video punks.

My good friend Diego Bergia just hooked up this arcade cabinet in his apartment that features over 3000 video games - basically everything that was ever made pre-millennium. So instead of pumping a machine full of quarters in the back of some sketchy donut shop after school, we're able to enjoy unlimited credits, close proximity to a fridge full of beer while banging golden era hip-hop on iTunes. It's kind of a cheat, but it's the only way you'll beat NARC without dropping a chunk of change. Besides, when's the last time you saw a throwback arcade in your neighborhood? The machine was originally created to host an animation piece for an art exhibit at Magic Pony Gallery in November but has since become a Sunday night hot spot.

This recent fanaticism with vintage gaming leeds me to another retro obsession - punks in movies. Diego put me on to an early 1980's gaming flick titled, Joysticks. Basically, the premiss of the film is that a bunch of squares try and shut down the local video arcade with plenty of stereotyping, gratuitous nudity and screwball humor along the way. One of the main villains is a punk named King Vidiot who is determined to destroy the preppy playboy arcade owner. His only real intimidation is that he wears black lipstick and has little shame or metal stability, which is a common portrayal of punks on screen. Vidiot got me thinking about some of my favorite punk roles in film, some of which are so B I couldn't even find stills of on the whole world wide web! For example, the 1974 kung-fu flick, Return of the Street Fighter featuring Sonny Chiba spotlights a couple of crazed Chinese punks with a white ringleader. They drive around mindlessly destroying fruit stands and rickshaws in their jeep while making some pretty hilarious ESL comments and gestures in the spirit of mimicked American rebellion. But that's not even the worst/best of it...

Punks in movies - selected stills and images below.

✝ Joysticks (1983) ✝

✝ Times Square (1980) ✝

✝ Summer of Sam (1999) ✝

✝ Valley Girl (1983) ✝

✝ Class of 1984 (1982) ✝

✝ Suburbia (1984) ✝

✝ Repo Man (1984) ✝

✝ Return of the Living Dead (1985) ✝

✝ Night of the Demons (1988) ✝

✝ Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains (1981) ✝

✝ Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (2001) ✝

✝ Thrashin' (1986) ✝

✝ Dogs in Space (1987) ✝