CLASSICS OF CINEMA
HATED - GG ALLIN &
THE MURDER JUNKIES
HATED - GG ALLIN &
THE MURDER JUNKIES
It’s hard to say what’s more shocking about Hated – GG Allin And
The Murder Junkies, the endless shots of naked men shitting and
being shat on, drinking piss and generally getting quite filthy, or
the fact that this exceptional film was made by Todd Phillips, who
would later go on to make Road Trip and Starsky And Hutch.
Sure, Road Trip had plenty of jokes about the bodily fluids and the
sexing, but did it have a bloke lying on his back whilst a naked
woman pisses into his mouth, and then the fella on the floor pukes
all over his face, before reaching up for another mouthful? Did Ben
Fokker from Starsky And Hutch take a shit and then lie down, eat
some of it, and smear the rest over his head?
Maybe in that Unrated Directors Cut, but certainly not in the one I
saw in cinemas.
A couple days ago The Duke watched a concert video by the name of
GG Allin – Raw, Brutal, Rough And Bloody. If you read my fucking
astoundingly incisive critique of that particular product, you may
have noted how humorous I found much of to be, how fascinated I was
by the disgusting shenanigans going on in the name of God Awful
Music.
After finally seeing this documentary about the man in question, I
have to say the fascination is still there. The humour, though, I
can’t seem to find that motherfucker anywhere right about now.
What Hated concerns itself with, is Todd Phillips decided to make a
film about these insane motherfuckers who were addicted to the
murder or whatever. The fellas that had GG Allin for a singer.
GG had just been released from prison after a three-year stint for
the assault of a woman at one of his shows, when he assumed it
might be perfectly acceptable for to shove a cigarette into her
face and then fling her across a table.
I mean come on, GG probably thought. Rod Stewart does it all the
time, man.
GG agreed to the documentary proposal, and so did everyone else, so
we not only get interviews with the defecating drug-riddled
frontman, but also get to hear what brother Merle, who also plays
guitar, and some other folks think about it all.
Merle, despite his “hilarious” Hitler moustache and extravagant
sideburns, comes across as probably the most sane of them all.
The drummer, Dino, who performs naked on account of the drum stools
hurt like fuck when they rub against fabric, he explains how he’s
got some psychic connection to The Lunachicks, and how GG is really
a beautiful person and is a statement in himself about how awful
this violent world really is. Because we should be loving, is what
he suggests. That violence sucks, is Dino’s assessment of it all.
Then we cut to GG running naked through the audience punching folks
in the head with indiscriminate abandon.
Whilst Dino drums away, naked and no doubt pondering on the beauty
of it all.
By presenting to us the non-performing GG, Hated manages to remove
any shred of enjoyment one might feasibly gleam from the absurdity
of his faeces-flinging frolics.
This is probably as disturbing a portrait of any motherfucker since
that film about Henry The Serial Killer or whatever.
For example, there is footage from a spoken word performance GG
gives in a tiny hall somewhere, way back in 1988. His hair is long,
straggling, his face hidden both by the hat he wears most of the
time, and a massive beard hanging from his jaws. He is a thin,
raving spectre, someone you would see standing in Hyde Park on a
Sunday morning talking about Communist Conspiracies. Except they
don’t tend to fling a handful of arse-paste at you when you walk
past.
It’s like in the final third of Nick Broomfield’s Aileen – Life And
Death Of A Serial Killer, when Aileen Wuornos addressed the camera
with bug-eyed intensity, obviously out of her mind, and
heartbreakingly oblivious to the fact.
Wuornos, however, seemed totally sympathetic. She was a woman who
had definitely committed murder, although how many times or for
what precise reasons no one will ever know. And yet The Duke was
welling up watching her.
GG, however, ranting just as deliriously, doesn’t come across as
sympathetic, necessarily, but simply… sad. It’s a sad fucking
image. And he didn’t even kill anyone.
Not that he didn’t talk about it plenty.
At one point he states how he would definitely have murdered
someone by now, if he hadn’t gone the way of the Recording Artiste
instead. Later, we hear of his visits to John Wayne Gacy in prison.
