NOW IN THEATERS! Get ready to rock out with absolutely no roosters out with the totally perfect rock-doc Pretty Ugly: The Story of The Lunachicks, written and directed by Ilya Chaiken. It tells the careening tale of woman-fueled rock-and-roll chaos in the last decade of the 20th century. On the streets of New York, at the end of the 80s, a group of misfit teenage girls banded together to form the punk band The Lunachicks. Decades later, band members Theo Kogan, Gina Volpe, Sydney “Squid” Silver, and Sindi Benezra get back together to talk about the days that were.
The audience is given the whole lowdown on The Lunachicks’ wild career, which ruled in the Hell of the underground but never got to mainstream success heaven. They came close, including having Offspring open for them before they blew up, which later led to them opening for Offspring. They were also on the 1999 Van’s Warp Tour, where they had an onstage feud with Blink-182. We also hear from the infamous drummers, Becky Wreck and Chip English, who say the wildest s**t. With their music still as hot as Jan Brady with a flame thrower, will they ever reunite to play and slay again?
Pretty Ugly: The Story of The Lunachicks starts out at a 10 out of 10 and stays there. There is this pounding of the drums in the beginning, along with a rising swell of a guitar arsenal being loaded for action. The hair on your arms starts to rise as electricity fills the air. Then the band on stage lets loose, launching a breakneck momentum that never relents. Director Chaiken begins with fun and keeps it coming throughout. It is one of the most exciting rock documentaries ever made. It radiates fun like the sun radiates heat. Really good movies make you high. Pretty Ugly: The Story of The Lunachicks gets you f*****g blasted.
“… the careening tale of woman fueled rock and roll chaos …”
Like a lot of viewers, I am coming to Pretty Ugly: The Story of The Lunachicks with no background knowledge of the band. Despite being in New York at the dawn of the 90s, I completely missed the Lunachicks. They were not playing at the Pyramid club on the one night I got on the guest list. I have never heard any of their songs; I thought I had heard one, but it turns out it was by The Cycle Sluts From Hell. I only knew their name because in the GG Allin documentary that Film Threat distributed, Dino, the naked drum player, believes he is psychically connected with The Lunachicks. I would have loved to have caught them then, as they were everything I was looking for in music at the time: fast female punk with a John Waters aftertaste.
Chaiken blends new interviews with the band members with VHS-era archive footage to immerse the audience in the wild ride that ran until the end of the 90s. We get to see all the Lunachicks become friends in high school, along with their “mentor” Benezra, who had her own apartment and could show them the downtown ropes. The interviews are eloquent, giving lots of emotional insight into the connections and conflicts between these musicians. It delivers the kind of sucker punches to the heart that you would expect to get from binging a TV season than a rock doc.
Pretty Ugly: The Story of The Lunachicks has all the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll you can handle, 90s style. Chaiken also fills in a giant, gaping hole in rock history: she shows that there was something awesome happening in New York City during those years. After lording over the music industry for decades, New York underperformed during the 90s, being overshadowed by the output of Seattle, Tempe, Detroit and other smaller cities. This movie cements The Lunachicks as New York’s best-kept secret, one that is too juicy to keep to yourself. Pretty Ugly: The Story of The Lunachicks will hit you harder than ten bags of Alphabet City’s finest product, as it will knock the wind right out of you.
"…one of the most exciting rock documentaries ever made"
