A brief guide to punks on film

Ever since the advent of punk in the 1970s, the sub­cul­ture has been mined in zom­bie movies, com­ing-of-age dra­mas, Star Trek sequels and count­less exploita­tion flicks. Punks have even pro­vid­ed the sound­track to one of cinema’s most elec­tri­fy­ing end­ings, with Sid Vicious mur­der­ing ​‘My Way’ over the finale of ver­i­ta­ble punk direc­tor Mar­tin Scorsese’s Goodfellas.

Most recent­ly, fic­tion­al punk band The Ain’t Rights fea­ture in Jere­my Saulnier’s white-knuck­le back­woods thriller, Green Room, play­ing the gig from hell to a bunch of neo-Nazi skin­heads at a dive bar in the mid­dle of nowhere. Screen punks are so plen­ti­ful there’s even an annu­al Punk Film Fes­ti­val, Too Drunk To Watch, now in its fifth year. And lat­er this year, to cel­e­brate the 40^th anniver­sary of punk, the BFI is hold­ing its own Punks On Film sea­son. With all that in mind, here are some of our all-time favourite movie punks.

It seemed like no Hol­ly­wood film from the ​’80s was com­plete with­out the hero get­ting street has­sle – or pub­lic trans­port has­sle – from some anti-social punks. Here, with the Enter­prise crew vis­it­ing 20^th cen­tu­ry Cal­i­for­nia, a sole punk on a bus is giv­en a vari­a­tion on the Vul­can death grip by Spock, after Cap­tain Kirk asks him to turn his ghet­to blaster down. The scene was repli­cat­ed in 1994 in The Spe­cial­ist, where bomb expert Sylvester Stal­lone favours Mia­mi bus­es over car own­er­ship, but takes excep­tion when a group of punks (in the very lit­er­al sense, ​‘ruf­fi­ans’) nab the seat of a preg­nant woman. Noth­ing like see­ing a punk get put through a plate glass window.

This ​’80s take on The Black­board Jun­gle has Per­ry King as an ide­al­is­tic teacher com­ing up against a punk gang in an out of con­trol inner city high school. Head punk, the charis­mat­ic Peter Stegman (Tim­o­thy Van Pat­ten), is a mes­sian­ic nihilist prone to pro­fun­di­ties like ​“I am the future” and ​“life is pain.” Teach decides that Stegman is a pain, and sets out to erad­i­cate the gang – and how! The music is per­formed by Cana­di­an punk band Teenage Head, who remark­ably are still going, which come to think about it isn’t very punk-like behaviour.

In this clas­sic hor­ror com­e­dy, some small town punks, led by a fel­low called Sui­cide, choose a typ­i­cal­ly obnox­ious loca­tion for an impromp­tu par­ty – the local ceme­tery. What they don’t realise is that a secret army nerve gas has been inad­ver­tent­ly leaked caus­ing the dead to rise out of their graves, chomp­ing on the punks (includ­ing nude, flame haired tomb danc­ing scream queen Lin­nea Quigley), turn­ing them from drool­ing, revolt­ing crea­tures into… well, you get the idea.

This grotesque splat­ter com­e­dy from Tro­ma is actu­al­ly a moral­i­ty tale – when high school­ers start ingest­ing drugs con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by the nuclear pow­er plant next door, they turn into ram­pag­ing mutants. More specif­i­cal­ly, the clean cut pupils become the ​‘Cretins’, nasty punks with zero respect for author­i­ty. The mes­sage is clear: don’t do drugs, and don’t build a school next to a nuclear pow­er plant.

Alex Cox’s film is pure punk cin­e­ma – irrev­er­ent, unclas­si­fi­able and brim­ming with an infec­tious, uncon­tain­able ener­gy. Emilio Estevez is a down on his luck punk (is there any oth­er kind?) in Los Ange­les, who gets a job repos­sess­ing cars with Har­ry Dean Stan­ton. Appear­ing as a night­club band are LA punks Cir­cle Jerks, who also fea­ture in Pene­lope Spheeris’ cel­e­brat­ed 1981 punk doc­u­men­tary The Decline of West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion, where they can be seen per­form­ing their fra­grant love bal­lad I Just Want Some Skank.

Dubbed the ​‘Cit­i­zen Kane of punk movies’ by Vari­ety, Julien Temple’s lunatic mock­u­men­tary charts the rise of the UK’s most infa­mous punk rock­ers, tak­ing sav­age swipes at the vagaries of fame and the cyn­i­cism of the music indus­try along the way. Bizarrely enough, Sex Pis­tols had been due to star in their very own film, Who Killed Bam­bi?, a cou­ple of years pre­vi­ous­ly, direct­ed by Russ Mey­er. The film was pulled after half a day’s shoot­ing when the back­ers got a look at Roger Ebert’s script which starts with a sur­re­al scene at a job cen­tre fol­lowed by a riot at a coun­try and west­ern pub. Russ Mey­er – Sex Pis­tols – what were they expect­ing – a sequel to the Dis­ney cartoon?

It was only a mat­ter of time before Hol­ly­wood sunk its fangs into the punk craze, and the mon­ey mak­ing poten­tial there­in, with this sto­ry of an ide­al­is­tic punker, Diane Lane, front woman of the tit­u­lar band lured by fame and for­tune to sell out her ideals, much to the cha­grin of fel­low rock­er Ray Win­stone. It arrived a cou­ple of years too late – by then the punk ​‘scene’ was dead – and like­wise it died a death at the box office. Sim­i­lar ground was cov­ered to bet­ter effect in the British film Break­ing Glass in 1980, star­ring Hazel O’Connor and Winstone’s Scum co-star Phil Daniels, and fea­tur­ing a scene where O’Connor stirs up a riot among an audi­ence of far right skin­heads. Which brings us full cir­cle (jerk) to Green Room.

Green Room is out Fri­day 13^th May.