A fan, who also went to visit Gacy, speculates on what the pair
might have discussed. Tying women up and fucking them seems to be
his thoughts with regards the subject matter of the conversation.
During that 1988 spoken word performance, GG also reads from a
newspaper which has the audacity to ridicule his claim that he will
kill himself in October 1990. As he rants about these motherfucking
reporters and how dare they fuck with what I say, motherfucker, he
almost brings to mind late-period Lenny Bruce, as he hollers before
a paying audience about how these sons of bitches have done him
wrong.
Someone in the crowd shouts “Why don’t you kill yourself sooner?”
GG immediately pounces, stepping forward, looking off camera
towards the back of the hall.
“Why don’t I kill myself sooner? Because it would please you too
much, you fucking cunt.”
He invites the heckler to come up and say that to his face.
I swear to God, my arsehole tightened like you wouldn’t believe.
The woman comes up to him, this hillbilly crazy-stared
motherfucker, and she repeats the question.
GG grabs her by the hair, drags her over to the side of the room,
and bashes her against the wall. Two male members of the audience
rush onstage, one of them helping the woman, the other punching GG
on the face. The one with the woman in his arms, once she is
steadied, he kicks GG in the ribs.
GG stands up, continues his rant.
Amazingly, the guy who punched him returns to get his hat.
GG honestly looks like he doesn’t even notice.
We get interviews with GG’s High School Principle, who reveals that
young Kevin was in fact quite the quiet type, no real hassle, even
though he did turn up on occasion dressed in women’s clothing,
sporting a fetching wig. His music teacher, too, seems rather
enamoured of his former pupil, although doesn’t say very much after
hearing one of The Murder Junkies less tuneful efforts.
Todd Phillips also gets to chat with The Murder Junkies’ former
guitarist, who eventually grew tired of GG’s nonsense and left. He
says that despite his messianic-complex and delusions of artistic
grandeur, what GG is doing really amounts to little more than
throwing a quarter at a steel door. He’s making miniscule dents
when he could be doing something much greater. Like running a
religious cult. That seems be what the guitarist suggests.
Bashing your head with a mike is no big deal, he says. He then
punches himself really fucking hard in the face about a dozen times
in the space of half as many seconds.
“See? No big fucking deal.”
The documentary was filmed before and during the 1991 tour of
America which provides the three shows captured on Raw, Brutal…
Before the tour commences, though, Phillips and his crew organise
for the band to make an appearance at a university in New York.
In front of a crowd of seemingly well mannered, polite, seated
young students, a naked GG stands completely alone in the middle of
the stage. All the lights are on. There are speakers and monitors
laid out before him, but no sign of a musical instrument anywhere.
GG takes a banana, unpeels it, and shoves what he can of it up his
arse. Some of it squishes around the side of the cheeks, but that’s
OK. He just scoops that up to and rubs it around a little in there.
Then he pokes it back out, chews it for a second, spits it out and
throws the rest at the audience. Some of them laugh. Most of them
leave.
He demands that they each strip and throw their clothing onto the
front of the stage. No one does.
Even his threat of walking off doesn’t seem to encourage anyone to
take their pants down.
Getting progressively angrier, GG decides it’s time to walk out
amongst these folks and have a chat. Almost everyone rises and
rushes for the exit. GG lifts a chair and throws it at a
“motherfucker” who’s trying to leave.
The cops come.
Nary a note is ever aired.
Hated is filled with this kind of stunningly barbaric behaviour,
but unlike the aforementioned concert video, this appears as
nothing less than the crazed actions of a genuinely psychotic,
disgustingly misogynist motherfucker.
He is fascinating, but not because he’s some kind of nihilistic
Christ figure. He is fascinating because he completely demolishes
the safety-line between performer and audience, because his antics
continue long after the band have packed up, because he is perhaps
utterly unique in a culture swamped with repetition and cast-off's,
and because there are people who truly worshipped him.
One fan explains how he wanted GG to come to Boston, it being the
great man’s birthday. GG agrees only if the fellow can get a girl
to piss in his mouth for him. Amazingly, the young chap finds this
to be shockingly easy to arrange. We then get camcorder footage of
the act.
