| The
Bad Film Society Rocks!
Rockers,
punks, and the public are invited to the next Bad
Film Society pot luck dinner and movie event. Bring
something special for a totally amazing pot luck
dinner followed by righteously crappy cinema. There
will also be door prizes! What fun!
The
feature will be Rock 'n' Roll High School
starring The Ramones. A pack of cartoon '50s hubcap
thieves time-warped to the hedonistic '70s, the
Ramones were so stunningly out of step with the
glitzy mainstream that they made uncoolness cool.
Their gawky diffidence spawned what's known as punk
, and yet the youth-culture swamis at Roger Corman's
New World Pictures were sharp enough to see that
their three-chord Bowery beatdown
had more in common with the prior decade's bubblegum
pop than with the
Class of '77's safety-pinned sloganeers. As a result,
this tailor-made vehicle from 1979--a celebration
of pizza, mild petting, and the iconic power of
leather jackets draped over scrawny frames--is more
AIP
beach-party flick than rock 'n' roll swindle, a
loving send-up of Corman's drive-in delinquency
epics and don't-knock-the-rock B movies. Despite
the end-of-the-'70s setting, the sensibility is
pure Eisenhower era right down to the costumes and
the PG-rated sex. Our peppy punkette heroine Riff
Randell dresses and acts like a Happy Days carhop
even as she wages culture war on the Ramones' behalf
against stern Miss Togar the new principal at Vince
Lombardi High ("where winning is better than
losing").
The film has a sugar-rush energy level, aided by
the blitzkrieg bopping of the Ramones in all their
rip-kneed, splay-legged glory--a poignant sight
now that Joey and Dee Dee Ramone are in rock 'n'
roll heaven. To see the eternally young Joey singing--propped
against a mike stand with raceless
grace--is to realize the irrelevance of the fine
line in rock between brilliant and stoopid.
During
the pot luck dinner on view will be music videos
by Devo. The band was a distinct, well-executed
concept that remained equally rooted in both Dadaism
and anti-corporate worldviews that ultimately drove
away a public that couldn’t care less. Their
loss – the delirious creativity of Devo is
obvious throughout. The videos are mini-shows of
Modern Art, slapsticks silliness and social commentary.
Devo proves it's a beautiful, wiggly world we live
in.
Feel
free to bring some old videos you'd like to get
rid of as door
prizes! |
