Add songs to this and you could call this "Punk Rock Follies of 1984". It was ironically released the day after my 21st birthday, and over 38 years later, I finally got around to watching it. Living in the not so nice parts of L. A. when this was made, it certainly was nostalgic to see sections of the city I'd drive through windows up and doors locked. Most of it is set way on the other side of downtown L. A. in the industrial section where you did not want to be even an hour before dark. Skid row times ten. Add punk rockers, gang members and something deadly in the trunk, and you got a cult movie that people still talk about as if it had just opened in the theater.
When Harry Dean Stanton is pulled over by the police and the officer checks the back of the trunk, I can just hear everyone in the theater screaming in delight. I didn't know what to make of this part of the story because it cropped up so infrequently afterwards, and other parts of the story seem to just be pulled off the cover of a gossip rag and tied into the script. Another hysterical scene involves Emilio Estaves getting fired from his job, reacting to his boss and the security guard in the most hysterical of ways.
There are many familiar character players among the large supporting cast, and involved in the story in a way that becomes more perplexing. This is a movie that on the surface the audience should have hated, but it is presented in a way that is hysterically funny and a definite metaphor for life in America in 1984, definitely an anti-Reagan rant from liberal Hollywood. It is not bogged down with song hits of the time so you can enjoy the film on its own merits which in spite of being impossible to pull out are plenty.
When Harry Dean Stanton is pulled over by the police and the officer checks the back of the trunk, I can just hear everyone in the theater screaming in delight. I didn't know what to make of this part of the story because it cropped up so infrequently afterwards, and other parts of the story seem to just be pulled off the cover of a gossip rag and tied into the script. Another hysterical scene involves Emilio Estaves getting fired from his job, reacting to his boss and the security guard in the most hysterical of ways.
There are many familiar character players among the large supporting cast, and involved in the story in a way that becomes more perplexing. This is a movie that on the surface the audience should have hated, but it is presented in a way that is hysterically funny and a definite metaphor for life in America in 1984, definitely an anti-Reagan rant from liberal Hollywood. It is not bogged down with song hits of the time so you can enjoy the film on its own merits which in spite of being impossible to pull out are plenty.