But that’s not the only sex you’ll see. At another point, we get a
photograph of a smiling GG receiving a blow-job from an especially
committed male admirer.
In fact, most of the more devoted of the devotees do in fact seem
to be male. GG appeared on Jerry Springer once, and a young girl
was on hand to explain why he was the most amazing thing to ever
happen to her, but all Todd Phillips can find is a bunch of quite,
well, geeky fellas who seem to love GG so much because he is doing
what they all wish they were, but don’t have the balls to.
Obviously these genitals are of the metaphorical variety. I don’t
mean to be rude GG but, honestly, I’ve saw nuns with bigger dicks.
Phillips seems to suggest that the reason for GG’s popularity is
simply because he speaks for an increasingly isolated and
disenfranchised section of America’s youth. The kind of kids who
see smug, preening motherfuckers like Geraldo every day of their
lives, and want nothing more to take a shit, chew it, and spit it
into the bastard’s face.
Geraldo in fact makes an appearance in the film, GG providing the
focus of one of his shows. As the fans down front applaud their
hero, Geraldo makes patronising comments about them, and about
anyone who might even want to think seriously about what this
maniac does for a living. You can see why these teenagers, these
kids who are invited onto national television and then ridiculed,
you can see how they might wanna punch a motherfucker in the jaw.
They don’t though. Why? Fear, mostly. Something which GG Allin had
seemingly little personal experience of, outside of his propensity
to inflict it on others.
As a footnote to the film, after the credits, we get to see footage
of GG’s funeral. His open casket is wailed over by Mohican-spouting
fans, his blackened, bloated skull sporting a pair of head phones.
In death, as in life, his appearance is brutally uncompromising.
Phillips, who seems unsure what to think about it all, finishes by
noting that he had kind of hoped GG would live up to his constant
threat, and go out in some glorious fashion, something no one in
the rock world could ignore. Instead, he sighs, “He died like a
rock-star. In typical rock star fashion.”
Thanks folks.
Further Reading
The Duke’s Review Of "GG Allin - Raw, Brutal, Rough And Bloody"
Drop The Duke A Line Via Electronical Email
The Murder Junkies, the endless shots of naked men shitting and
being shat on, drinking piss and generally getting quite filthy, or
the fact that this exceptional film was made by Todd Phillips, who
would later go on to make Road Trip and Starsky And Hutch.
Sure, Road Trip had plenty of jokes about the bodily fluids and the
sexing, but did it have a bloke lying on his back whilst a naked
woman pisses into his mouth, and then the fella on the floor pukes
all over his face, before reaching up for another mouthful? Did Ben
Fokker from Starsky And Hutch take a shit and then lie down, eat
some of it, and smear the rest over his head?
Maybe in that Unrated Directors Cut, but certainly not in the one I
saw in cinemas.
A couple days ago The Duke watched a concert video by the name of
GG Allin – Raw, Brutal, Rough And Bloody. If you read my fucking
astoundingly incisive critique of that particular product, you may
have noted how humorous I found much of to be, how fascinated I was
by the disgusting shenanigans going on in the name of God Awful
Music.
After finally seeing this documentary about the man in question, I
have to say the fascination is still there. The humour, though, I
can’t seem to find that motherfucker anywhere right about now.
What Hated concerns itself with, is Todd Phillips decided to make a
film about these insane motherfuckers who were addicted to the
murder or whatever. The fellas that had GG Allin for a singer.
GG had just been released from prison after a three-year stint for
the assault of a woman at one of his shows, when he assumed it
might be perfectly acceptable for to shove a cigarette into her
face and then fling her across a table.
I mean come on, GG probably thought. Rod Stewart does it all the
time, man.
GG agreed to the documentary proposal, and so did everyone else, so
we not only get interviews with the defecating drug-riddled
frontman, but also get to hear what brother Merle, who also plays
guitar, and some other folks think about it all.
Merle, despite his “hilarious” Hitler moustache and extravagant
sideburns, comes across as probably the most sane of them all.
