Punk Rock (1977) User Reviews

WADE NICHOLS AT HIS BEST.

[Serpent-5 · 5/10 · 10 March 1999]

The Late Wade Nichols stars as a Police Detective looking for a rich man's daughter who is missing. R. Bolla plays his grumpy Captain who hate Wade's guts. Bolla who is an adult film actor has no sex scenes, as if he was ready to go mainstream (he did several horror films since). The ending was poor as Wade dies, and the sound is bad. The video version has video insert tacked in on the sex scenes to make the scene longer. Wade, in my opinion is one of the best adult film actors (next to Sonny Landham) to make a transition to mainstream films, it's too bad about his death. Adult films in the 70's had good plot to keep the audience watching, but plotlines died in the late 80's.

You can't say it's not interesting. . .

[lazarillo · 24 May 2010]

This is kind of an interesting film in that it started out as a hardcore porno movie, but then director Carter Stevens went back and took out of all of the (hardcore) sex and added a lot more story. (There is still a hardcore cut of this out there, but I imagine it is a quite different movie). The results are somewhere between a 40's film noir/detective flick and one of the 70's John Holmes/"Johnny Wadd" detective-theme hardcore porn efforts brilliantly parodied in "Boogie Nights". The quality of this is, of course, much closer to the latter than the former (not surprisingly, given it's original hardcore origins). It's porno-movie cheap and the actors are all erstwhile porn stars. But all porn actors are not created equal--Wade Nichols and Robert Kerman ("Cannibal Holocaust") may never have won any Academy Awards, but they were far more talented than total non-actors like John Holmes.

As for the "punk rock", this contains performances by minor acts like the Squirrels and the Stilettos (the latter had been Debbie Harry's first band). It's much better than the usual music found in 70's porn movies, but don't expect to see (or hear) any of the more talented punk acts of the era like the Ramones, Television, or the Dead Boys. Hilariously, this was once marketed as a semi-sequel to "Saturday Night Fever"! (Punk, disco--what's the difference?). Punk rock is really about as peripheral to this story as it was in that infamous TV episode of "Quincy M.E." set in a punk rock club.

Still, I kinda liked this. Inept as it is, it has a kind of labor-of-love quality you find when porn talent tries to go legit. There's not much sex, but the girls in this all look pretty skanky anyway. Don't rush out and buy this, but it's worth a rental.

An enjoyably seamy 70's private eye exploitation thriller

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 7 June 2009]

Rugged private eye Jimmy Dillinger (well played to the tough guy hilt by Wade Nichols) finds himself embroiled in a seedy and dangerous world of drugs, murder, prostitution, gangsters and white slavery when he searches the sordid New York City punk rock scene for missing teenage runaway Jenny Jordan (fetching brunette Susaye London). Director/co-writer Carter Stevens offers a pleasingly sleazy wallow in the extremely coarse'n'nasty neon slime: we've got excessive profane dialogue, a few attractive ladies deliver a nice smattering of tasty female nudity, a smidgen of raunchy sex, a constant snappy pace, hard-boiled narration, a remarkably tricky and complex plot, authentically grimy urban cesspool locations, a grotty tone, a heated shoot-out, and a genuinely startling surprise downbeat ending that packs a potent punch right to the gut. Moreover, there's a nifty rogues' gallery of colorful low-life characters: Richard Bolla as huffy, cynical cop Detective Joe Giovanni, Bobby Astyr as twitchy, wormy hoodlum Igor, Elda Gentile as brash pimp punkette Vanessa Garbo, Crystal Sync as sweet'n'saucy hooker Jana, Jean Sanders as zonked-out junkie dancer Nan, and Randy Coppasquatto as Vanessa's slimy henchman Ralphie. Best of all, there's a mighty vivid and flavorsome evocation of the grubby 70's Big Apple underground punk milieu, complete with first-rate raw and energetic live stage performances by the punk bands the Fast, the Squirrels, Spicy Bits, and Elda and the Stillettos. Prudence Prevails' gritty cinematography does the trick. The funky pulsating score likewise hits the groovy spot. A lot of deliciously down'n'dirty fun.