Notes from the underground.

SUBURBIA (1984) WAS A LOW-BUDGET FILM about punks taking over a suburban house, and facing neighbors and the difficulties of the bleak future the early 1980s offered. The acting is terrible, the cinematography is subpar, but it's still a great film to watch for a laugh. Best part of it is the sound track, and the music features a pre-Red Hot Chili Peppers Flea. Penelope Spheeris, who also directed the Decline films, directed this ... There were three of the Decline of Western Civilization films made, and the second is pretty damn good, although it's about the metal. This first and best one was a look at the Los Angeles punk scene of the first years of the 1980s, and the bands that comprised the scene: X, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, the Germs, and more. It's got amazing footage of early (and great) X, and hilarious band and fan interviews. Darby Crash's crash-and-burn weighs heavily as he is a much-interviewed subject in the film. The third was made in 1998 as an attempt to revisit the Los Angeles punk scene, but it wound up tired and bogged down by the relentless following around of gutter punks that made up the last half of the film ... X (The Band)--The Unheard Music (1986) is a documentary that shows the behind the scenes and history of X, a truly seminal LA band, as they are entering their twilight years (and as their releases began to get tired). They actually went on after this to go through lineup changes and to put out some more records, but it's this stuff and before where the band really made an impact (although they never hit it big back then). Interviews and live performances and a little play-acting throughout as the band tells their story make this so much more than just a documentary, but a very well-made film ... Repo Man (1984) got very mixed reviews when it came out, and starred a young Emilio Estevez pro-Breakfast Club (total pap, that). That being said, it's a great movie with a great sound track that reflects the LA early '80s scene, with the onset of hardcore, the height of the Ronald Reagan era, and the general apathy that abounded at that point in time. The appearance by the Circle Jerks as a lounge act was hilarious, and combines that with a ridiculous story about aliens in the trunk of an old car and Otto's eventual liberation, and it's a good mix ... The Cramps: Live at Napa State Mental Hospital (1984) was filmed in 1978 by Target Video folks (although it was released much later). This is an absolutely disturbingly brilliant document of the originators of rockabilly inspired psychotic punk actually playing in front of medically diagnosed mental patients. The video is quick, only seven songs, but it is the most amazing Cramps stuff that would later appear on Gravest Hits and Songs the Lord Taught Us. The mental patients get up and sing and dance with the band, and how in the hell this was set up and supervised is beyond me. I've heard that later versions of this have been transferred by a poor quality original, but it's still got to be worth seeing ... One to avoid: Sid and Nancy. It's like the punk equivalent of the movie Thrashin' for skateboarders--it's not bad to watch, although it's painful at times, and it's obviously tailored to a "wider audience," but there is a great quote by Johnny Rotten's character: "Sex is boring hippy shit" ... An honorable mention goes to The Punk Rock Movie, archival footage of the Roxy in London, with some of the great bands of the time, but not the most polished stuff ... And of course there are movies that are punk as fuck but without being about or with punk rock music, shit like Taxi Driver, Mad Max, The Road Warrior, Blade Runner, Clockwork Orange (a film banned in England when it came out, as it was thought to inspire gang violence, and of course later the singer for the Addicts adopted the look) and more ... All worth watching as well.