John Moritsugu juxtaposes two eras in "Mod Fuck Explosion," illustrating the timeless qualities of teenage life. Ironically, the ephemeral nature of adolescence remains a focal theme. Using 60s London as a template, Moritsugu updates the clash of Mods versus Rockers to a modern nondescript American city. Apart and helplessly in the middle of this conflict is London, an aimless youth struggling to define herself in the context of her disfunctional family and dispassionate friends. Ultimately, the climactic scene of the actual fight between the two gangs seems almost an afterthought. London and her equally misguided boyfriend M16 are conveniently absent. However, they do not experience any catharsis from leaving the gang. Exemplifying an axiom of teen life, they remain mired in their own troubles, unable to consummate their relationship. Moritsugu frequently employs gruesome imagery to graphically illustrate irrational violence and substance abuse. In fact, many characters seem perpetually in a drug-induced stupor. Much like George Kuchar, Moritsugu uses many strictly one-dimensional characters to contrast with his protagonist, London. Yet, Moritsugu is less adept than Kuchar and sometimes seems to indulge in capricious anecdotes that do little to advance the film. "Mod Fuck Explosion" manifests a unique vision merging elements of "West Side Story" and "Quadrophrenia" into a contemporary drama, exposing the most banal elements of adolescence.
5 Reviews
Leather jacket
polysicsarebest3 September 2008
Mod F... Explosion feels exactly like an old Greg Araaki film but is even darker and more bizarre than anything he ever came up with. If you're familiar with "The Doom Generation" or "Nowhere", you'll totally get what this film is about: Teenage angst, drugs, sex, music, violence, and bizarre names/clothes/locations. The entire film is washed over with darkness, and though there isn't much plot to speak of, the film is compelling from beginning to end because of its clever use of setting and its undeniable energy. The film is only 67 minutes, so it never even starts to get boring. A very strange and funny movie from beginning to end with probably a $0 budget. Great.
Teen angst was never so funny.
tron-1216 July 1999
Mr. Evans's comments (above) are great. (Boy, you can sure tell he's from Austin! he he he) Just to follow up, MFE is a fun, low budget romp through a teen wasteland that looks not too different from our urban world. Is it the future? present? USA? Japan? Is it social commentary or genre homage? In the end, what matters is fun, and Moritsugu delivers in spades. From the rival gangs to the doped-up mother who keeps coming on to her kids to the bad dubbing (purposeful), MFE is a great film in the Greg Araki-tradition. They are friends and contemporaries, so if you like Araki's stuff (Nowhere, Doom Gen, etc.) you'll love this.
Colorful, great early-90's indie-soundtrack, and loaded with bad acting that winks knowingly at you, MFE is the real deal. The lead, a pouty blonde named London (get it?), does a great job of combining the archetypical emotions of angst, depression, and the need to belong to a group, into a great package that makes fun of itself and celebrates how funny adolescence can be.
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Mod Fuck Explosion: if you read this far, see it.
Colorful, great early-90's indie-soundtrack, and loaded with bad acting that winks knowingly at you, MFE is the real deal. The lead, a pouty blonde named London (get it?), does a great job of combining the archetypical emotions of angst, depression, and the need to belong to a group, into a great package that makes fun of itself and celebrates how funny adolescence can be.
[deletion for content --mod]
Mod Fuck Explosion: if you read this far, see it.
Just like the title promises MOD F*CK EXPLOSION! So satisfying. Moist.
kentad25 April 2016
I LOVE this movie. When it first came out I immediately wanted to take it home! I did, and now 20 years later it has never let me down. Laugh, cry, dance and sing along. One of the BEST musicals ever made. This movie cannot be defined or described, it can only be EXPERIENCED! Are YOU experienced? Thank you, Jimi, you would have loved this film, if you had only stuck around. SEE what you MISSED! Rated an explosive 10,000 out of 10 stars. If all modern movies were this funny and timelessly teenage, we would still have drive-in movie theaters nationwide. People would honk their car horns and flash their spotlights at the main title. On the drive-in HILARITY AND MAKE-OUT SCALE, THIS MOVIE IS TEN FRONT BENCH SEATS OUT OF TEN!
Not Moritsugu's best film, but it's one of my favorites of his.
