Rock: It's Your Decision

1982 "A stirring portrayal of teenage conflicts over music"
1.4| 0h52m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 01 March 1982 Released
Producted By: Olive's Film Productions Inc.
Country:
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

The parents of a young man force him to go without rock music for thirty days, and as a result, he discovers how rock music is a tool of Satan to control people.

Genre

Drama, Music, Family

Watch Online

Rock: It's Your Decision (1982) is now streaming with subscription on Prime Video

Director

John Taylor

Production Companies

Olive's Film Productions Inc.

Rock: It's Your Decision Videos and Images
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Rock: It's Your Decision Audience Reviews

Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.
Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.
Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
Zbigniew_Krycsiwiki Purports to tell the story of a young Christian man's discovery that rock music is (allegedly) evil, and his subsequent salvation, but film ends up showing us a guy becoming so unlikeable, homophobic, and holier-than-thou that we start to root for his friends to save themselves, and get away from this fruitcake.He ends up completely alienated from all his friends, and his girlfriend, and becomes so utterly paranoid about the evils of rock music, that it ruins his life.There's this film's hero for you! Imagine if Jack Nicholson had found Christianity, rather than go bonkers, in The Shining, and it had been an after school special.Horribly outdated, even for the 1980s, it seems more like 1940s Bible belt propaganda for the already converted. Or, was the purpose of this film to show how religion can, and does, ruin some peoples' lives? The film's climactic sermon makes it especially difficult to tell.
Lee Eisenberg No doubt you've seen footage of clergymen telling people that rock 'n' roll is evil. It was inevitable that there would be a movie about a rock fan who has to choose between Jesus and his favorite music. "Rock: It's Your Decision" is more subdued than I predicted. I expected an hour of pastors shouting about how rock music pollutes our minds. Instead I got a lousy attempt at a character study. The main character likes rock but soon "realizes" that much of it is overtly sexual and even "satanic". Yeah, like I'm sure that everyone who listens to rock is going to become a diabolical, sex-crazed psychopath.Basically, this movie isn't even over-the-top enough to function as an accidental comedy like "Reefer Madness". It's just boring.
Sandcooler Jeff is a 30-year-old teenage boy who has it all. He has a loyal best friend (who is kind of a tool, but still), a fun, easygoing girlfriend and his life is full of fun activities, including going to "the rock concert". Kids in those days apparently didn't bother to mention band names, "the rock concert" was clear enough. There's only one problem though: Jeff is also a devote Christian, which doesn't mix well with the evils of AC/DC, KISS and I'm not joking, Barry Manilow. Thankfully Jeff has gotten rid of his sinful addiction well before halfway, so that gives him plenty of time to convince others. The movie sorta meanders along until it reaches its legendary climax, the fantastic speech scene in the church. It has gotten a second life on Youtube now, but if you're really busy: the bottom line is that every rock song ever is about either sex or satanism. Santana's "Evil Ways" starts with the line "you have to change your evil ways", but actually listening to fifteen seconds of every song was a bit too much research. "One Of These Nights" by The Eagles is also evil. The Captain and Tennille, can't get more evil than that. Getting the target audience for this kind of film to hate stuff like The Rolling Stones' "Sympathy For The Devil" or AC/DC's "Highway To Hell" is a cakewalk, but somehow they got cocky and tried to see what they could get away with. Which perhaps was a good thing, because at least the movie stuck around because of that and we can still enjoy it tremendously. On the other hand it's weird how this can serve as propaganda: Jeff starts out as this happy, somewhat awkward but nice guy, then Jesus somehow turns him into a grumpy, unbearable know-it-all who loses everyone dear to him. Not a big endorsement I'd say, but the Lord works in mysterious ways.
Ddey65 ***UNAPOLOGETIC SPOILERS*** I probably shouldn't use the Cinema Snob's YouTube videos as a form of reference. Not because I disagree with that video, in fact I agree completely. Nevertheless I saw that video, and there were comments about it from people who claimed to be Born-Again Christians and disregard the movie's message about rock and roll being evil. Christian Rock actually came out more than a decade before this movie did, but I always thought it was a product of the 1970's, primarily with the advent of rock operas like "Godspell," and "Jesus Christ, Superstar." I was wrong; it actually came out before the "Summer of Love."Produced by a bunch of churches in Alabama, the alleged hero of the movie is a teenager named "Jeff" who was around the same age I was at the time. Jeff is in a born-again Christian family, and he likes rock and roll. His parents can't stand him blasting it on his stereo, and his mother decides to call the youth pastor at his local parish about it. Jeff has a few friends, including a cute girlfriend, named Melissa, a ten-to-eleven year old Ford Maverick, and an after-school job. Aside from the hassling from his parents and the repression of his church, he seems to have a relatively decent life... that is until Brother Jim Owen, that youth pastor his mom called up approaches him and tries to get him not to listen to any rock music for two weeks. At the same time, he gives the kid a book designed to con kids into thinking all rock music is evil, which obviously has to be loaded with misinterpretations. Unfortunately, he starts to believe this crap. And to make matters worse, within the first of those weeks, he was supposed to take his girlfriend to a concert by an unknown band for her birthday. No real bands are shown anywhere in this movie, although plenty are randomly mentioned. Among his idiotically new-found "information," Jeff seems to find it utterly horrifying that 12-year-olds would buy KISS albums, which is strange because among metal-heads, it's commonly accepted that somebody over the age of 14 who buys one is a metal newbie, or a wimp, or a retard.Meanwhile Jeff is completely brainwashed and starts losing his friends including his blonde babe Melissa, yet even as he's telling them all that all rock music is evil, he still can't stop playing it and still can't get along with his mom. After barging from one last party he gets into another fight with her. Finally he drives off in yet another huff and parks out into some snow-covered vacant lot (Yes, kids. The Winter of 1981-82 had snow down south), and begs God for forgiveness and pleads with him on how to deal with his dilemma. He returns to the party for one last time and tells them all that he's not going to be their friends anymore because they're all so "sinful." The next thing we know we see him at the same church delivering his own sermon on behalf of Brother Owen, apparently trying warn the kids on how they're being suckered into a life of sin by listening to KISS, The Eagles, AC-DC, Jefferson Airplane/Starship, The Rolling Stones, and other bands that kids of the 1980's were holding onto as they were trying to hold down disco and rap, and overlook new wave. The Cinema Snob covers the movie's claim that the Captain & Tenille's music was somehow evil, but he didn't mention the claim about Barry Manilow. It's hard to imagine Daryl Dragon, Toni Tenille, and Barry Manilow being put in the same league as Angus Young, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Don Henley or Glenn Frey, and yet it does just that. I wonder what he would think of bands like Stryper, Jars of Clay, Velour 100, Creed, or Switchfoot.I gave this movie two stars, but I'm being generous here. The reasons in no particular order are because one, the kids in this movie were roughly the same age as me, as I mentioned earlier, two because the actress playing Jeff's girlfriend Melissa was gorgeous, and three because of one background song I'm curious about when Jeff is in the record store and narrates about how "the beat just grabbed me." Other than that, the only thing I could recommend this for is a somewhat morbid laugh.