Film Review: Get Crazy (1983)
The pantheon of ‘80s punk panic movies is a fantastic hodgepodge of freaks, weirdos, and blood-thirsty psychos that has, over the decades, amassed a VHS hoarding, middle-finger-waving cult of rabid collectors and staunch defenders. This oft-maligned genre is made up of celebrated losers and rockers; of anti-authority wing-nuts and drug-fueled maniacs who live and die as free men and women of the societal wasteland. They snub their nose at normalcy and etiquette while feasting on the fear and leftovers of a civilization in decline.
For many of us lucky enough to be raised on these hallowed films — who regularly participated in clandestine late-night USA or HBO viewings of these oft-forgotten gems of deformed cinema — the chaos we found within proved infectious, prompting our own life of wanderlust and unshackled adventure. D. Boon said “Punk rock changed our lives,” but it was punk movies that first opened my eyes to the possibilities of the world — something I can’t express how thankful I am about.
Get Crazy, like many ‘80s punk classics, is not a “good” movie by any metric of cinematic achievement, but sometimes what’s considered “good” doesn’t mean shit to me. Allan Arkush’s minor triumph has just the right amount of madness, off-the-wall antics, and good old-fashioned can-do attitude to place it among the best the genre has to offer — not to mention one of the finest “live” performances from a fake band I’ve ever seen in any movie ever (thank you very much, Lori Eastside and Lee Ving). Get Crazy is bonkers in all the best ways that low-budget ‘80s movies often were (gleefully exploitative, yet oddly socially conscious and hip to Reagan-era greed), yet maintains an almost naive innocence that pushes it towards the gentle rather than the provocative.
Taking place almost entirely at a wild New Year’s Eve concert in Los Angeles, Get Crazy tells the fabled story of plucky underdogs (led by Daniel Stern) trying to save their beloved and ramshackle theater from a greedy concert promoter (a wonderfully villainous and sleazy Ed Begley, Jr.) bent on replacing it with a stadium (or something, I’m not exactly sure). What follows is a showcase of the live performances that make up the concert, augmented with backstage horseplay and the increasingly bizarre attempts at sabotaging the whole affair. If you’ve ever seen an ‘80s movie before, you can probably guess where all of this winds up, but, 40 years later, the campy predictability is part of the fun.
Continuously lost in the shuffle between 1979’s Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (another punk rock tour de force from Arkush) and the 1984 standard-bearers Repo Man and Suburbia, Get Crazy remains essential viewing for those inclined toward all things mondo and unruly. With a cast that also includes Malcolm McDowell as an aging Bowie wannabe (hilariously named Reggie Wanker), Lou Reed as a spacey folk singer, and of course an obligatory appearance by Clint Howard, Get Crazy delivers marvelously in all the categories that matter most: freakazoid punks, burnt-out hippies, climactic explosions, and wacky alien space drugs. What more could you want out of a movie?
Happy New Year!
Originally published by ASHEVILLE MOVIES.
