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Simply Perfect

Just what I expected

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Director Penelope Spheeris captures the incredibly infectious filth and howling savage fury that fueled the Los Angeles punk music scene of the late 1970's and early 1980's with a bracing acuity that ensures that this documentary is both informative and entertaining in equal measure. Moreover, Spheeris neither glorifies nor vilifies the bands and fans featured herein; instead she wisely lets the punks speak for themselves so they can either slit their own throats or state a credible case on punk's behalf. It's also a hoot to see stoked audience members eagerly engage in stage diving and slam dancing. The groups who perform throughout certainly deliver the grungy goods: The Circle Jerks are dynamic and exciting, X seriously smoke, the lead singer of the Germs makes a hilarious clumsy fool of himself on stage by constantly dropping the microphone, Catholic Discipline are hysterically funny, and Black Flag put on a hell of an incendiary show, but it's Fear who clearly cop the top honors by whipping the audience up into a ferocious frenzy thanks to charismatic frontman Lee Ving's exceptional aptitude for pushing people's buttons. Super raw and wild, it's far better and more fun than jabbing needles in your eyes.

Penelope Spheeris (of "Wayne's World" fame) made her mark with the documentary "The Decline of Western Civilization", about the LA punk scene in the late '70s and early '80s. Most of the documentary features interviews with the punks and footage of concerts (which often turn violent). Overall, we get to see how the punk movement was a reaction to the hippies: whereas the hippies were into being natural, the punks wanted to have themselves as altered as possible, what with spiked hair and all. But also, we see how they're really disaffected and sometimes becoming skinheads.Anyway, this is a really great time capsule. We're not really sure whether we want to long for that era or feel repulsed by it. But this is definitely not a documentary that will leave you neutral. Truly worth seeing.

One of the major successes to The Decline of Western Civilization, filmmaker Penelope Spheeris' indie breakthrough, is that it can perhaps appeal to non-punk fans as to the hardcore ones. More importantly, it captures a moment in history before the movement became completely "market-worthy", when bands would play (or, at the least, try to play in some cases) in dank, dirty clubs to an audience that had as much self-respect as they had respect for the bands. For the fan, such as myself, there are precious interviews with some of the quasi-legends of LA's punk-scum, some dead, some still living and still hard-working in the scene. Performances and interviews include the likes of The Circle Jerks, X, Black Flag (in the pre-Henry Rollins days), Catholic Discipline, Fear, the Alice Bag Band, and most memorable (in my opinion) being the Germs. While I knew of a few of the bands and performers in the film (The Jerks and Black Flag mostly), I had only heard rumors about lead singer (the late) Darby Crash, and from the footage in the film he seems to be one of the, if not the, epitomes of the punk movement. He doesn't take himself too seriously, he loves to drink, sometimes when he speaks it's complete gibberish, and the attitude he brings on stage is both funny and in a free-form way exhilarating. A performer like that would probably scare Steve Miller and Jackson Browne out of their skins.Decline of Western Civilization may not turn on every non-punk fan that seeks this film out (it's hard to find on video), but it shouldn't necessarily turn them off either. Like a kind of anthropologist that's sneaked into the party, Spheeris gets the behavior of these people down pat, their motives, their likes and hatreds, and the power that was their on and off-screen personas. A few of them almost come off as normal, some don't, but they're only offensive to those who aren't too open to things. On top of that, the film is a must-see to the kinds of kids that think they're punk fans just because they listen to Good Charlotte and Blink-182: if you want to get the real scoop on the movement and genre of rock you profess to love, give the pioneers a chance. A

Everyone who's seen "Decline" knows how great it is. My favorite segments are those featuring Black Flag and Fear, because they're the funniest and the most visceral. Still, all the bands that actually STARTED the Los Angeles punk scene, apart from the Germs, are missing from this film. Where are the Weirdos, the Screamers, the Dils, and the Zeros? The Alice Bag Band is here, but they were better when they were simply the Bags. The Germs' segment is depressing. The very brief glimpses of Catholic Discipline were fascinating and made me wish that this band had at least recorded some demos. As a documentary, "Decline" is flawed...but it's indispensable, too. To find out about the bands this film didn't cover, read "We Got the Neutron Bomb" by Marc Spitz and Brendan Mullen. And to see what was going on in San Francisco right around the same time, get the much shorter (but equally brilliant) documentary "Louder Faster Shorter", directed by Mindaugis Bagdon. This twenty-minute burst of pure punk actually *does* feature the Dils--along with UXA, the Avengers, the Sleepers, and the Mutants.