Tag Archives: Punk

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: MATAPANKI (2026)

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DIRECTED BY: Diego Fuentes

FEATURING: Ramon Galvez, Antonia McCarthy, Rosa Peñaloza, Diego Bravo, Rodrigo Lisboa

PLOT: Punk kid Ricardo unlocks superpowers from a mysterious alcoholic admixture and reluctantly pursues the path of a superhero.

Still from Matapanki (2026)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: The punk DIY aesthetic goes quite a ways in making this one a bit different—but the apocalyptic, kaiju-scale showdown with the US prez takes it over the finish line.

COMMENTS: Punks and their punk movies. Jerky camera maneuvering, hand-painted ¡Poder! effects, naturalistic acting, boozing, cigarette-lighter huffing, amiable grandmothers… Wait, where was I? Oh yeah, and they can’t even afford to film in color!

Of course, I jest. (And I’m something of a square.) To be honest, this film is quite charming. Ricardo and his pals have a healthy social thing going: the cover charge at the club they frequent can be paid through second-hand books. All they’re trying to do is live their low-key party lives on their own terms. But as is always the case, the Man (in particular, the Gringo) wants to bring ’em down.

With an opener straight out of ‘s dark alchemy, Matapanki‘s punk cred is never in question, despite the feel-good throughline. The superhero storyline unspools in thrash time, taking somewhere under an hour (if you don’t include the credits). Viewers get a wallop of antiestablishmentarianism, with fast cuts and vibrant doodles whenever our hero (and later, the supervillain) pumps up the ¡Poder! Matapanki jouncily stumbles toward the finish line, keeping merely oddball throughout (with more than a few hints of Repo Man) until culminating with a BANG! when Super Punk Boy battles Super Neocon Gringo Man.

Take that, you square! And don’t you ever mess with our anarcho-drunken heroes again.

Matapanki does have a worldwide distribution deal with Italy’s Minerva Pictures, so it should become available to the general public in the nearish future.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a perfect rendition of a superhero flick made in the style of the cinema of transgression… Like a good punk song, it stuffs a lot of chaos into a very short running time…”–Micheal Talbot-Haynes, Film Threat (festival review)

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: LIVE FREAKY! DIE FREAKY! (2006)

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Beware

DIRECTED BY: John Roecker

FEATURING: Voices of Billie Joe Armstrong, Tim Armstrong, Theo Kogan, Kelly Osbourne, Davey Havok, Asia Argento, John Doe, Jane Wiedlin

PLOT: A denizen of a future, post-apocalyptic landscape discovers an account of a narcissistic cult leader and his murderous spree in Hollywood in the latter half of the 20th century. 

Still from Live freaky, die freaky! (2006)

COMMENTS: A line of defense of bad comedians is to complain when they get called on the carpet for telling offensive jokes that punch down. “Don’t be so offended,” they love to say. So it’s not an auspicious start for Live Freaky! Die Freaky! to kick off with a title card that warns us, “Rated X, not for the easily offended.” It’s a litmus test. If you’re in any way put off by what follows, you have no one to blame but your own uncool bleeding heart. Because giving offense is very much the order of the day.

Make no mistake, writer-director Roecker wants so very badly to shock you with his profane irreverence. Live Freaky! is a bouillabaisse of slanderous characterizations, insulting stereotypes, cheeky musical numbers, and puppet gore. It’s a parade of sub-“Davey and Goliath” animations naughtily saying the dirtiest things they can think of, and then winding up covered in blood. Everyone fails every possible variation of the Bechdel test because everyone endlessly boasts about their depraved sex practices (and one character indulges himself even after death). The meet-cute between the film’s lunatic messiah and one of his aspiring acolytes is a lengthy scene of explicit stop-motion doll sex while singing a jaunty music hall tune. It’s the creation of someone who saw Team America and concluded that the way to make that film’s notorious sex scene funnier would be to just do more of it. 

I suppose Live Freaky! is a bold example of not really caring about anything at all. From the moment we see a live-action post-apocalypse vagrant unearth an old copy of Healter Skelter (sic), we’re launched into a looking-glass version of the Charles Manson story where the inexplicably charismatic miscreant may be bad, but at least he’s a man of the people. His victims are portrayed as even worse: drug-addled, sex-obsessed, vulgar and dismissive of anyone who isn’t rich or famous like they are. Oh, wait. I’m sorry. Did I say Charles Manson? Of course I meant Charles Hanson. Absolutely nothing to do with that other fellow. In fact, you can tell that the filmmakers have done their due diligence removing any trace of the Manson family’s rampage,  because while the names may all seem familiar, they’ve cleverly replaced every first initial with an H. Yep, this story is about Sharon Hate and her friends Hay and Habigail. Totally different. You can’t possibly sue them. It’s all 3-D chess with these guys.  

