off of things, the two head for a walk in the park, however things only get worse as Bob begins to hallucinate and perceive inanimate objects as military weapons, terrifying him further. Bob is no longer able to view the real world and starts seeing hellish and scarring scenery through two women using a Quija board. Unable to deal with Bob’s trauma, Laura decides to leave and gets on a comically small bus to get out of town, only to be taunted by her own monsters. Bob returns, now controlled by marionette strings, and ends up morphing into a skeleton soldier and catches fire, leaving Laura heartbroken.
In the 1970s, Jack, a fisherman at a winter port and his pet lobster head out to sea. The lobster informs Jack of Laura, who is discovered to be frozen in ice. She quickly thaws and Jack helps provide her with warmth and comfort. Through humor and care, the two begin to have a dynamic. While another, bigger boat is trying to harpoon a nearby whale, the three express opposition to killing the whale and succeed in cutting the harpoon line. However Jack gets caught in the rope and the boat collides with the bigger boat, causing Jack to drown in the water. Laura, the lobster, as well as a seagull all make it to the lifeboat, and the lobster retrieves Jack’s body. Looking at him, Laura begins to flashback to her days as a youth sailing and exploring with her male friend, getting into treachery and culminating with her having to witness the death of her friend, mirroring her having to say goodbye to Jack. The lifeboat’s motor backfires and falls into the water, the three are greeted by some monsters, and a thunderstorm occurs, leading to a bleak site. Luckily, Jack’s spirit comes by and the lobster gladly goes with him. After waving goodbye, the seagull hands Laura the remains of a bottle containing alcohol, which helps her get her mind off of things.
In the 1980s, Laura, now under the alias of Peggy Sue, moves into a new apartment and gets a job working at a technology company. At her apartment, she meets a monster guy referred to by the Jukebox narrator as the Joker who has several affairs with her. Evident by mishaps at work, Laura becomes significantly more clumsy and after trying to use a supercomputer gets knocked out. Upon waking up, she is greeted by the man from the computer screen, who is extremely kind and gives her a cab ride home. The man morphs into Billy, Bob and Jack, which inspires Laura to retrace her steps. She stops by a dealership and gets a new car, and drives to the port town and mistakes a local fisherman for Jack. At a gas station, she notices a man playing piano inside of a shipping truck and is disappointed upon learning that it is not Bob. She finds an abandoned diner and plugs in a jukebox, causing the spirit of Billy to briefly appear, disappointing her more. The Joker returns, holding a jewel Laura left behind in Billy’s car on prom night. Laura is quick to follow him and he reveals himself to be Laura’s True Love, being a combination of Billy, Bob, and Jack. The Joker takes the form of his truest self and he and Laura happily reunite.
Production of Rock Odyssey began in 1981 at Hanna-Barbera's short-lived feature animation unit, as a follow-up project to Heidi's Song. It was intended as a prime-time TV special for ABC, and was mentioned in a fall 1981 H-B trade ad as being slated to air in the spring of 1982, but the project was shelved after executives at H-B and corporate parent Taft Entertainment saw the film's graphic imagery, particularly relating to the 1960s and the Vietnam War. (Subsequently, Robert Taylor left the studio, and H-B closed their feature animation unit, after the box-office failure of Heidi's Song.)[6]
The program was shelved by Hanna-Barbera, who intended to retool the program; at a March 1983 Congressional hearing on children's television, ABC children's programming VP Squire Rushnell mentioned that it was slated to air that year.[7] However, the film remained on the shelf until the mid-80s, at which time a new sequence was added, featuring classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon clips set to "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go". This sequence was intended to bring the film "up to date", since the rest of the soundtrack only covered songs up to 1980. Hanna-Barbera and Worldvision Enterprises made Rock Odyssey available for international television distribution in 1987, and the film is mentioned in trade advertisements from that year. (Ironically, this final completed and released version seems to retain all of the "offensive" scenes which had led H-B to shelve the project back in the early 80s.)
Rock Odyssey has not yet been aired on TV, or released on VHS, DVD or Blu-ray in the United States by Warner Home Video, however, it was screened at the Second Los Angeles International Animation Celebration in July 1987. It has also aired on TV in Spain and several Latin American countries, with the narration dubbed into Spanish.
Despite all this, clips from the film were used for HBTV and a poster of Rock Odyssey can be seen in The Flintstones TV movie Hollyrock-a-Bye Baby.
In the fall of 2010, the film was aired (in English) on Boomerang Southeast Asia.
As of 2023, the film is available (unofficially) to watch in its entirety on the Internet Archive.
The film has no dialogue and few sound effects, instead relying almost entirely on music for its soundtrack. Below is a list of all the songs featured in the film.
