Critics reviews

Writer-director Spheeris had been on the front lines of California hardcore c. 1980 while filming her documentary The Decline of Western Civilization, and even if the staging of the assault at the show feels utterly false in every detail, it's very likely that Spheeris knew something we didn't about the sexual bullying and general loutishness that went on in the scene at that time.

It is a remarkably accomplished piece, full of felicitous touches in framing, camera movement and cutting. It is not a film imbued with any particular cinephilic penchant for quoting other films, but it has ended up being mightily influential over two subsequent decades of punk cinema.