One of the great, unsung rock musicals, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains is one of my all-time favorite movies in general, and one ripe for rediscovery for a new generation.
Not unlike the Velvet Underground's classic first album, it wasn't a huge hit in its time, but it influenced a host of musicians to form their own rock groups moving forward, in particular the famed "Riot Grrrl" movement of the 90's, which I was also a huge fan of back in the day.
Like a lot of those bands, I first discovered the film in its countless airings on cable TV, in particular on the late, great USA Network weekend series, Night Flight.
For those unfamiliar, the show was a hodgepodge of different things, including rock concerts and documentaries, cult movies and interviews with the more left-of-center pop culture figures out there- everyone from musicians like DEVO to Bowie to Ozzy, to avant-garde filmmakers and stars like John Waters, Divine, Dennis Hopper, Russ Meyer and Roger Corman.
Night Flight itself has made a bit of a comeback in recent years, thanks to brief snippets shown on the IFC Network, as well as a website, nightflight.com, where the show can be streamed on the subscription channel, Night Flight Plus.
If you're into more cult-oriented stuff, or just want a crash course in oddball movies, music and TV, look no further. Basically, it's the TV show equivalent of a music mixtape- or a playlist, for my younger readers.
The show ran from around 1981-88, and was then syndicated in the early 90's, which is probably when I started watching it. (Had to have been the late 80's or early 90's, I'm not quite sure exactly.)
Anyway, it's the first place I saw the likes of Rude Boy, Urgh! A Music War, Warhol's Dracula and Frankenstein, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Reefer Madness, among many other wacked-out movies and music videos. It was kind of the anti-MTV, in a way.
The Stains was a popular favorite on the show, not in the least because it never had a proper theatrical release. However, reception to the movie on Night Flight was so strong that it eventually got one on the art-house film circuit in the mid-80's.
It was later revived in theaters in the late 90's throughout the early 2000's, eventually making its way back onto cable around 2009, notably on TCM's Underground film show, which highlights cult classics. A DVD, which is sadly out-of-print now, was released in 2008, complete with a cast commentary and one from the film's director. A soundtrack album, released around the same time, is likewise OOP.
As we swiftly approach the film's forty-year anniversary, maybe a Blu-Ray is in order, along with a re-release of the DVD and the film's soundtrack. Hey, stranger things have happened, and just look at the crazy shit they're releasing on Blu-Ray these days. Why shouldn't The Stains have another day in the sun?
Well, there might be a few reasons for that, which we'll get to in a minute. In the meantime, here's a brief rundown of the movie's plot. The film follows, in time-honored biopic tradition, the rise and fall of a (fictional) girl group in the early 80's, which is when the film was actually made. The director later reunited the three main girls to film a brief, more upbeat coda around two years later, which also reflected the changing times.
When the film was made, women's rock groups were barely even a thing, although The Runaways, Suzi Quatro, Heart, Blondie, Pat Benatar, Patti Smith and Siouxie & The Banshees were all around. Of course, all of those, save The Runaways, were female-fronted bands made up of guys, rather than all girls, so it wasn't quite the same thing.
The point being, that sort of thing was still a bit of a novelty in those days, but by the time the film was released in 1982, the landscape had shifted considerably, thanks in no small part to MTV, which helped to open up the floodgates for such acts, including the likes of The Go-Go's, The Bangles, Vixen and Girlschool, among others.
However, it would be the 90's before bands with prominently female members would be commonplace, notably within the Riot Grrrl movement. It's hard to imagine a lot of those bands were not influenced by this movie, in particular Sleater-Kinney (and, by extension, Heavens to Betsy and Excuse 17), Bikini Kill, Hole, Babes in Toyland and Bratmobile. I also suspect that The White Stripes are fans, given that the term is used to describe the girls' distinctive hairstyles in the movie.
As such, the film was quite ahead of its time, while simultaneously being somewhat of its time, thanks to the presence of various other styles of music prominent in the movie, which mostly has a distinctly 70's vibe to it as a result, save the somewhat tacked-on 80's-style happy ending. This is certainly not a complaint, just an observation.
Despite history's tendency to group things into convenient decades and generations and the like, the truth is, things have never been that clean-cut. The 80's most people think of when they think of the decade didn't really kick in, in earnest, until several years into it, when the shinier, happier New Wave music took the place of the mostly punk and metal bands represented here.
