Punk Vacation

My review was written in May 1990 after watching the movie on Raedon video cassette.

Despite a couple of twists on the gender and tone of the genre, "Punk Vacation" degenerates into a routine action pic. Bearing a 1987 copyright, it's a current direct-to-video release.

A group of punk-styled youths passes through a small town on their motorcycles and the townsfolk form a posse to fight the. This basic plot line from "The Wild One" through dozens of '60s biker pics has the novelty of a coed gang led by a woman, tough but lovely (under her declasse makeup) Roxanne Rogers.

Film's mood, especially its diary, is tongue-in-cheek. But director Stanley Lewis lets things slip into cornball fights in the woods in the final reels. Finale is different, with a shootout between Rogers and heroine Sandra Bogan instead of the usual macho display.

Cast is subpar and low-budget lensing includes some woefully inadequate faking, such as a rocking care in the studio for a driving scene. Louis Waldon, who starred in several Andy Warhol films, plays the sheriff.

Well... I like bad movies. So this isn't exactly the worst bad movie I've ever seen. It's sort of entertaining, at least, to laugh at a bit. But as for the "punk" part of "Punk Vacation"... uh, don't look here for punk rock stuff. This ain't no "Suburbia," not even "Class of 1984." At least those movies had actual punk bands perform in them, but "Punk Vacation" has a sort of mock-punk soundtrack and a bunch of pseudo-punkish people with bad makeup and studded wristbands. At least at one point the punks try to start a revolution by shooting all the cops in the small desert town they're "vacationing" in. Too bad they're stopped thanks to the "Predator"-style booby traps laid by the wily, sexy deputy. Good for a laugh as to what clueless Hollywood types think "punk" is all about.

So much weirdness! Strange camera angles, slow motion, color filters. Bad edits and the world's longest pauses in between lines. P.V. opens with a dude on a moto losing his forty cents in the soda machine. The owner of the diner shoos him away with a shotgun. So the angry dude returns with his gang... and it goes south from there. The gang, dressed in their 80s rock star hair and makeup, starts trouble then runs off to hide in the hills. One of their group, Billy, is still in the hospital, so they decide to stick around and help him escape. and a chick with a gun goes rock climbing to find the gang, in a dress! If they had cult classics back then, this should have been one. It's so lame, its funny. although no-where as creative as Rocky Horror. The ONE and only film directed by Stanley Lewis. This was also the one and only role for a whole lot of the cast. and this one is classified as a Video on IMDb... not sure what the difference is. It's pretty funny, as low-budget horror films go. Vincent Price was still around when this was made... i kept waiting for him to appear!

This movie changed my life. It has a compelling story line with excellent acting. The director's vision takes the viewer on an endless adventure that will make you laugh, cry, and jump out of your seat.The movie takes fight club and Big and mixes them up into the best kind of movie soup you have ever slurped. I challenge anyone on the face of the earth and beyond to find a more heartbreakingly good story than this.Chris Gaw made this movie what it is with his soul patch and corny jokes keeping everyone going.If you love punks.....and love them more when they are on vacation, you will love Punk Vacation.Please go out and purchase this movie.

A quaint, sleepy California farming community is the weekend destination for a savage gang of ridiculously over-the-top big city "punkers". An elderly fellow ends up dead the very moment these hoodwinks come rolling into town, and his distraught daughter vows bloody vengeance. Before long, every goat-ropin' hee-haw hayseeder in town is facing-off against the no-good poseur-punk delinquents.

A laggard little squirt of "direct-to-video" trash, made more-or-less endurable by a small serving of unpremeditated chuckles. That said, it still stands as one of the more honorable releases from the knuckleheads at notorious Rae-Don Video.

The wardrobe supervisor for this flick apparently drew inspiration from the "punked-out" guest-villains of 80s-era cop shows, and their comically overaccessorized punk pastiche of heavy chains, tattered fishnet, and glitter-spritzed hair moussed-up into something vaguely redolent of a mohawk(Vivienne Westwood meets Sid and Marty Krofft?). These misrepresentational Vaudevillian caricatures are always spuriously amusing, but it's not enough to save PUNK VACATION from face-down ignominy.

3.5/10...tolerable, though not nearly as much fun as I wanted it to be.