Something was in the air in the early 80s - or rather, in the hair? Boys I knew grew out their locks long enough to have them shaved short or swept back at the sides with exaggerated quiffs and stray locks running wild. The Stray Cats and Robert Gordon rebooted rockabilly and in 1981 Kathryn Bigelow's The Loveless, her debut full-length film, was released.
I watched it over and over on video at the time. Today I watched it again. It came up when I was searching Willem Dafoe so I thought 'Why not, for old time's sake?' This was Defoe's first lead role. The script is minimal, the pace designed to allow time to linger lovingly on all the key 50s biker iconography. Some compare it to The Wild One, for obvious reasons, but it's that plus Scorpio Rising, for sure. The bikes, chrome, leather, lipstick, smokes, Coke vending machine, flick-knives, swastika tattoo, macho posing make it a retro feast, self-consciously so.
It was called 'a pathetic homage to the 1950's' in a New York Times review but the writer didn't get it, obviously. This is the blank generation rewritten as biker chic. The lost and loveless mirror a fag-end of New Wave that would become No Wave in going-nowhere-fast attitude. Even John Lurie and his brother Evan were involved in the music. If the dialogue's corny and the cool layered on thicker than hairspray and grease no matter, it all adds to the atmosphere. I loved it all over again. If you haven't seen it, the clips compiled in the video below make it seem a far more 'happy' affair than it really is; more like an average teen flick. I post it for the song and a taste of the visuals. Some stills below.
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