Destroy All Movies!!! The Complete Guide to Punks on Film

by Zack Carlson, Bryan Connolly (Editor)

The most dazzlingly insane film reference book of all time, Destroy All Movies!!! is an informative, hilarious and impossibly complete guide to every appearance of a punk (or new waver!) to hit the screen in the 20th Century. This wildly comprehensive release contains A-to-Z coverage of over 1100 feature films from around the world, as well as dozens of exclusive interviews with the cast/creators of crucial titles like Repo Man, Return of the Living Dead, The Decline of Western Civilization and Valley Girl . Also examined are several hundred prime examples of straight-to-VHS slasher trash, Brooklyn skid row masterpieces, Filipino breakdancing fairytales, no-budget apocalyptic epics and movies that shouldn't even have been released, many of which have never been written about. Plus hundreds of eyeball-smashing stills and posters, many in full color!

Interviewees include screen veteran punk musicians Richard Hell, Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat, Lee Ving of Fear, Exene Cervenka and John Doe of X, Keith Morris of Black Flag and Circle Jerks, Chris D. of The Flesh Eaters, Youth Brigade's Shawn Stern, Sickie Wifebeater of The Mentors, Ivan Kral of the Patti Smith Group and many others. Also featured are conversations with filmmakers Penelope Spheeris (the Decline of Western Civilization documentaries, Suburbia ), Mark Lester ( Class of 1984 ), Martha Coolidge ( Valley Girl ), Alex Cox ( Repo Man ), Lech Kowalski ( D.O.A. ), Allan Arkush ( Rock 'n' Roll High School ), Amos Poe ( The Blank Generation ), Susan Seidelman ( Smithereens ), Slava Tsukerman ( Liquid Sky ), Alan Sacks ( Du-beat-e-o ), Eric Mitchell ( Underground USA ), Brian Trenchard-Smith ( Dead End Drive-In ), Dave Markey ( Desperate Teenage Lovedolls ), Bruce LaBruce, and NYC transgressor Nick Zedd. Performers like Mary Woronov, Eddie Deezen, Clint Howard, Jon Gries, P.J. Soles and Dick Rude speak out, plus countless other actors and creators from the frontlines of punk's big-screen explosion.

Destroy All Movies!!! nails down decades of insanity with superhuman research, vicious precision and electrically charged stills and images, and is the first and final definitive armchair roadmap to punk and new wave on celluloid. Five years in the making, this pulse-bursting monument to lowbrow cultural obsession is a must for all film fanatics, music maniacs, anti-fashion mutants, '80s nostalgists, sleazoids, cop-killers and spazzmatics!

Genres: Film, Music, Nonfiction, Punk, Media Tie In, Reference

528 pages, Flexibound

First published December 6, 2010

Reviews

[Willy Boy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Completely wonderful, beautifully designed, wise and witty ... A definitive lateral section through the corpus of film, 'Punk Rock', video, and the 'long 1980s' (they begin in, oh, 1974, end somewhere around '97 ... (and the 'long '60s begin around '63 and end about '82-'84 - turns out there never was a '1970s' after all)) ... A crucial tome, giving equal space to the 'authentic' and the exploitative, the sublime and the ridiculous, the accurate and the inept ... A mess of contradictions, Punk was media savvy yet naive, craving attention but shunning factory farm-media production ... vampire-like, Punk would attempt to deny the celluloid mirror a glimpse of it's true image. Punk film is surely to the present generation of cineastes what Film Noir was to the French critics in the '40s and '50s ... This book is ridiculously expensive now, so if you see a reasonably priced used copy, grab it!

[Robert Giesenhagen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is seriously one of my favorite coffee table style books ever. These guys basically watched every single movie they could find up until 2000 searching for any trace or hint of a trace of punk rock culture. It could be a movie with punk as it’s centerpiece or a movie with just some random person with a Mohawk in the background of the opening credits and everything in between. And they give little humor inflected reviews of everything they find.

Super fun & rad & perfect for leaving out at a party or something.

[Jon Y. · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most brilliantly executed concepts for a movie tome I've ever encountered. Zack Carlson's capsule reviews are alone worth the price of admission, with the added benefit of being so comprehensive that it has turned even someone as far-gone into the recesses of both movie and punk obscurity as myself onto titles I'd never even dreamt existed. Ever seen It's A Complex World, Du-Beat-E-O, The Fishmen and Their Queen, or Ray Pettibon's Sir Drone? Me neither! Great, great stuff, and Carlson's caustic reviews are the snotty cheery on top of this bile-crusted compendium of fuck you.

[Gsd1985 · Rating 4 out of 5]

To Zack Carlson, Bryan Connolly and anyone else who may have helped produce this fantastic, fascinating document... Thank You! Destroy All Movies: The Complete Guide to Punks on Film is an absolutely priceless treasure for anyone who is both a punk rocker and a movie buff. The contents features all kinds of wild movie poster art, behind the scenes interviews on some of the more well known "punk" features (including interviews with L.A. luminaries like Penelope Spheeris, Keith Morris of Circle Jerks, and John and Exene from X) as well as the meat of the book: lengthy, detailed reviews.

The movies featured are primarily exploitation movies, a few documentaries, some softcore pornos, very obscure foreign films, lost or impossible to find films, and even the occasional blockbuster from the 80s or 90s that thought it knew just who punkers were or what punk rock was (Back to the Future II, Ghostbusters, Batman movies - LOL). What this tome really does is... give someone like me - a punk rocker and film snob - the opportunity to scour the pages to look for hidden gems. Some of my fav. movies and documentary features are punk films... Class of 1984, The Decline of WesternCivilization, Suburbia, Repo Man, Lech Kowalski's Gringo, the work of director Dave Markey... The one caveat here is... having been released in 2010, this book largely misses the punk movie renaissance of the 2000s. You won't find reviews for the following features: What We Do Is Secret [2007], Punk Attitude [2004], American Hardcore [2006], Last Fast Ride: the Life, Love, and Death of a Punk Goddess [2011], Salad Days [2014], You Weren't There: Chicago Punk Scene [2006], or many other punk themed films of this century. Either way, this book is an essential bit of punk ephemera.