The movie openly embraces a punk aesthetic, which is presumably why the voice cast is comprised of several major figures from the punk rock scene, led by Green Day front man Billie Joe Armstrong essaying Charlie through what feels like a Redd Foxx impression. He’s joined by Tim Armstrong (no relation) from Rancid, John Doe of X, plus friends from Good Charlotte, AFI, Blink-182, Tiger Army, White Zombie, Lunachicks, and the Transplants. (Also Jane Wiedlin of The Go-Go’s, which is just depressing.) And then they hand this collection of punk all-stars a series of lame songs without an ounce of punk in them. And aside from their punk bonafides, the other thing cast all have in common is that none of them can act. Every line is delivered as if it was the only take of a script received five minutes before recording. The closest thing we have to a professional actor, Ozzy Osbourne’s daughter Kelly, plays her grotesquely vain socialite with the same snooty, over-enunciated whine throughout. The best analogy for the cast I can think of is a bunch of friends who come over to help you move. Everyone’s there to lend a hand, but they’re really just there for the pizza.

This kind of thing is tolerable in a show like, say, South Park because the creators are such committed libertarians. Yes, they’re bomb-throwers, but their targets are usually the high and mighty, the terminally humorless, and blinkered illogicians. There’s a brief glimmer of satire in Live Freaky! in a 20-second scene where the prosecuting attorney bemoans the degeneracy of Charlie and his crew, and then celebrates all the money he’s going to make off the book he’s writing about the case. But that’s it. Who is the movie really out to take down? Hollywood, maybe, although not any Hollywood that bears relation to life as lived by actual human beings. The rich? They’re not so much worse than the murderous, dumpster-diving poor. No, there’s no real target here, except the audience. Basically, the filmmakers are just hoping someone will take offense. They want the glory of having ruined someone else’s day. Well, mission accomplished.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“This 2003 [sic] film is a weird concept, done in a weird way and done with a weird sensibility.  Nothing about this feels normal… To quote a great man, ‘This movie sucks!'”– Alec Pridgen, Mondo Bizarro

(This movie was nominated for review by Sam, who called it “Pretty terrible, but incredibly weird!” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Live Freaky Die Freaky

Live Freaky Die Freaky
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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: STRANGERS IN PARADISE (1984)

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DIRECTED BY: Ulli Lommel

FEATURING: Ulli Lommel, Ken Letner, Thom Jones, Geoffrey Barker, Ann Price, Galyn Görg

PLOT: A mentalist has himself cryogenically frozen to escape the Nazi regime, only to be thawed out amidst another fascist regime: suburban America in 1984, where hyper-conservative parents hope to use his talents to undo the rock-and-roll perversions of their children.

Still from strangers in paradise (1984)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: A deeply earnest musical that isn’t afraid to look silly—and does, quite often. Strangers in Paradise wants to speak to the young while addressing hot-button issues, a formula that is catnip for us because there are so many ways for it to go wrong, none of which come anywhere close to “normal.” In that respect, Strangers in Paradise really can’t miss, with its direct comparisons of Nazis to Reagan Republicans. But there’s also real talent here: a surprisingly strong set of songs, excellent choreography, and enough good ideas to give the bad ideas competition.

COMMENTS: If you read any biographical information about Ulli Lommel, you might be fooled into thinking that you’ve gleaned a little insight into how he might have developed his highly unusual career. Born in the waning months of World War II in part of Germany now located inside Poland, his parents purportedly smuggled baby Ulli out of the city wrapped up in a rug. As a teenager, it’s said that he played music with during the King’s tenure in the Army. His early acting career included a role in a Russ Meyer adaptation of Fanny Hill. He appeared in Rainer Werner Fassbinder‘s debut feature and became a regular in that director’s company, with roles in Whitty and World on a Wire. When one of his own directorial efforts attracted the attention of Andy Warhol, Lommel came to America, where he became particularly attracted to films with music, such as Jack Palance’s rock western Cocaine Cowboys, and punk pioneer Richard Hell’s Blank Generation. So there you have it: a historical fear of Nazis, a strong relationship with the avant-garde, and an affinity for a rockin’ beat.

I provide you with all of this background to tell you that none of it adequately explains the path that might lead a person to make Strangers in Paradise. The end product is such a wild tonal mishmash, such a startling blend of amateur and professional skills, such an earnest and serious-minded piece of cheese, that it’s remarkable to think that it all spawns from the mind of one man. Instead of developing a singular voice, it simultaneously adopts multiples.

Strangers in Paradise lets you know just what kind of intestinal fortitude it has right from the beginning, when we meet our hero, the renowned mentalist Jonathan Sage (played by Lommel himself), telling Adolf Hitler (also Lommel) that he won’t work for him. To his face! You can’t get much more principled than that! While Sage can make a dedicated German soldier forsake the cause, he can’t do the Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: STRANGERS IN PARADISE (1984) →

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CAPSULE: FREE LSD (2023)

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Free LSD is available for VOD purchase or rental.

