Punk to me has always been
epitomized by Dead Kennedys. For educational purposes, I love a whole slew
of punk bands, from Negative Approach
to Dead Boys to D.I. to The Ramones (the
only one of those listed here I ever got to see live, though sadly without Dee Dee, but it was still outstanding),
and back again. Anyway, DK was unique in punk. There was strong musicianship involved in
their song writing (and no, that doesn’t mean that I think that other punk
bands are musically talentless). Jello Biafra’s vibrato vocals were
singular (and a blast to imitate to this day).
Their subjects ranged from political (California Über Alles) to personal (Dead End) to silly (Dog Bite),
and they tackled them all with equal parts wit, anger, and raw power. As of this writing, no punk band has made a
bigger impression on me than these guys (and frankly, I don’t see that
happening ever if current acts are any indication), and I think their place in
the punk pantheon is certainly well-deserved.
So, why don’t any of the punks in Stanley
Lewis’ Punk Vacation listen to
them (music rights notwithstanding), huh?
One of the mysteries of the ages, that one.
Billy, a motorcycle-riding punk
who really can’t stand cola-flavored
soda but loves orange, gets run off from
Mr. Kemper’s store at the end of a shotgun, but he comes back with his punk (in
the Adam Ant vein) gang, who proceed
to kill the old man and rape his youngest daughter, Sally (Karen Renee). While
responding to the store’s alarm, fairly useless cop Steve (Stephen Fiachi) accidentally nails Billy with his cruiser while the
rest of the gang flee. Enraged, older
daughter Lisa (Sandra Bogan) vows
vengeance. It’s funny, because, back in
the day, I and some friends of mine wanted to shoot a movie called Rednecks Versus Punks that was
essentially the plot of this film (which, I hasten to add, we had never seen),
just without the seriousness, rape, and budget, but with more beer. We got exactly one shot done.
There is a very clear theme about
America illustrated within the film’s first moments. We get a montage of a sunrise over a forest,
the American and California flags, railroad tracks heading off into the
distance, a church, and running water.
Alongside the images that are self-explanatory, the others combine with
them to paint an idyllic, idealized version of small town America (how many
beer commercials have we seen with sunrises/sunsets over lush foliage and
crystal clear streams [which obviously flow straight into a brewery’s water taps]). This is the American Dream visualized. It is then shattered by the sounds of gunfire
as Steve practices his shooting on some empty bottles (the police don’t have a
range for this?), and this disruption is the foreshadowing of what’s coming
down the pike for this town. Naturally,
the punks are antithetical to everything that Steve and his friends and
colleagues hold dear. And yet, the
filmmakers are just as critical of the establishment in the town as they are of
the villainous punks. This is
exemplified by Sheriff Virgil (Louis
Waldon), a loud, idiotic, cigar-chomping ultra-patriot. He calls the punks “fascist communist pinkos”
(as I’m sure he would term any person or group of people different from himself). He wrongly declares (a la Animal House’s Bluto), “Did Patton call
in the state troopers when he took Iwo Jima?!”
When he thinks of America, he salutes, and military march music pours in
on the soundtrack. Later, he will lead a
pack of rednecks (affectionately referred to as “The Gun Club”) in a tonally
incongruous (and there are tonal incongruities aplenty in Punk Vacation) attack on
the punks. People like Steve (and by
extension Lisa) are in between the two groups, more or less shunned by the two
groups (Steve is ridiculed and browbeaten by his boss, and Lisa is considered
little more than a nuisance), and so are alone in a world gone mad around
them. The realization of the film (to
me, anyway) is that the American Dream doesn’t exist as anything other than a romanticized
concept. Rebelling against it is futile,
but playing along by its rules is equally insane. And while this stance does finally give some
closure to the story, I found it less than satisfying. Further, I felt that this perspective was
cowardly on the part of the filmmakers.
To imply that doing nothing and walking away is better than taking a
stand one way or the other may seem like an enlightened viewpoint (and, hey,
maybe it is for all I know), particularly in light of the film’s dim view of
its world and characters, but it feels like the exact opposite. It feels like a lazy cop out, and it took
away from my enjoyment of this movie.
The film can be looked at as a
Western in some respects, as well. A
gang of rowdy outlaws rides into town and interrupts the normal lives of its
inhabitants. A posse (and they do use
that word in this film) is formed to take care of the problem, but of course,
they can’t (they are even confounded by a net for far longer than they really
should have been). The outlaws hide out
at the old ranch on the town’s outskirts, waiting to bust their pal out of
jail. A lawman, his trusty deputy pal
(Don, played by Don Martin), and his
loyal woman are the only ones who can run the bad guys out of town. Further, the punks also refer to themselves
as Indians (one of them even says he likes “playing Indians”), and their leader
Ramrod (Roxanne Rogers) claims to be
their shepherd (I was a bit surprised she didn’t call herself their chief). She even has theme music which emphasizes
Native American flute. Nonetheless, the
Western influences are only decorations, like so much else in the film is. There’s no intelligible point, because Lewis and company do everything in
halves. They don’t go far enough in any one
direction to make any kind of cogent point, and the schizophrenic tone robs their
non-finale of any impact. From what is a
solid set up for a small revenge tale, the film simply plods along and then
peters out, as if the filmmakers either simply lost interest in where they were
heading, or they wanted to cram so many disparate facets into one film that
none of them fully gels. Punk Vacation disappoints more than it
gratifies. It’s more mundanely bad than
offensively bad, but I know I’m not in a terrible hurry to rewatch it, whether
I’m on vacation, taking the skinheads bowling, or just lying on the couch.
MVT: There is an attempt to
flesh out the punk characters to some small degree, so they’re not strictly
one-dimensional. Simultaneously, I never
bought that these people would actually hang out with each other if this is who
they are. Maybe I’m just shallow.
Make or Break: The initial
attack on the Kempers was interesting to me, particularly because of what
happens to Sally. It’s not very often
that you see very bad things happen to child characters, and I was a little bit
taken aback, quite frankly. And then,
almost all of this was forgotten and completely left dangling, so…
Score: 6/10
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