We do get a glimpse of that sort of thing via the appearance of Black Randy and the Metrosquad, the sort-of ska-adjacent band that crops up in the film's second half. Somewhat ironically, the band was meant as a bit of a joke, with the former punk rocker Randy grafting wise-ass lyrics onto the band's oddball amalgamation of various genres, making them more of a piece with the likes of Oingo Boingo and Mr. Bungle than a straight punk band.
However, as everyone knows, even if they have a tendency to associate a particular time with a particular type of music, often there are all sorts of different things going on at once in a given decade, much less within the music itself. The film certainly reflects that in the various styles represented throughout, which is what helps it age as well as it does, whereas it might seem dated otherwise if it only focused on one given style of music.
The film begins with a nod to the music that was beginning to fade in popularity, the folk-rock/singer-songwriter movement of the 70's, represented here by Carole King's "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?"- itself originally a hit for the girl group The Shirelles way back in 1960- another connection to the past, and to girl groups in general, besides.
Furthermore, the song itself was taken from King's massively-successful album, Tapestry, which was produced by none other than this film's director, Lou Adler. Adler has a long, illustrious career in the music industry, in many ways making him the perfect person to direct this film. He began as a manager (of the rock duo Jan & Dean), then segued into songwriting ("Wonderful World" by Sam Cooke, as heard in the classic Animal House, was his big hit).
Adler then formed his own record company in the mid-60's, Dunhill Records, home to such bands as The Mamas & The Papas, Barry McGuire ("Eve of Destruction") and The Grass Roots ("Midnight Confessions"), all of which he produced or co-produced. In '67, he sold that label off and started a new one, Ode Records, which was home to Carole King, Spirit and none other than Cheech & Chong, whose first film, the classic Up in Smoke, Adler directed.
Adler also put together the legendary Monterey Pop music festival, which launched Jimi Hendrix's career in the US, and produced the subsequent film chronicling the event. As if that weren't enough, he executive-produced the legendary Rocky Horror Picture Show, the longest-running theatrical film in history.
With that kind of resume, it's no wonder Adler hit a slam dunk, in terms of the film's music, to say nothing of its realism. Even the movie's faux bands seem real, thanks to the presence of the perfectly-cast members, many of whom were actually musicians themselves.
For the past-their-prime dinosaur rockers, The Metal Corpses, Adler cast Fee Waybill and Vince Welnick of the New Wave band, The Tubes, who completely ace their roles as washed-up has-beens in the KISS mode. Although, as pointed out in the commentary, KISS is, in actuality, still going strong, while most of the others represented here are long gone, so there you go- you just never know. Also note the resemblance of the band's logo to Iron Maiden, who are also still very much alive and well- life after death, you might even say. 💀
Somewhat ironically, though The Tubes had some minor hits (notably "White Punks on Dope" and "Sushi Girl") before the making of this film, their biggest song, the Top 10 smash "She's a Beauty" came after it, in 1983. You can still hear it on classic rock radio to this day. And yes, that's them doing the mash-up song with Olivia Newton-John, long before that was really a thing, in the cult rock musical Xanadu.
Formulating band #2, The Looters, are three bona fide punk-rock legends, Paul Cook and Steve Jones of The Sex Pistols, and Paul Simonon, of The Clash, on drums, guitar and bass, respectively. Fronting the faux band is character actor Ray Winstone, then-hot off the film version of The Who's Quadrophenia.
Winstone has worked steadily to this day, cropping up in films as diverse as Scum, Nil by Mouth, Sexy Beast, Robin of Sherwood, Henry VIII, Cold Mountain, The Departed, Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Edge of Darkness, Hugo, Point Break (the remake) and the self-explanatory Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, which one could say brought him around full circle, in a way.
Last, but definitely not least are the titular Stains, played by a group of actresses that make up for in spunk what they lack in skill. Though one of the girls, Marin Kanter, sadly had a decidedly short-lived career, with only five movie credits to her name (The Loveless, co-directed by Kathryn Bigelow, and Endangered Species are both well-worth seeing), you might have heard of the other two: Diane Lane and Laura Dern.
The two are nothing short of two of my all-time favorite actresses, whose careers I have followed since I was just a kid. Lane, in particular, I had a massive childhood crush on, thanks in no small part to her roles in the Y/A classics The Outsiders and Rumble Fish, both adaptations by Francis Ford Coppola of S.E. Hinton's much-beloved novels.
