While the GF was freezing her culo off in Chicago, I was praying that an obscure '80's flick would live up to my memory of it: "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains."
HIGHLY SATISFYING.
You know how there are those movies you saw as a kid and loved them and then when you see them years later, you think you must have been high on Pixy Stix because the movie sucks donkey balls and you begin to wonder how you graduated from the 7th grade? (Ice Castles, I'm looking at you.)
This was my fear, because the Fabulous Stains was one of those movies that I loved so much, but since I could never find it again, it became almost mythical to me. It wasn't constantly being cycled on Starz or TNT like the loathesome Threesome or Rocky II or Twins. It was elusive. It was the Missed Connections of movies, the kind that made me wonder if perhaps I'd imagined the whole thing. Diane Lane never mentions it; it was as though she arrived on the scene in The Outsiders. Same with Laura Dern. Of the oeuvre of girl-band flix, this one doesn't rank, which is all the more puzzling since, let's face, the girl-band oeuvre is pretty thin, all Satisfaction and - well, that's pretty much all the comes to mind right now. And so I began to wonder if I'd conjured the entire thing.
But I hadn't - the movie was real and it held up. Diane Lane - only 16! - was all scowly goodness. Again, it's not the perfect movie but god, does it nail the universal desire to flee the confines of your small town and become a rock n' roll star, not to mention the art of media manipulation. Rent it.
