DVD & BLU RAY REVIEWS

This is a film that would have sat on a shelf indefinitely if not for a cable station program called Night Flight. One of the stories behind the myth of the film is that it was produced with proceeds from the box office gains of Cheech & Chong’s Up In Smoke. Director Lou  Adler, who produced and directed that first Cheech & Chong film, comments that he was approached to direct the film after it had already been in production, so Cheech & Chong’s money had nothing to do with this film. For whatever reason, when the film was completed after a lengthy editing process, it had a disastrous preview screening, and Adler decided to do some additional shooting for the end. Screenwriter Nancy Dowd (Slapshot) and Adler had major disagreements, and after a handful of unsuccessful screenings, the studio decided the film was too much trouble and shelved it. It ended up in a package of films to be shown on a small cable channel called The USA Network on their weekend late-night block, and it found an audience. 

Diane Lane plays Corrine Burns, who gets some local publicity in Charlestown, PA, when she appears on a local news segment. Much like the town of Braddock, PA, featured in  George A. Romero’s Martin, Charlestown (home of the Charlestown Chiefs) is a dying town. In the news follow-up story, she reveals that she has changed her name to Third Degree  Burns and has started a band. With no job, no parents, and no hope, she attends a rock concert and ends up getting an offer to join the tour as the opening act (at the same time escaping the bleakness of her hometown). She then proceeds to manipulate the press and the people around her to gain fame.  

In a stroke of pure genius, the British punk band on the bill is called The Looters and consists of Paul Cook and Steve Jones of Sex Pistols on drums and guitar, Paul Simonon of  Clash on bass, with actor Ray Winstone doing a fantastic job on vocals. The headliner is a washed-up hard rock band called The Metal Corpses featuring Vince Welnik and Fee  Waybill of The Tubes. An extra added treat is the Los Angeles band Black Randy And The Metro  Squad appearing in an audition scene.  

Over the years, the film has accumulated a decent number of followers who consider it one of the smartest and funniest unsung Rock N’ Roll films of all time, and Rhino released it on  DVD in 2008. Now it is being released on Blu-ray, and hardcore fans will want to spend the dough for the upgrade. The picture and sound quality are fantastic, with The Looters songs just blasting off the screen. The commentary tracks with Diane Lane and Laura Dern, and a separate one with Lou Adler from the DVD, are included. There is a brilliant documentary on the making of the film with interviews featuring many key players. A standout is the interview with screenwriter Nancy Dowd. Her skills as a writer are apparent when looking at her credited and uncredited filmography. With Slapshot, she wrote the script to one of the gnarliest sports movies ever made and got all the crude, male macho posturing hilariously right. The same goes here. Dowd gets everything right as far as the band interactions, life on the road, and how loyalty means nothing when the big time beckons. There are several other little things she also captures, like the power of the media, fashion trends, teens seeing their idols in concert at the mall, and the scene where Christine Lahti, as Laura Dern’s mother, appears on a news interview regretting her bad parenting, is a home run.  The acting is top shelf throughout, with Lane, Winstone, and Dern all doing miraculous work.  British journalist and legit original punk rocker Caroline Coon was brought in as a consultant so things look and feel right. The Looters’ songs were written by Cook and Jones and sound like their band The Professionals. The incidental reggae music was written and performed by Barry Ford, who also plays the small-time promoter/driver Lawnboy. This release is a 4K/Blu-ray combo with most of the extras on the BD only. Along with the commentaries and documentary, there is an audio interview with Night Flight co-creator  Stuart Shapiro, an alternate opening credits sequence under the title The Professional,  deleted scenes, and dailies from the MTV-style music clip at the end. There is also a reversible sleeve with the MTV Stains on the front and a great picture of Corrine with her skunk-style hair on the reverse side.