80's MONTH: "SUBURBIA"

Fresh off the success of her documentary "The Decline of Western Civilization", Penelope Spheeris makes her feature film debut with punk rock drama "Suburbia". The film follows a group of punk rock kids squatting in an abandoned house living on their own, away from the families that don't care for them. It also focuses on some "regular" people who want the punks to stop ruining their suburban society with trash, graffiti, and theft. It all culminates in a climactic battle between the punk underground and the norms of society.

Let me start off by saying this is super low budget and you won't find any recognizable actors. In fact, the majority of the actors were real punk rock kids at the time. This creates some authenticity to the product, but also makes it suffer in the quality acting department. If you can get past some of the bad acting, you will enjoy this film. It has excellent music, a decent story, and has moments of sadness I didn't quite expect from the film. It evokes as much emotion as it can out of it's low budget. This is probably some of the better C-grade film making I've seen out there. Worth checking out, especially if you grew up on punk rock like I did.

*3 Lance Approvals*