The drummer, Dino, who performs naked on account of the drum stools
hurt like fuck when they rub against fabric, he explains how he’s
got some psychic connection to The Lunachicks, and how GG is really
a beautiful person and is a statement in himself about how awful
this violent world really is. Because we should be loving, is what
he suggests. That violence sucks, is Dino’s assessment of it all.
Then we cut to GG running naked through the audience punching folks
in the head with indiscriminate abandon.
Whilst Dino drums away, naked and no doubt pondering on the beauty
of it all.
By presenting to us the non-performing GG, Hated manages to remove
any shred of enjoyment one might feasibly gleam from the absurdity
of his faeces-flinging frolics.
This is probably as disturbing a portrait of any motherfucker since
that film about Henry The Serial Killer or whatever.
For example, there is footage from a spoken word performance GG
gives in a tiny hall somewhere, way back in 1988. His hair is long,
straggling, his face hidden both by the hat he wears most of the
time, and a massive beard hanging from his jaws. He is a thin,
raving spectre, someone you would see standing in Hyde Park on a
Sunday morning talking about Communist Conspiracies. Except they
don’t tend to fling a handful of arse-paste at you when you walk
past.
It’s like in the final third of Nick Broomfield’s Aileen – Life And
Death Of A Serial Killer, when Aileen Wuornos addressed the camera
with bug-eyed intensity, obviously out of her mind, and
heartbreakingly oblivious to the fact.
Wuornos, however, seemed totally sympathetic. She was a woman who
had definitely committed murder, although how many times or for
what precise reasons no one will ever know. And yet The Duke was
welling up watching her.
GG, however, ranting just as deliriously, doesn’t come across as
sympathetic, necessarily, but simply… sad. It’s a sad fucking
image. And he didn’t even kill anyone.
Not that he didn’t talk about it plenty.
At one point he states how he would definitely have murdered
someone by now, if he hadn’t gone the way of the Recording Artiste
instead. Later, we hear of his visits to John Wayne Gacy in prison.
A fan, who also went to visit Gacy, speculates on what the pair
might have discussed. Tying women up and fucking them seems to be
his thoughts with regards the subject matter of the conversation.
During that 1988 spoken word performance, GG also reads from a
newspaper which has the audacity to ridicule his claim that he will
kill himself in October 1990. As he rants about these motherfucking
reporters and how dare they fuck with what I say, motherfucker, he
almost brings to mind late-period Lenny Bruce, as he hollers before
a paying audience about how these sons of bitches have done him
wrong.
Someone in the crowd shouts “Why don’t you kill yourself sooner?”
GG immediately pounces, stepping forward, looking off camera
towards the back of the hall.
“Why don’t I kill myself sooner? Because it would please you too
much, you fucking cunt.”
He invites the heckler to come up and say that to his face.
I swear to God, my arsehole tightened like you wouldn’t believe.
The woman comes up to him, this hillbilly crazy-stared
motherfucker, and she repeats the question.
GG grabs her by the hair, drags her over to the side of the room,
and bashes her against the wall. Two male members of the audience
rush onstage, one of them helping the woman, the other punching GG
on the face. The one with the woman in his arms, once she is
steadied, he kicks GG in the ribs.
GG stands up, continues his rant.
Amazingly, the guy who punched him returns to get his hat.
GG honestly looks like he doesn’t even notice.
We get interviews with GG’s High School Principle, who reveals that
young Kevin was in fact quite the quiet type, no real hassle, even
though he did turn up on occasion dressed in women’s clothing,
sporting a fetching wig. His music teacher, too, seems rather
enamoured of his former pupil, although doesn’t say very much after
hearing one of The Murder Junkies less tuneful efforts.
Todd Phillips also gets to chat with The Murder Junkies’ former
guitarist, who eventually grew tired of GG’s nonsense and left. He
says that despite his messianic-complex and delusions of artistic
grandeur, what GG is doing really amounts to little more than
throwing a quarter at a steel door. He’s making miniscule dents
when he could be doing something much greater. Like running a
religious cult. That seems be what the guitarist suggests.
Bashing your head with a mike is no big deal, he says. He then
punches himself really fucking hard in the face about a dozen times
in the space of half as many seconds.
