Long, long ago, a friend insisted that I watch the Penelope Spheeris documentary, The Decline of Western Civilization. Punk rockers seemed like horrible people. A couple of repellent punk girls talk about finding a housepainter who had died of a heart attack while working on the house. They had fun taking pictures of themselves with his body. Asked if they felt any sympathy for the man who died, they said, No. Because I hate painters.
Many years later, I watched this other Penelope Spheeris movie, The Boys Next Door with Charlie Sheen and Maxwell Caulfield as two high school seniors who travel to the big city and begin murdering people. Made in 1985. It was just bad. During a car chase, the driver Caulfield sees a way to outmaneuver police. Instead of simply doing it, he says, "WATCH THIS!" before swerving. Visually it was so middling that I thought maybe it would look better in black and white. I adjusted the TV and turned the color down. It didn't help at all.
It would have looked better filmed on Super 8 like Desperate Teenage Lovedolls made a year earlier in 1984 by David Markey. Made for "$250 plus bus fare", it shows the rise and fall of a punk rock girl band. One girl escapes from the mental hospital her parents committed her to. They kill another girl's mother who was played by a man in drag who speaks in falsetto. That made the murder less upsetting than it might have been.
The film stole incidental music from The Brady Bunch, The Beatles and used "Stairway to Heaven" on the soundtrack at one point.
A competing girl band forces one into a knife fight. "Now the Lovedolls are wanted for TWO murders!"
Another Lovedoll is raped by a record producer.
Forty-nine minutes. The Super 8 picture is a bit fuzzy but looks okay. In the days before digital video, it was either that or VHS.
Available on Fandor.
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