Year: 1981
Director: Penelope Spheeris

One night in the late eighties, BBC2 had a Metal Night (think of what BBC4 do on a Friday these days) presented by Elvira, Mistress Of The Dark (parodied in The Simpsons as “Boobarella”) and they screened ‘The Decline Of Western Civilisation Part II: The Metal Years’. A documentary, or if you will, rockumentary on the LA metal scene in the late 80’s which threw up bands like Guns N Roses. Footage of almost made it new acts is interspersed with comments and “skits” with stars like Lemmy, Ozzy, Paul n Gene from Kiss and infamously a sizzled Chris Holmes from WASP floating in a pool watched by his mother. Years before MTV, Spheeris knew the sight of Ozzy making breakfast in a leopard-skin dressing gown was gold.

Almost a decade before the same filmmaker had explored another youth cult in the same city as the fledgling LA punk scene crawled out of basements and squats in bands like X, Black Flag, The Germs, Circle Jerks and Fear. The gig violence, attitude and lifestyle depicted so enraged the LA police chief Daryl Gates that he called for the film to be banned within the city limits. There is no escaping the excitement and energy of the footage and the cute naiveté of Darby Crash (who would die shortly after the film’s completion) and X’s Exene proudly showing the cameras around her band’s grubby dive of a home – she is a wildly captivating screen presence in amongst all the pale white boys.

The third part of the Trilogy focuses on the remnants of that scene in the 1990’s with the mobs of “gutter punks” who inhabit the underbelly of the City Of Angels. Basically homeless gangs of abandoned and often damaged teenager panhandling to feed alcohol and drug habits they have a ragbag music scene to reflect their frustration and anger. This part of the series was rarely seen in cinemas and never got a home video release so like Part I & II could only been seen, maybe fittingly, via bootleg copies.

This 4 disc DVD/ Blu-Ray set presents the films in fresh transfers with plenty of extra performance and unedited interview footage, commentaries by Spherris on I & II, Dave Grohl comments on and off on a separate track for the first film (Foo Fighters Pat Smear was a members of The Germs) and the usual DVD extra gubbins.

Might appeal to people who enjoyed:

Punk n metal but exclusively. These are rather more snapshots of a time and place. Grimy, piss soaked and puke flecked Polaroids but worth looking at