“See? No big fucking deal.”
The documentary was filmed before and during the 1991 tour of
America which provides the three shows captured on Raw, Brutal…
Before the tour commences, though, Phillips and his crew organise
for the band to make an appearance at a university in New York.
In front of a crowd of seemingly well mannered, polite, seated
young students, a naked GG stands completely alone in the middle of
the stage. All the lights are on. There are speakers and monitors
laid out before him, but no sign of a musical instrument anywhere.
GG takes a banana, unpeels it, and shoves what he can of it up his
arse. Some of it squishes around the side of the cheeks, but that’s
OK. He just scoops that up to and rubs it around a little in there.
Then he pokes it back out, chews it for a second, spits it out and
throws the rest at the audience. Some of them laugh. Most of them
leave.
He demands that they each strip and throw their clothing onto the
front of the stage. No one does.
Even his threat of walking off doesn’t seem to encourage anyone to
take their pants down.
Getting progressively angrier, GG decides it’s time to walk out
amongst these folks and have a chat. Almost everyone rises and
rushes for the exit. GG lifts a chair and throws it at a
“motherfucker” who’s trying to leave.
The cops come.
Nary a note is ever aired.
Hated is filled with this kind of stunningly barbaric behaviour,
but unlike the aforementioned concert video, this appears as
nothing less than the crazed actions of a genuinely psychotic,
disgustingly misogynist motherfucker.
He is fascinating, but not because he’s some kind of nihilistic
Christ figure. He is fascinating because he completely demolishes
the safety-line between performer and audience, because his antics
continue long after the band have packed up, because he is perhaps
utterly unique in a culture swamped with repetition and cast-off's,
and because there are people who truly worshipped him.
One fan explains how he wanted GG to come to Boston, it being the
great man’s birthday. GG agrees only if the fellow can get a girl
to piss in his mouth for him. Amazingly, the young chap finds this
to be shockingly easy to arrange. We then get camcorder footage of
the act.
But that’s not the only sex you’ll see. At another point, we get a
photograph of a smiling GG receiving a blow-job from an especially
committed male admirer.
In fact, most of the more devoted of the devotees do in fact seem
to be male. GG appeared on Jerry Springer once, and a young girl
was on hand to explain why he was the most amazing thing to ever
happen to her, but all Todd Phillips can find is a bunch of quite,
well, geeky fellas who seem to love GG so much because he is doing
what they all wish they were, but don’t have the balls to.
Obviously these genitals are of the metaphorical variety. I don’t
mean to be rude GG but, honestly, I’ve saw nuns with bigger dicks.
Phillips seems to suggest that the reason for GG’s popularity is
simply because he speaks for an increasingly isolated and
disenfranchised section of America’s youth. The kind of kids who
see smug, preening motherfuckers like Geraldo every day of their
lives, and want nothing more to take a shit, chew it, and spit it
into the bastard’s face.
Geraldo in fact makes an appearance in the film, GG providing the
focus of one of his shows. As the fans down front applaud their
hero, Geraldo makes patronising comments about them, and about
anyone who might even want to think seriously about what this
maniac does for a living. You can see why these teenagers, these
kids who are invited onto national television and then ridiculed,
you can see how they might wanna punch a motherfucker in the jaw.
They don’t though. Why? Fear, mostly. Something which GG Allin had
seemingly little personal experience of, outside of his propensity
to inflict it on others.
As a footnote to the film, after the credits, we get to see footage
of GG’s funeral. His open casket is wailed over by Mohican-spouting
fans, his blackened, bloated skull sporting a pair of head phones.
In death, as in life, his appearance is brutally uncompromising.
Phillips, who seems unsure what to think about it all, finishes by
noting that he had kind of hoped GG would live up to his constant
threat, and go out in some glorious fashion, something no one in
the rock world could ignore. Instead, he sighs, “He died like a
rock-star. In typical rock star fashion.”
Thanks folks.
Further Reading
The Duke’s Review Of "GG Allin - Raw, Brutal, Rough And Bloody"
Drop The Duke A Line Via Electronical Email