LLAAA483710 April 2010
It's difficult to write a review for a Jon Moritsugu film. Mod F-ck Explosion is an easy film to examine though. One thing I have always appreciated about Jon Moritsugu's work is that, even at his most grotesque, he still manages to craft a pretty radical world. Take Mod F-ck Explosion, for example. This film has no plot to speak of, but has slight hints of thematically inclined references to West Side Story. The film takes place in a futuristic punk surface coated landscape. Most of the characters appear to be Asian and most of the characters are in gangs. We have a drifter, London, whose family life is disturbingly dysfunctional and perverted. She yearns for a leather jacket, though our purposefully badly comically dubbed biker gang will be more than happy to comply if she cooperates with them first. The film's climax is inevitable, yet it somehow comes out of nowhere at the same time. The dark tone that the film adopts can only lend itself to tragedy, and the tragic parts are where the picture comes off the strongest. This avant-garde experimental science fiction picture comes off like a combination of an early Gregg Araki picture and Liquid Sky, although the early films of Gregg Araki were inspired by Jon Moritsugu, so I guess this balances that out, although I'd say Gregg Araki went a little too over the edge in his inspiration by including footage from Moritsugu's own film Hippy Porn (1991) into his gay teenage angst satire Totally F***ed Up (1993). Regardless, if you are a newcomer to the films of Jon Moritsugu, Mod F-ck Explosion is probably not a good starting point. To be perfectly honest, I don't really know which film of his they could start with since they are all so bizarre, but Mod F-ck Explosion is definitely not the one.
One of the things that I found interesting while watching this film was the overall hilarity in the misery of everyone. Every character in this film is stoned out of their minds, but there's something genuinely hilarious about it in this film. The actors don't strain for laughs, but the director does. What is interesting is that in a way you can see the battle between choice over direction between the actors and the naturalness of the plot. This could have only been intentional, obviously, but it's one of the funnier things I've seen from a film of this type. What's more, the introductory scenes of these characters is just simply amazing, even the more insignificant characters. I think what makes it so enjoyable is that these characters hardly even change their behavior. They stay the same, and so you know that the film won't head toward any sort of ultimate betrayal mixed with soap opera trickery to pull off it's story. The film just ditches that and instead floods the screen with dingy, dark, grimy, and colorful imagery that is both ugly and over-the-top. It's satisfying to see a film like this that goes in this direction and opts for satisfying details like this rather than ditching all charismatic charm. The characters suck, and yet I love them for this reason.
Perhaps the strangest thing about this film though, at least for me, is that I found the personal plight of the London character to be strangely easy to relate to and it's for this reason that this film deserves more credit. Perhaps this says more about me personally than it does for the film, but any film that can touch me like this film does is gold in my mind. Make no mistake, not many people are going to get much out of this. The over-the-top comedy and disturbing gruesome violence are not going to be too involving for anyone expecting a serious film, but this film transcends artistic storytelling and goes far into total detached derangement that is as goofy and shocking as ever, but also is not without honesty. The film is full of life and of urban decay, and it celebrates trash film-making as what artistic freedom can sometimes represent. Obviously the film is full of itself, but how can it not be when it completely defines what ugly film-making and rebellious angst can amount to? There's just too much of the same out there for me to not love this film. I think it's probably the worst film that Moritsugu has ever done, it's also his most rebellious and his least personal. And yes there is a dream sequence set in a meat garden constructed of eight hundred pounds of rotting flesh, just like the DVD cover promises.
One of the things that I found interesting while watching this film was the overall hilarity in the misery of everyone. Every character in this film is stoned out of their minds, but there's something genuinely hilarious about it in this film. The actors don't strain for laughs, but the director does. What is interesting is that in a way you can see the battle between choice over direction between the actors and the naturalness of the plot. This could have only been intentional, obviously, but it's one of the funnier things I've seen from a film of this type. What's more, the introductory scenes of these characters is just simply amazing, even the more insignificant characters. I think what makes it so enjoyable is that these characters hardly even change their behavior. They stay the same, and so you know that the film won't head toward any sort of ultimate betrayal mixed with soap opera trickery to pull off it's story. The film just ditches that and instead floods the screen with dingy, dark, grimy, and colorful imagery that is both ugly and over-the-top. It's satisfying to see a film like this that goes in this direction and opts for satisfying details like this rather than ditching all charismatic charm. The characters suck, and yet I love them for this reason.
Perhaps the strangest thing about this film though, at least for me, is that I found the personal plight of the London character to be strangely easy to relate to and it's for this reason that this film deserves more credit. Perhaps this says more about me personally than it does for the film, but any film that can touch me like this film does is gold in my mind. Make no mistake, not many people are going to get much out of this. The over-the-top comedy and disturbing gruesome violence are not going to be too involving for anyone expecting a serious film, but this film transcends artistic storytelling and goes far into total detached derangement that is as goofy and shocking as ever, but also is not without honesty. The film is full of life and of urban decay, and it celebrates trash film-making as what artistic freedom can sometimes represent. Obviously the film is full of itself, but how can it not be when it completely defines what ugly film-making and rebellious angst can amount to? There's just too much of the same out there for me to not love this film. I think it's probably the worst film that Moritsugu has ever done, it's also his most rebellious and his least personal. And yes there is a dream sequence set in a meat garden constructed of eight hundred pounds of rotting flesh, just like the DVD cover promises.
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