Ladies And Gentlemen-The Fabulous Stains!!

Rhino Home Video has recently released what has got to be about my favorite punk-rock themed movie, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains. What has this movie got going for it? How about:

Diane Lane in her first starring role

Laura Dern in an early featured role

A couple of Tubes (about my favorite mainstream late 70's, early 80s band, The Completion Backwards Principal was required listening in my college dorm years)

A couple of Sex Pistols

A member of The Clash

Legendary LA-punksters Black Randy And The Metrosquad

So, really, what is not to to like?

An added feature is that it really is less about the redemptive power of music (although I like these kind of rock and roll fillums, also-Almost Famous, That Thing You Do, and Purple Rain would have to be required syllabus items in any Rock and Roll film class), than it is about people behaving badly.

The bad behavior starts when Diane Lane and her cohort, leave school and family behind and get themselves on a traveliing road show that includes a heavy-metal top act, a punk second bill, and a Rastafarian road manager (see? the film just keeps getting better as it goes along).

The Stains are a female rock and roll trio so unfinished, that they make the Raincoats sound like late-period Led Zeppelin. So, they obviously need a gimmick.

Diane Lane mutilates and colors her hair until she has a skunk-like hairdo. An ambitious female TV reporter pounces on this character, who inadvertently starts a bad hair and bad attitude youth movement which mantra is: I Am A Skunk, And I Do Not Put Out!!

Ummmmm....except later, she does, with Paul Simonon, in the shower.

She also steals a song from his band, The Looters, and by the end of the movie, The Stains become a polished Go-Go like act with a hit music video.

See, better living through bad behavior!!

I have seen this entire movie on Youtube on occasion, but it now is available from Rhino Home Video.