DIRECTED BY: Dmitri Coates

FEATURING: Keith Morris, Dmitri Coates, Autry Fulbright II, DH Peligro, David Yow, Chelsea Debo, Chloe Dykstra

PLOT: An aging sex-shop owner takes an experimental erectile dysfunction medication that sends him to an alternate reality where he’s lead singer of the punk band Off!.

Still from Free LSD (2023)

COMMENTS: Free LSD joins a small group of narrative movies made by bands. Not movies that are basically filmed concerts, or movies made by others to exploit the popularity of a band like A Hard Days Night or Head, or big-budget adaptations of prog-rock concept albums like Tommy or The Wall, or even movies written by musicians but directed by professionals (the Foo Fighter’s Studio 666, ‘ This Is Me… Now)—but movies written and directed and performed by the rockers themselves. Successful examples of this subgenre include ‘s 200 Motels, the Talking Heads’ True Stories, and (at least arguably) the Flaming Lips’ Christmas on Mars.

Of course, for every musician-led effort that’s a qualified success, there are many more that are mixed bags at best: the improvised psychedelia of the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour, Paul Simon’s box office bomb One Trick Pony, ‘ heartfelt but adolescent K-12. And so it is with punk supergroup Off!’s offering to the genre. Musicians bring a unique perspective to filmmaking, but they aren’t filmmakers. So when they try their hands at this new medium, we hope for something that departs from the usual, but expect something that isn’t overly polished: something raw and ragged and maybe not wholly coherent that nonetheless sustains a level of exotic interest for adventurous viewers. That is exactly what we get with Free LSD.

One of the first problems bands face when making their own movies is that the band members will act in it. Lead guitarist Coates, writing himself an alternate reality role as a coke-sniffing, secretary groping music exec, does the best in front of the camera—but since he also serves as director, it might have been stretching himself too thin to also play the lead. Bassist Fulbright is serviceable as a cult member/ladies’ man. Drummer Peligro has few lines and is in a coma for much of the film, but he had a good excuse—he was undergoing chemotherapy as the movie was being shot. It only seems natural to cast your lead vocalist in the lead role, but that becomes a big problem here, because whatever his talents as a frontman and singer, Keith Morris lacks any emotive qualities as an actor. (At one point the script requires him to do a spit-take; I wasn’t entirely convinced he actually spit, despite seeing the liquid spewing from his mouth). Hidden in a heavy wig and fake beard, Morris plays an aging hippie who runs a sex shop during the day and hosts an Art Bell-style UFO radio show at night, who is also the improbable erotic target of a hot twenty-something barista with pink hair who favors miniskirts and disfavors brassieres, and has a thing for sleazy graying bohemians who can’t act. Unfortunately, Morris’ monotonously-enacted story takes up the entire first act.

On one level, Free LSD serves as a sampler for Off!’s album of the same name: there are a handful of partial performances of album cuts, just enough to tease fans, but not so much that the concert scenes overwhelm the story. As for the plot—it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but that’s not really an issue. It’s not even clear where the bad guys come from—they seem like they should be aliens, but the promotional material claims they’re an “advanced AI species.” Unless I missed a throwaway line, nothing in the actual movie attempts to explain their origins or motives. But Free LSD isn’t a serious hard sci-fi movie, it’s a movie about a group of eccentrics who take an experimental boner medication and find themselves in the region of the multiverse where they’re famous punk musicians. It is loosely structured in three acts—introducing the premise through Morris’ character, getting the band together, triumphing over the baddies at the end—but it wanders all over the place. In this case, the digressiveness is a feature, not a bug; it allows us to take in scenes like popping in for no real reason as a street hustler with pierced nipples and a red cowboy hat, an erectile dysfunction parody ad, stopovers at a never-explained inter-reality beekeeping waystation, and an ending where Off! goes metaphysically platinum by giving away free samples of their Viagra-based psychedelic (delivered via blotter tabs that look indistinguishable from LSD) with their latest album to inaugurate an era of peace and love. Given the level of acting here and the generally low production values, a conventional narrative would have doomed the film to failure for everyone but hardcore Off! fans. Instead, there’s just enough insanity in the mix to hold your interest.

Musician/comedian Jack Black produced, and has a small role in the film (appearing remotely via cellphone). On a sad note, DH Peligro, who stepped in at the last moment to replace Off!’s regular drummer (who had another commitment), died in late 2022, soon after the film was completed.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…this incoherent feature debut from writer-director Dimitri Coats of the punk band Off! is no The Wall.”–Josh Bell, Crooked Marquee (contemporaneous)