[SHUiZMZ · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for film buffs. A must-read for punk rockers. It covers a pretty wide gambit of films because punks are tossed in them as background extras all the time (as the fact that this pretty meaty book's size can attest to). I just didn't care for the liberal use of the word "retard". Come up with a better adjective Mr. Carlson.

[Caroline Pynes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book! It is overwhelming it's so big. It is a comprehensive guide to all punks on film. It's fun to watch movies and look for punks that I read about in this book! A must have for those crazy, zany and wacky people in your life!

[Angus Podgorny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unbelievably exhaustive fantastic!.

[Christopher Stockwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can you really say about this book. You don't read it like a story. It's more like a directory of sorts. But I still find myself just reading large portions of it in a sitting. The concept is simple, where have punks been in movies. I guess there's no way of knowing if he got all or even most of the occurrences of punks in movies, but I haven't been able to think of any he missed. Now when I watch an old movie from the 80s or 90s and see a punk, I immediately go and look it up in this book. After I find it, I usually spend the next hour reading about some other movie I haven't seen or haven't seen in some time.

If you can find a copy, get it. I saw one sitting at Scarecrow Video here in Seattle a few years ago. It wasn't for sale, just store copy for the staff to reference or whatever. I immediately went home and told my wife to get me a copy for Christmas. It must have been December. I really don't remember. I just know I got it for Christmas that year. Anyway, she found a used copy, and paid way too much for it. It must be out of print, all the more reason to grab one if you can.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was a time in my life when I watched b-movies almost religiously. I absolutely loved '80s 'punksploitation' movies that portrayed the subculture as being straight out of Bible Belt America's worst nightmares - "Class of 1984," "Suburbia," "Repo Man," and infamous episodes of TV shows like "Quincy MD" and "CHiPs." The Quincy episode even led to its own derisive slang term, "Quincy punks." Needless to say, these portrayals of rampant hedonism and antisocial tendencies are highly amusing for anyone involved in the music and scene. There were also the leather / mohawks / studs post-apocalyptic movies and the cheesy afterschool specials! When I heard about this book, I knew I HAD to own a copy. The authors do not disappoint - EVERYTHING imaginable is covered in a readable, entertaining way, and there are tons of stills and posters, and interviews with some of the stars and directors. This is an all-encompassing snapshot of unexplored '80s exploitation tropes - a must for discerning b-cinephiles and punk fans.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

AMAZING reference book to all punks and wavos in film, until 2000. It's a great read to remember the Night Flight movies, traded by VCR tape punk to punk in my pre-internet teenage world, and to remember we the punks were such a hilarious symbol in the eyes of Hollywood of danger, chaos and buffoonery. And now I have to see "Never Too Young To Die" in which John Stamos, as the gymnast son of a secret agent, must take up his father's fight to stop an evil hermaphrodite, played by Gene Simmons, from poisoning the water supply. Vanity is in here somewhere, too. Destroy All Movies is a total success.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's half Punk Rock movie reviews, half "spot the punk" sightings in straight movies, half VIP interviews and insights, half culture thermometer, and half punk cinema history. If you are like me: enjoy Punk Rock, rubbish at adding up halves, read the Leonard Maltin's Video Guide for fun, love hits of eighties and shit movies from the eighties then you'll love . . .



One of the best bits is pointing out the fake punks and "made for TV" punks and posers peppered in Hollywood movies. "Quincy Punks"



Fun.

[Kurt Reighley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this at the Fantagraphics signing last weekend, and have been unable to put it down since. And I'm only up to the beginning of "R." Even when the movies in question are terrible, the authors' love for their subject jumps off the page. Informative and hilarious.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

When they say "complete", they mean it! There are some films included that have one scene of one person who looks sorta alternative. In other words, they really seem to cover all of their bases here. Great book for film lovers and punk lovers alike!

[Honey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of fun. From thoughtful interviews with landmark movie punks to amusing smack-down reviews, it's an entertaining resource. Included plenty of films that I had never heard of that I now look forward to tracking down. Fun fun fun!

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Undoubtedly the best reference book of 2010. I may wind up reading it from cover to cover.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

In-fuckn'-credible!!

[Amelia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A hilarious and sometimes touching compendium to an unlikely subject. If you like movies (or punk rock), you must.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing. I noticed once I got to Robocop that there is no Buckaroo Bonzai in the book, which seems odd as they include New Wave types.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll never watch most of these movies, but I love guidebooks like this.

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

Man, this was cool! So many interesting punk rock movies I've missed. Also these guys are ruthelessly funny in their movie reviews.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is exactly what it purports to be, and so painstaking in its exhaustive examination of every miniscule second a punk appears on any given piece of celluloid I can't help but give it 5 stars.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best and most important book.

[Tee Goe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite possibly the best movie guide ever written.

[Abby Denson · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my fave books of the last several years. An encyclopedic guide to punks on film with some very interesting interviews too. I really hope this gets reprinted soon!

[Gary Shindler · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exhaustive but enjoyable encyclopedia of punk moments on film.

[Todd Souvignier · Rating 5 out of 5]

completely awesome in every respect, cant say enough good things about this book.