Dudes

Film-maker Penelope Spheeris's 80s absurdist road-tripping slacker black comedy sees three punk rockers leaving New York on their way to a better life in California, but on their way there they become targets of a ruthless hillbilly gang (led by an impressive Lee Ving) with one of them ending up dead. For the remaining two, instead of heading to California they decide go after the gang. This is one very odd, slapdash journey narrative with broad humour, but an even brutal tone and cross-cultural conflict as the modern punk scene meets old west philosophy as actors Jon Cryer, Daniel Roebuck and Flea find themselves along for the ride. I'm not that much of a fan of Cryer, but this is definitely the best thing I've seen him in. Also showing up in the cast is Catherine Mary Stuart. For a road movie, scenery is important and here the Arizona backdrop provides many picturesque sequences. Director Spheeris crafts out some surreal dynamics from the visuals and sets up some good stunt pieces. Pumping soundtrack, edgy script and kooky characters only added to this cult film's spontaneous and jarring charm.

"I'm so sick of waiting for the world to end."

This is not a serious film. It tries to be in a couple of places but doesnt make it. Some of the dream sequences are just a tad laboured but only a tad. Apart from this small points it is full of good humour and I certainly enjoyed it. I do not watch films for messages, for me that just escapes the point. Film is escapism, that is why it exists, to take us out of ourselves, to make us laugh,cry and smile. This is what DUDES does. We follow 3 punks cross country and their encounters with different people. They are products of the multi-cultural mix that is New York, the scene of all three bored in the VW driving thru the desert is truly hilarious. The second half of this film is bit more bleaker with dream sequences et al but still this is remains a joy. I was left with a good feeling after the end of this film and do so every time I revisit it.

'Dudes' (1987) is a delightfully rowdy black road comedy that for some inexplicable reason remains relatively unheralded. And it is a cultural travesty that, Penelope Spheeris's endearingly ludicrous cow punk road comedy is still unavailable on a UK-friendly Blu? Jon Cryer, Daniel Roebuck and Flea decide that the life of a big apple punker is a stone-cold snooze, and in a prescient moment of drunken inspiration they decide that a road trip to California might demonstratively improve their dour, metropolitan ennui. A righteous bummer for them, but fortunately for the viewer, their riotously ramshackle exodus is amusingly fraught with all manner of improbable calamity. An especially memorable interlude is a violent encounter with some low-down desert skeezoids, headed by the murderous red neck, Missoula, vividly played with gleeful mania by ex-Fear vocalist, Lee 'Black Moon Rising' Ving.

'Dudes' is a thoroughly engaging, roughshod road-movie oddity that begs for rediscovery, due largely to the endearingly daft twin lead performances from Roebuck & Cryer, the exhilarating RAWK soundtrack, and playfully eccentric mise-en-scene by maestro, Penelope Spheeris. For me, the REAL clincher is when the divinely bickering punkers over-imbibe a bottle of lysergic snake juice, procured from amiable renaissance man, Daredelvis (Pete Wilcox) and suddenly Spheeris plunges us deep into squirrelly, Alex Cox territory wherein all manner of gonzoid western archetypes are purloined for our midnight movie edification! It's the film's flaws, mad energy, and joyful incongruities that make it such a winning VHS-era cult gem! And my vinyl soundtrack album featuring Keel's boisterous 'Rock N' Roll Outlaw' cover is something I shall, hopefully, never have to part with!

This movie is fun. And it's great in that it is remarkably fun, as opposed to "about anything." If you can take it in context of "Punk-Western" as a "rock" movie and a western the bar is not set incredibly high to begin with, and this clears the hurdle with ease in merging two genres that usually droop into the exploitation movie quality level. Penelope Spheeris's prior works: Decline of Western Civilization and Suburbia were genuine and earnest portraits of punk-rock music, the first from a documentary perspective of the performers, and the second from the subjective fictional live of the fans of the genre. this is an attempt to launch these concepts into the language of mainstream genre cinema and succeeds better than adequately. Admirably, exceptionally, debate and quibble about the adjective. no matter what. this is approximately 1 1/2 hors of fun movie watching with that little extra to think about. And I occasionally entertain the bizarre notion of building a religion around Daredelvis. If one respects a youth culture as an anthropological phenomenon, tis film shines out as the "punk" take on westerns almost in the way that "LITTLE BIG MAN' was a 60's hippie western

I steaming pile of bad movie making. Don't watch it