Movie Details
| Title: | Dudes | |
| Director: | Penelope Spheeris | |
| Year: | 1987 | |
| Genre: | Revenge | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 05.04.24 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (4)
- The Decline of Western Civilization
- The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years
- The Decline of Western Civilization Part III
- Suburbia
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 05.04.24 | Internet | A group of new york punks (John Cryer right in between Pretty in Pink and Hiding Out, Daniel Roebuck a year after River's Edge, and Flea) decide to road trip to california in their VW bug but get... ambushed one night while camping in the desert and harassed by a group of... militiamen? rednecks? antagonists led by a guy named Missoula (Lee Ving). They kill Flea so the main dudes vow revenge and go on a weird spirit journey where they sort of become a cowboy and a Native American. Oh, and Jon Cryer sleeps with the girl from The Last Starfighter along the way. In my mind, this is always a prime example of why I loved cable growing up. When we got HBO and Cinemax, practically every weekend would be spent watching something super fucking random late at night or during the summer when the network shows were between seasons. And I don't think I got cable until the early 90s... certainly didn't have my own tv until then, but movies like this would be on and they soaked into my psyche by osmosis. Now that I'm old, the dots start to connect and I see new stuff to clear up hazy impressions I had in my mind. I could've watched Suburbia again since this came back to mind thanks to the books I'm reading on the LA punk scene, but I think I re-watched that one not too too long ago whereas I haven't seen this since I was a teenager. This one is bizarre. It's not quite a comedy (although it starts like one), not really an action movie (although it ends like one), not really a road movie (even though they go from Monument Valley up through Utah) and not quite a western (even though there are horse chases and jailbreaks and flashbacks to native american genocide). Mostly I had an issue buying the premise, that this aimless punkers would want to hunt the bad guys down and kill them just because the local cops don't believe them. A couple scenes attempt to smooth this over but the climax of the film feels divorced from reality and ends in a really strange spiritual attaboy? It might've made more sense if they had leaned into the spirituality of the story a bit more, like parallel lives inferring that Missoula was related or a reincarnation of the soldiers that massacred the native americans (the same actors are in the flashbacks so it kind of makes this point in the subtlest of ways), but as is I never quite bought that they'd immediately going to shootouts and stuff. Other than that though, it matched my memory pretty well. Lee Ving's a pretty decent actor in these type of villainous roles (perhaps most well known for Mr. Body in Clue) and you get a bit of footage of The Vandals playing at the beginning and... that might be it. Truthfully it's not a good movie but it's enough to hold your attention if you're flipping channels late at night. |