Streets of Fire, which I've covered here previously, didn't hurt matters. Indeed, in my twisted brain, Lane's role in that film as singer Ellen Aim is like a continuation of this one, with Lane's character the alter ego of Corrine Burns, who went solo after being given the boot from The Stains at the end of this film, only to reunite with the girls in the film's coda, for a successful MTV-era reboot of The Stains, as it should be. (Hey, something has to account for those missing years!)
Lane's career sadly took a nosedive after the box office failures of SOF and her follow-up The Cotton Club, but after taking a few years off to reconnect with her mother, she came back a little older and a lot wiser, choosing her roles a bit more carefully. She hit pay-dirt with a turn in 1989's TV miniseries Lonesome Dove, receiving an Emmy nomination.
Solid roles in movies like My New Gun, Chaplin, Indian Summer, Wild Bill and Gunshy followed, but it was her turn in A Walk on the Moon that revived her career in earnest. 2002 brought her Oscar-nominated role as an adulterous wife in Unfaithful, which reunited her with Cotton Club co-star Richard Gere.
Since then, she hasn't had much trouble finding work, including roles in big-budget flicks like The Perfect Storm, Hollywoodland, Jumper, Secretariat, Man of Steel (and all the subsequent Superman-themed flicks) and plenty more indies where that came from.
When Lane made this film, she was all of 15, having only made two films prior to The Stains. (She was 17 and noticeably older in the final coda scene of the film.) While a bit rough around the edges at times, it suits the movie, and the character, making this one of her must-see films.
Meanwhile, Laura Dern was all of 13 when she made the film, having made brief appearances in two of her mother Diane Ladd's films, including Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, before her first major role in the excellent and underrated teen drama Foxes, alongside a young Jodie Foster and real-life rocker Cherie Currie, of The Runaways. She actually successfully got herself legally emancipated to do this film, much to her mom's chagrin!
Dern's career chugged along, with turns in the likes of Teachers, Mask and Smooth Talk, before got everyone's attention in cult classic Blue Velvet, which really helped kick her career into overdrive. Dern would become one of director David Lynch's go-to stars, cropping up in his Wild at Heart, Inland Empire and the recent Twin Peaks revival as the notoriously theretofore unseen Diane.
Perhaps her biggest role came courtesy of none other than director Steven Spielberg, who cast her in the massive hit Jurassic Park, a series that continues to this day, albeit not always with Dern's involvement. Other films worth mentioning include Rambling Rose, A Perfect World, Citizen Ruth, I Am Sam, Happy Endings, Lonely Hearts, The Fault in Our Stars, Wild, 99 Homes, The Founder, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and The Tale.
Dern recently won a Golden Globe for her fierce turn in HBO's hugely successful miniseries Big Little Lies. She will reprise the role in a second season, which is shooting as I write this. She's truly one of Hollywood's finest actresses, bar none, IMHO.
While Dern admittedly has a small role in this film, she does what she can with the part resulting in some amusing and occasionally heartfelt moments, notably the scene where she stumbles upon the dead rocker in the toilet and the one where she spots her mom talking about her on TV.
The mom in question, BTW, is a young Christine Lahti, who has had quite an illustrious career herself. She was nominated for an Oscar mere years after this film for the movie Swing Shift, with Goldie Hawn, and was also in such well-regarded films as ...And Justice for All, Running on Empty, Miss Firecracker, Leaving Normal and The Executioner's Song. She would later win both an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her role on TV's Chicago Hope.
Rounding out the main roles are Peter Donat as the snarky newscaster, Harley Dennis, and Cynthia Sikes as Alicia Meeker, a reporter who has the luck to catch the rise and fall of the group from the very beginning. Meanwhile, David Clennon plays Dave Robell, the sneaky, slimy agent that manages both The Looters and later, The Stains.
Canadian actor Peter Donat has a lengthy list of credits that includes The Godfather Part II, F.I.S.T., The China Syndrome, The War of the Roses, The Game and playing Fox Mulder's father on The X-Files.
Cynthia Sikes was a TV regular best-known for Flamingo Road (which reunited her with co-star Donat), St. Elsewhere, JAG and, more recently, the Charles Manson-inspired police procedural Aquarius. She also produced the recent Blade Runner 2049, the long-awaited follow-up to the sci-fi classic.
Finally, David Clennon has been working steadily since the late 60's, appearing in such classic movies as The Paper Chase, Helter Skelter, Coming Home, Being There, Hide in Plain Sight, Missing, Star 80, The Right Stuff, Sweet Dreams, Light Sleeper, Matinee, And the Band Played On, Silver City, Flags of Our Fathers, J. Edgar and Gone Girl. Most recently, he had a recurring role on TV's Code Black. But he's best-known to me for his role in another of my all-time faves, John Carpenter's cult classic remake of The Thing.
