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All movies seen on 05/03/2010

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The Decline of Western Civilization (1981)

Directed by Penelope Spheeris

Documentary

Most recently watched by Javitron

Overview

The Los Angeles punk music scene circa 1980 is the focus of this film. With Alice Bag Band, Black Flag, Catholic Discipline, Circle Jerks, Fear, Germs, and X.

Length 100 minutes

Actors

Eugene Tatu | Alice Bag | Claude Bessy | Dinah Cancer | Exene Cervenka | Lorna Doom | Darby Crash | Don Bolles | Philo Cramer | John Doe | Lee Ving | Greg Ginn | Chuck Dukowski | Ron Reyes | Pat Smear | Greg Hetson | Keith Morris | Nicole Panter | Penelope Spheeris

Viewing History (seen 2 times)

Viewing Notes

As an ex-punk and longtime lover of the music, it’s a crying shame I’ve never seen this movie.  It’s not like it’s easy to find, though and I can’t recall ever missing it on cable.

Anyways, having just recently seen the 2nd one, it makes the metal years one even funnier as I realized the Ozzy scene is just parodying the Germs scene in this one where Darby Crash is making some fucked up breakfast.

Speaking of Darby Crash, Decline is a better look at The Germs than What We Do Is Secret, which isn’t surprising consider this is a documentary.

All things considered though, despite this being a seminal punk documentary it’s actually kind of poorly done. You really learn little to nothing about the scene other than just getting to see some amazing performances from X, Germs, Circle Jerks and more. The actual conversations, other than ones about pogoing, a few random interviews with punks of all sorts (straight edgers, skinheads, etc…) doesn’t offer a ton of insight into the scene.

Still, for history’s sake it was well worth a watch to me.

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