First off, we’ve got the trailer for Head, starring the Monkees! This film was co-written by Jack Nicholson.
2. The Great Rock and Roll Swindle (1980)
In the first film that Julien Temple made about the history of the Sex Pistols, Malcolm McLaren presents himself as being the genius behind the group and tries to keep viewers from noticing that Johnny Rotten refused to have anything to do with the film.
3.Stunt Rock (1978)
I know next to nothing about this film but it was directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith and that’s often a good sign.
4, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978)
Featuring Donald Pleasence singing the longest version of I Want You ever recorded!
5. The Decline of Western Civilization (1981)
From director Penelope Spheeris comes the ultimate documentary about 1980s Los Angeles punk rock.
6. The Decline of Western Civilization Part 2: The Metal Years (1988)
No More Mr. Nice Guy was originally written for Wes Craven’s Shocker, a movie about someone who was never a nice guy. The video pays homage to the film’s electric chair-inspired plot. This video was directed by Penelope Spheeris, who is best known for Wayne’s World and The Decline of Western Civilization trilogy.
In this video, Megadeth performs behind a wire fence while their fans attempt to get to the band. It doesn’t have much to do about the song, which is about a man sneaking back into his house after cheating on his girlfriend. But it probably is a fair representation of what it was like to be in a popular thrash metal band in the 80s.
Directing this video was Penelope Spheeris, who has previously celebrated metal in the documentary, The Decline of Wester Civilization Part II. Spheeris would later direct the film for which she is best remembered, Wayne’s World.
I sound like a broken record every time I say this, but there isn’t much to talk about here beyond it being a good song.
Even if somebody didn’t know anything about Megadeth or director Penelope Spheeris, it would make perfect sense for someone to look at this music video and think it was extracted from a documentary. I haven’t seen The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (1988) yet. According to Songfacts, the music video was either shot before the documentary, then integrated into it, or it was part of the documentary, then extracted to be released as a music video. Either way, you’d be right to look at this and think it was from a documentary.
I like what Spheeris did here. She made a stripped down concert video that lets the band shine on their own merits rather than her work as a director. It isn’t devoid of her touch though. She clearly tried to capture them as people performing for other people rather than creating a stylish representation of the material like you would see in their music videos for Peace Sells and Sweating Bullets. The thing that subtly jumps out at me when I watch this over and over is that Mustaine is largely invisible due to the limited amount of time he is shown on stage, the sunglasses, and his face being partially darkened during parts of it. I would imagine this was done not only to visually show the darkness of the lyrics, but to keep your focus on the lyrics and how they are resonating with the crowd.
Speaking of the lyrics, this is one of those music videos that was banned from MTV. According to Wikipedia, it was due to alleged references to suicide.
According to mvdbase, the husband and wife team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris produced this music video. They would go on to do a lot of other famous music videos together as well as the movie Little Miss Sunshine (2006). They were also producers on The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years.
I thought this would be simple. It’s October, so of course Feed My Frankenstein by Alice Cooper would fit. Also, I find that I get more hits on artists and songs that people know. It was in Wayne’s World (1992). A perfect storm to feature as a music video of the day. I had no idea it would be so difficult to find out who directed it when it should have been obvious.
You would immediately think that Penelope Spheeris directed the music video. I went to the two major databases on music videos–IMVDb and mvdbase–but neither of them had a director listed.
At first glance, it looked like what I remembered from the movie. I pulled out my copy of Wayne’s World and played that sequence side-by-side with the music video. It certainly is the same set, but they actually look quite different.
The next thing that came to mind was that it made sense that she would shoot a little extra material for Alice Cooper so he would have a music video for his song. After all, she directed The Decline of Western Civilization movies and has a personal quote on IMDb that says:
[on why she does documentaries about metal and punk music] “I mean, look, you don’t see me making documentaries on Britney Spears, you know what I mean? Sweetheart of a little girl, you know. Or Madonna. That’s not my thing. I just like this harder edge stuff. That’s just me.”
My next step was to look up whether she did have any credits for directing music videos, and up came some results. She shot at least three music videos for Megadeth. However, that was only a tease because she actually directed the music video for Megadeth’s cover of Alice Cooper’s No More Mr. Nice Guy.
Luckily, the website Songfacts came to my rescue, and said exactly what I thought to begin with when I went in to writing this post. She shot some more footage to create an extended version of that scene from the movie.
I don’t know how that wasn’t in the two biggest music video databases, but there’s the series of steps I went through to find out that piece of information.
Sadly, that’s pretty much all I have on this music video. The difference between the music video and the film, is that you get the full song with all its’ sexual metaphors. The only other thing to mention is that Alice Cooper was originally going to perform School’s Out, but two weeks before filming, Mike Myers was told by the band’s manager Shep Gordon that he would be performing their new song, Feed My Frankenstein. Again, thank you Songfacts for that information too.
Three years after starring in Grease 2, Maxwell Caulfield starred in another (albeit far different) film about teenage delinquents, 1985’s The Boys Next Door. Directed by Penelope Spheeris (who also did Suburbia, another film about wayward youth), The Boys Next Door is a frequently harrowing film about a road trip gone very wrong.
The film opens with a series of black-and-white photographs of real-life serial killers, so you know what you’re about to get yourself into before the main action even begins. Caulfield plays Roy, a not-very-smart teenager who lives in an industrial town in the southwest. With his generally bad attitude and violent temper, Roy is one of the least popular kids at the local high school. In fact, his only friend appears to be Bo (Charlie Sheen). Bo is just as stupid as Roy but he’s not as violent. Bo’s problem is that he’s a follower, the type who is incapable of making his own decisions. If Roy says, “Let’s beat the Hell out of someone,” Bo is going to agree because … well, why not?
When Roy and Bo graduate from high school, they don’t have much more to look forward to than a life of working in a factory. After an angry Roy violently lashes out at a graduation party, he decides that he and Bo should get out of town. Fortunately, Bo has received $200 as a graduation gift. Roy and Bo decide to use that money to take a trip to Los Angeles.
On the way to L.A., it quickly becomes obvious that Roy is more than just an angry kid. When he and Bo rob a gas station, Roy savagely beats the attendant. When they get to Los Angeles, all Roy can talk about is how much he hates the city and everyone who lives in it. Roy is especially vocal about how much he hates anyone who he perceives as being gay…
Of course, even as Roy is loudly expressing every homophobic thought that pops into his tiny mind, it’s hard not to notice that he seems to be rather obsessed with Bo. In fact, he is so obsessed with Bo that he basically kills anyone who shows the least bit of interest in Bo. Paranoid that Bo is going to abandon him, Roy is willing to do anything to keep that from happening.
The Boys Next Door is one of those films that really took me by surprise. It may start and look like your typical low-budget thriller but The Boys Next Door ultimately reveals itself to be a disturbingly plausible portrait of a sociopath. The film suggests that, as individuals, both Roy and Bo are somewhat laughable but, as a team, they’re deadly. It’s no wonder that Roy is so insistent that Bo always stay with him because, without Bo around, Roy wouldn’t have any motivation to do anything. Everything that Roy does — from theft to murder — is largely to impress Bo. Unfortunately, Bo is too stupid to understand what’s going on in his friend’s head.
Especially when compared to some of the other performances that they are known for, both Sheen and Caulfield do surprisingly good work as the two murderers. Penelope Spheeris wisely directs the film as if it were a documentary and the end result is a harrowing film that deserves to be far better known.
Through the Shattered Lens 