Dante’s Weekend Double: The Punks Come Marching In For Week Three Of “July’s Youth In Revolt” In ‘SLC Punk’ And ‘Suburbia’
Oi! Oi! Oi!
After last week’s trip to the 1990s, we’re going back to where the nihilism started, the 1980s Punk scene: A decade of aggression, distortion, and more adolescent angst than a COD lobby on Saturday night.
Rebellion for the sake of rebellion in a world full of fakers, and greedy corporate sellouts – lace up, posers! It’s time to hit up the local club, start a moshpit, and watch these two Punk icons play back-to-back sets.
SLC Punk! (Beyond Films/Blue Tulip Productions/Straight Edge)
Steveo (Matthew Lillard) is a punk rocker, and a self-proclaimed anarchist from Salt Lake City, Utah, in the year 1985 (even though the film itself is from 1998). His father is an ex-hippie lawyer who wants him to follow in his footsteps, but Steveo isn’t some establishment sellout.
Instead, he roams those Latter-Day wastelands with his best friend, Heroin Bob (Michael Goorjian), and their slim tribe of Punks.
Heroin Bob (and not Jesus, Sean) isn’t called that because he’s a junkie. He’s actually afraid of drugs aside from cigarettes, booze, and eventually Percodan (sad spoilers). In fact, Steveo can’t even get him to take an aspirin. The name comes from Bob’s deep fear of needles, and his violent reaction to them. Let’s just hope that he never gets an infection.
When they’re not thrashing at a show, or driving cars into lakes, they’re usually beating the crap out of mods who themselves beat up skinheads. Skinheads took out the heavy metal guys, heavy metal guys beat the living crap out of new wavers, and new wavers didn’t do anything because they were the new hippies.
The movie walks a fine line between observation and satire. The director (James Merendino) could’ve dug at the Mormons harder, but what can you do?
Mathew Lillard gives a surprisingly great performance, seeing as how most of the characters he plays are loud, supercilious douchebags who grow more tiresome from one chewed scene to the next. The only difference here is that he occasionally shows a flash of endearing qualities throughout the movie.
He breaks down all the different tribes through narration, like a blue-haired Ferris Bueller fresh out of an Anthropology class, and we see his transition from an angry anarchist to “nothing more than a g@dd@mn trendy ass poser.”
It’s a touching story with laughs, awesome music, and let’s not forget SEX & VIOLENCE…SEX & VIOLENCE…SEX. AND. VIOLENCE. Find it all and SLC Punk over on TUBI.
Suburbia (Suburbia Productions)
If the ending of that last movie didn’t leave a small crack across your hearts, don’t worry. This next one will shatter it like a brick through a stained-glass window. From director Penelope Spheeris, and Producer Roger Corman (RIP) comes the definitive Punk Rock Flick from 1983, Suburbia.
It’s a film that separates the truest from the tourists. It’s about a group of teen runaways who call themselves “TR” (The Rejected), and they also have those initials branded into their forearms for initiation. They live in an abandoned housing district in the Los Angeles suburb of Long Beach and venture out to see killer live shows.
There are at least a dozen of them squatting in this house that the county government bought up when both the builders and the bank underwriting them went bust as casualties of California’s early-80s mania for real estate speculation.
Aside from the toddler-mauling stray dogs roaming the empty neighborhood, it’s just them. Or at least until the locals are made aware of their presence.
The suburbanites have a militant version of the neighborhood watch called “Citizens Against Crime” (or just CAC) that patrol the quiet streets of their sun-drenched utopia. They don’t appreciate the young punks raiding their garages for food in the middle of the night, and that’s when the turf war begins.
Let’s just say that things get violent between them, and those CAC suckers before it all comes to a tragic end where nobody wins.
Where SLC Punk touched on with nostalgic humor, this film showed the truth for so many young people at the time. It wasn’t malls, skate parks, or Warped Tour. It was a place where broken souls from broken homes gathered and were already feeling the grip of a system that was getting ready to throw us all overboard in the next few years.
This was adolescence for so many, and they saw the first cracks starting to appear. To add to the authenticity, Spheeris hired local kids and musicians to play the roles, which include performances by Punk greats D.I., True Sounds Of Liberty (or just T.S.O.L.), The Vandals, and let’s not forget about Flea as Razzle.
This isn’t the type of movie most people would expect from the director of Wayne’s World, The Little Rascals, and The Beverly Hillbillies, but this underappreciated classic is still her best. Roam Suburbia on TUBI.
NEXT: Dante’s Weekend Double: ‘The Doom Generation’ & ‘Kids’ In Week Two Of “July’s Youth In Revolt”
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