A fun and furious phenomenon of the ’90s New York punk scene is given its due and another faint glimpse of the spotlight in “Pretty Ugly: The Story of the Lunachicks,” a wry, wizened and not remotely bitter doc about a band that never quite made it, but should have.
They were a respected and popular (not THAT popular) “all girl” ’90s punk band — contemporaries of The Go Go’s, musical, spiritual and showmanship descendents of The Runaways.
The documentary’s decades of performance footage, capturing them as enthusiastic and musically polished teens and onward, makes their case for them all over again. With a sometimes-model lead singer (Theo Kogan) who looks like an ABBA love child and sounds like Cherie Currie (Runaways), howling guitars (played by Gina Volpe and Sindi Benezra) and a thunderous beat provided by bassist Sydney “Squid” Silver and a passing parade of drummers, they should be household names.
A rock journalist working on their biography, Jeanne Fury, assures them that they’d made a huge splash if they reunited. But as that book came out to good reviews and vanished and this documentary finished its film festival run quite a while ago, that didn’t exactly turn out to be the case.
Writer-director Ilya Chaiken’s film still makes for a light and heavily tattooed tour of that Nirvana/Offspring punk era — the rank sexism and abuse the band faced, the internal melodrama of bandmates as lovers and/or junkies and chances the Lunachicks had at the big brass ring.
Forming in the not-yet-Disneyfied New York of the ’80s, when CBGBs was still a thing and punk refused to die, they “wanted to be KISS,” Volpe laughs. They played up a “demented Barbie dolls” image in their stage attire, and titled their albums and EPs “Pretty Ugly,” “Binge & Purge” and “Babysitters on Acid.”
What’s not to love?
The band had minor label record deals, occasional TV and radio exposure, showcase appearances in the Vans Warped Tour, Reading Festival and tours opening for the likes of The Ramones, The Go Go’s, The Buzzcocks, The Dictators, Offspring, Joan Jett, Dinosaur Jr., GWAR and even No Doubt.
They faced sexist taunting from some headliners and mosh pit violence from the mostly-male audience directed at women in the crowd and in the band. Each Lunachick felt they had “something to prove,” “a wall to break down” various members remember.
Their feminism and sex appeal, their polished and frenetic playing, over-the-top shows and tongue-in-cheek tunes — “Jan Brady,” “Spork,” “Buttplug” and “Bitterness Barbie” among them — gave this New York quintet hipster cachet and a rabid following — especially among their punk contemporaries.
But the all-too-familiar story of how success or the lack of it eats away at band harmony plays out here — a taste of the wrong kind of “fame” (Howard Stern running gags, an infamous Calvin Klein heroin chic ad campaign), squabbles about money and credits and resentment over the attention “the beautiful one” gets.
Still, you know there’s a hatchet-burying to come and when it arrives, you can’t help but be touched. And if you aren’t tracking down their tunes after seeing this, your only excuse is “doctor’s orders” about your tinnitus.
Rating: unrated, some nudity, profanity
Cast: Theo Kogan, Gina Volpe, Chip English, Sindi Benezra, Sydney Silver, Becky Wreck and Jeanne Fury, with members of L7, The Offspring, Blondie and The Go Go’s, among others
Credits: Scripted and directed by Ilya Chaiken. A Giant release.
Running time: 1:31