Be sure to also keep an eye out for early appearances in bit roles by future stars like Brent Spiner (Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation), Elizabeth Daily (who would reunite with Lane in Streets of Fire, plus appear in the 80's classics Valley Girl and Pee Wee's Big Adventure, as well as go on to be a hugely successful voice-over artists as Bubbles on The Powerpuff Girls and Chuckie on Rugrats), future cult star Debbie Rochon, in her movie debut (Tromeo & Juliet, Terror Firmer) and look quick for future Wilson Phillips singer Chynna Phillips as one of the Skunkettes seen in photos. (Adler helpfully points her out in the commentary, for those interested.)
While the film has aged well for the most part, IMHO, I suppose some of the younger generations might be a bit taken aback by the film's arguably gratuitous examples of the infamous "male gaze" throughout. All of the main girls are heavily sexualized (although they make it a point to repeatedly claim they don't "put out") especially Lane and she even does brief nudity and a sex scene, which is more than a little skeevy, given her age.
However, the film isn't doing that just to be pervy, either. There is a point there, and it is that people- in particular guys- often try to take advantage of women, especially in that day and age. Nearly every man The Stains meet wants to profit off them in some way, and they rarely share the benefits unless cornered, as Lane does with the Agent character at one point.
It's worth noting that the knowing script, written under a pseudonym by Nancy Dowd (Slap Shot, Coming Home, Swing Shift), was written by a woman, and there is a method to her madness. While director Adler ably covers the life on the road and behind-the-scenes madness of a rocker's world from experience, so does Dowd wisely give voice to her female characters' plight, courtesy of some choice dialogue.
One of my favorite scenes is the one where Winstone's character, Billy, confronts Lane's Corrine, after she deftly steals one of his band's songs as her own, leading to this exchange:
Corrine: You're so jealous of me. I'm everything you ever wanted to be.
Billy: A cunt?
Corrine: Exactly.
Obviously, under normal circumstances, this would be a dreadful put-down, especially back then. (Though things haven't gotten much better now- witness the flap over comedian Samantha Bee using the word as of recently.)
But here, it reads as Corinne owning her state as a woman, as in "Damn right I am- and you only wish you could be like me." That's pretty awesome, and forward-thinking for the time.
So, yes, there is indeed some ick-inducing "male gaze" stuff, especially on the cinematographer's end- though Adler shares his side of the blame for allowing it to be in the film- but when you get down to it, this is a film about women not letting anyone getting in their way of achieving their dreams, even if they have to do things that are traditionally "male" to do it, like stealing or threatening people, to get it done.
Granted, some of the women aren't above doing it, too, as in the reporter that uses the girls to further her own career, and fans the flames of their success until it no longer serves her. But I like how the girls more often than not turn the tables on the guys and outfox them at nearly every turn, where in a typical movie, especially of that era, it would just be women getting screwed over and rarely coming out on top.
A lot of that is Dowd's excellent script, and it's a shame she took her name off of it, objecting to the revised ending- which she had nothing to do with- preferring the grittier one she concocted, where the other two girls soldier on without Corrine, even though they're family. It's kind of a downer, but I get it- life isn't a fairy tale sometimes.
Still, whatever ending you prefer, there's no denying that this is a forward-thinking movie for the time, and it pretty clearly inspired an entire generation of girls to do what The Stains did and form their own bands, so ultimately something awesome came out of it.
My advice to younger generations seeing this for the first time is to just filter out the iffy stuff the best you can, keeping in mind the film itself was written by a woman, and take comfort in the fact that the women are clearly the heroes and the ones calling the shots in the end.
I think you'll love the speeches Lane gives in her various rants against the system, and find the Girl Power-type moments to be sufficiently inspiring enough to look past the more troubling ones.
Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains might not be a perfect film, but it's an honest one, filled with great, catchy music; memorable characters and a rousing, ever-quotable script that shows how tough life for an all-female rock band can be, and how they deftly navigate the predatory men that try to get in their way and manage to remain still standing in sisterhood. I can live with that.
The film, as aforementioned, is out of print on DVD, but is readily available for rent on Amazon and has been known to crop up on Netflix time and again. By all means, do what you have to do to see it- it's well-worth checking out.
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