VICIOUS LIPS (1986) - A Queer Retrospective on Albert Pyun's Forgotten and Often Misunderstood Masterpiece

Albert Pyun's 1986 genre-and-mind-bending film VICIOUS LIPS sits at the intersection of 1980s neon camp, women-in-rock fantasies, and Pyun's flair for grit, grime, and glam.

The film revolves around a desperate, all-female, hyper-synth future-glam band called Vicious Lips. The band tragically loses their self-absorbed but (apparently) wildly talented lead singer just hours before they land a make-or-break interstellar gig at none other than the galaxy's wildest club, Maxine's Radioactive Dream. Gasp! Pyun, you've done it again.

In true Albert Pyun fashion, he drops us the viewer directly into this futuristic alien world of neon glam hyper-capitalist dystopia without much of an explanation. And we should thank him for it, too, because that's precisely what makes this film so compelling. But for now, let's briefly keep going through the plot.

Without a lead singer, the band is in trouble. Luckily, their sleazy yet somehow empathetic manager Matty takes charge and drafts anything-but-glam Judy Jetson as a replacement. It should be noted that he drafts her from what appears to be an amateur talent show a la Showtime at the Apollo, but I digress.

From there, the movie takes off quite literally as Matty and crew commandeer an old, battered starship carrying some, well, interesting, cargo unbeknownst to them and they set off for the distant planet of Spectra. En route, Matty unfortunately misses quite a few warnings from the ship's computer (which, I think is my favorite depiction of AI in cinema of all-time) and the ship crashes on a barren desert planet.

The band sends Matty out to look for help while they stay back on the ship to try and figure out a plan. Little do they know that their ship is carrying some dangerous cargo – a Venusian man-beast by the name of Milo.

What happens next is really, in my opinion, open for interpretation. Pyun himself never actually resolved what it is or how it's supposed to be understood. But, essentially, Judy/Ace falls into an extremely psychedelic and surreal dreamscape world where she appears to endure many metaphorical/bad trip scenarios that one could argue represent the perils of the entertainment industry and/or fame among other things.

Ultimately, Judy powers through the nightmarish vision quest and "wakes up" on the way to perform for the crowd at Maxine's Radioactive Dream as lead singer of the Vicious Lips. Her trials behind her seemingly just a test of her ability to truly handle the weight of being an intergalactic pop star.

Ultimately, if I'm being honest, the plot is often incomprehensible. But, Pyun pulls it off in a way that is surrealist and punk enough to work, at least in my opinion.

It seems that this film gets a bad rap. There isn't much information about it on the internet at all. Even tapping in to the mysterious powers of AI and using OpenAI's latest o3-pro for Deep Research yields only a few snippets of information about the film. I can understand why the film is critically panned – it is a low budget sci-fi B-movie after all – but I think there's a lot of really cool stuff in here that doesn't get talked about nearly enough.

So... Now that I've gotten the obligatory plot explanation and general background fluff out of the way, why is this movie "queer"?

Queerness is something that is different for everyone. Is Vicious Lips a "LGBT film"? No, certainly not. At least, I don't think that was Pyun's intention. But queerness is punk rock and Albert Pyun is most certainly punk as fuck.

The turn of phrase that came up the first time I watched VICIOUS LIPS with fellow Dreaming Crow contributor hazyincolour was, "This is like Jem and the Holograms for alt trans girls" and I think that's the most succinct way of describing the film for those who can understand what that means.

Transitioning (changing genders) is a different process and a different experience for everyone. No two transitions are the same. But, for many of us, transitioning can be something akin to running off with a rock band to try and make it in the gritty, grimy world of show business. You'll often lose friends, family, and face countless hardships along the way. But you do it because you know it's what you want from life. You do it precisely because it's hard and because you know the reward will be worth it in the end. A lot of that process I believe comes through in the story of Vicious Lips and particularly with Judy Jetson / Ace's journey to becoming a star.

Early on in the film, just when Judy has joined the band, we see a scene of the band getting ready to play a show. They're in the dingiest, dirtiest dressing room you can imagine, and Matty is generally being a dick and berating them as they're getting ready. But, what I love about this film and Pyun's writing of women in general is that the band members don't take any shit. The banter between them is also extremely natural and, I believe, was probably adlibbed a lot of times throughout this script.

There are bits of dialogue in here that instantly transport me back to my early transition days. "Who left my lip brush in the ashtray?" is one of my absolute favorite lines and is something I can identify with that I don't find in many other films.

There is no glitz and glamour here. Only raw, dirty, painful struggle. And let's not sugarcoat it – that's what transitioning is. These girls are finding themselves. Of course, this isn't exclusively a queer experience, but Pyun's world here showcases what it's like when you're thrust out into the world completely on your own, scared and confused, unsure of who you even are. Judy Jetson in particular begins the film as an innocent girl who just likes to sing. But upon joining Vicious Lips she is stripped of her identity and born anew as Ace. These are all things that I believe most trans folks can identify with. Media does not have to be explicitly queer to have queer undertones, and that's what we have here with VICIOUS LIPS.

The middle portion of the film is what I interpret to be a primarily psychological journey for not only Judy/Ace but for the entire band, and Matty too to a certain extent. There is a particularly surreal bit towards the end which involves Judy in what appears to be a psychedelic trip where she faces many mental trials and challenges.

It's very unclear what this part of the film is supposed to mean. I think it's a big reason why this film is generally critically panned. The majority of the second/third act is extremely surreal and vague, but I believe this is purposeful. This represents Judy's internal struggle with what her journey to becoming a rock star means. It's disruptive, it's terrifying, it seems like at any moment you could be completely consumed by it, killed by it, but yet you press on. Judy even breaks down at points, "I want to go home! I want to go home!", but home is long gone. There is no turning back now. There is no home. This is her home now.

This all culminates in Judy coming back to reality from her "trip" and learning that all that she had just experienced was a dream or, something like a spiritual journey. She had passed the test, and now she could be who she was destined to be – a star.

(Feel free to listen while you read the rest of the article. The song is amazing.)

The band, and particularly Judy, absolutely crush the performance and are implied to go on to be intergalactic superstars.

Queerness is something that is within all of us. It's simply an act of radical honesty. To be queer is to know oneself intimately, and to express yourself as true and honestly as one can, consequences be damned. It's punk, it's brutal, it's the hardest thing to do. But the rewards are immense.

Albert Pyun may not have even known it at the time, but in my mind he's made one of the queerest films in existence, and that makes VICIOUS LIPS one of my favorites. I've never felt a more intimate connection to a movie than this throw-away B-movie but I'm so grateful that it exists. We can all learn a little something from it, and I hope that if you're reading this and you've never seen it before, you'll give it a chance with an open mind.

I give VICIOUS LIPS a rating of 9/10. Dark, gritty, fun, inspirational, and unabashedly queer/punk to its core.

AI technologies were used to create the header image for this article and assist in research. All writing was done by me, a human being.