UPDATE: Karina initially accidentally posted this story under her name, instead of that of Lauren Wissot, who is the author. Please except her apologies for the confusion. Also, Young Karina did have a blue hair, black eyeliner & studded belt phase, but she was fairly careful not to get anywhere near a camera that year.

It was 30 years ago this week that Sid Vicious rang the death knell for punk rock, overdosing on heroin on February 2nd while awaiting trial for the murder of girlfriend Nancy Spungen. So in honor of the spike-haired rebel who was the face (if not the sound) of punk, and whose chaotic life ended at the tender age of 21, I present five punk rock films that really rock.

Suburbia

Suburbia was released in 1983, and though Sid Vicious had flamed out along with punk’s heyday years before, America’s hardcore scene was in overdrive with bands like Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys reinventing the music by playing at the speed of light, pumping up the adrenaline from coast to coast (and causing this minor threat to later consider the Ramones as slowpoke as The Beatles.) Director Penelope Spheeris, best known for docs like Decline of Western Civilization and her later forays into sellout Hollywood, thrillingly applied the original punk DIY ethos to filmmaking, using guerrilla tactics and nonprofessionals to create a time capsule of L.A.’s underground scene. In other words, the film not only documents punk, it is punk – and a must-see for a young punk as much as the latest Bad Brains album was a must-hear. In fact, I must’ve seen this film about a group of runaways who form a punk family a dozen times during my anarchistic teenage years, never sober and usually with my own extended, Mohawk coiffed, leather-and-chain-wearing family. Indeed, the image of lead character Evan kicking at white walls like a trapped animal, futilely trying to fight his way out of society’s cage, often would be the last I’d see before passing out next to a spike-toed Doc.

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