It’s Finally Here: Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains on DVD

By Noreen Sobczyk

Misfit youths who happened to catch a late night airing of Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains have been rubbing their magic lamps for years, fully willing to trade one wish for a good quality copy of this film. Now the wait is over, thanks to the folks at Rhino who’ve released it as the debut title in their Rock ‘N’ Roll Cinema Series.

Rocky Horror Picture Show producer and music business veteran Lou Adler directed this unique film in 1981. The movie managed to satisfy fans of new wave and punk with its story of two edgy bands on the road, but it also succeeded as an insightful and clever critique of the music business, and stardom itself. It truly became a cult phenomenon, and throughout the past 20-plus years, fans got excited just meeting another person who had seen it. A hardcore group of people made a lot of fuss about a movie that never even had a wide release. So what’s the buzz?

Diane Lane as Corinne

Diane Lane stars as the rebellious orphan Corinne “Third Degree” Burns and Marin Kanter and Laura Dern play her sister and cousin, respectively. They live in a dreary dead end town and Corinne decides that music is the way for the trio to escape its limitations. Her idea is to spread “rock and roll and the truth.” A local television station happens to film her during an angry outburst at work (“This town died years ago!”) and airs it along with a follow-up interview wherein Corinne declares herself lead singer and manager of The Stains (never mind that they don’t play any instruments).

Via Corinne’s attendance at a concert we are introduced to two bands representing different musical styles and attitudes. Opening the show is punk band The Looters, played by iconic punk rock musicians Paul Simonon (The Clash), Paul Cook, and Steve Jones (both from the Sex Pistols). Ray Winstone (who appeared in Quadrophenia) plays their lead singer Billy. Corinne is entranced as they perform their song “Join the Professionals” (by Jones’s and Cook’s real life band The Professionals). Backstage, Corinne tries to get advice from Billy, but he dismisses her in favor of a groupie. The rag tag tour headliner, The Metal Corpses, and their singer (a cokehead living off his recycled hit, played to perfection by The Tubes’s singer Fee Waybill) represent everything Billy hates. It’s a macho power struggle between new and old, and this foreshadows the feelings of future fans of The Stains (“Watch it you old fart”). This tension is also reflected between the condescending older male anchorman and his younger ambitious female co-host who launch The Stains into the surrounding area’s living rooms.

Ray Winstone as Billy

The first gig collapses as the girls struggle through the somewhat Shaggs-like song “Waste of Time.” In reaction to audience disdain, Corinne snatches off her beret to reveal a skunk-like hairdo. She tells a lady in the front row (who has lip gloss so thick it looks like she was sucking on a pork chop) that she’s “just another girl lining up to die.” Dropping her overcoat she reveals a new see-through blouse and an outlandish red, black, and white look. She spits out the classic line, “I’m perfect, but no one in this shit hole gets me, ’cause I don’t put out.” This starts a chain reaction with a few audience converts.

The bus-driving Rastafarian Lawn Boy has seen The Stains on TV and signs them up for the tour (and even gives them their own Suzi Quatro-esque cat suits). When one of The Metal Corpses ODs, Corinne uses the death and its media coverage to promote herself. The Stains and The Looters continue the tour, and the media promotion and fan fervor surrounding the Stains grows to a fever pitch. Billy tries to get the band’s sleazy manager to replace The Stains (“Girls can’t play rock and roll”) but he soon sees that Corinne is the next big thing. When Corinne finds out his plans, she teaches her band The Looters’ song, which they play in front of the audience, Corinne even miming Billy’s stage moves. The media hype continues and soon The Stains are headlining the tour with audiences growing as the band moves from playing a bar, to a mall, to an arena, where the red-black-and-white-clad audience looks like a weird combination of punk rock and a fascist rally. All the tickets have sold out. Has Corinne “sold out” too?

“I don’t put out.”

While the movie never made any money and perhaps soured Adler on directing (it was his last time in the director’s chair) it made an enormous impression on a lot of creative people, both known and unknown. Prominent names from the Riot Grrl movement are among the film’s fans. It was a Riot Grrl film before the genre title existed (not that female musicians hadn’t rocked and rolled before the ’90s reared their grungy head). Both admirers as well as detractors of that scene, and certain women from it, seem find parallels to themselves within this movie. The film encourages girls to pick up an instrument and empower themselves.

Laura Dern as Jessica

When Laura Dern mentions in the DVD commentary track that perhaps the film influenced The White Stripes (both the color combinations and the line, “you’re just two white stripes”), Diane Lane dismisses the notion. But it does publicly raise an interesting question that was already on the minds of some devotees. The two main songs in this film were as memorable as any song from a mainstream musical. Many people were still singing it years after they saw the film. Even Steve Jones’s ’90s band Neurotic Outsiders played it during their tours, and audience members loved it.

Yet with all of the adulation, there was always one sticking point: the film’s ending. It was interesting to find out via the special features that the movie’s music video-style “Hollywood ending” (which looks like it had a higher budget than the rest of the movie), was made and tacked on a year after the film’s wrap and the debut of MTV. The DVD also has a photo gallery and two commentary tracks.

Having watched both it seems that the movie made a deeper impression on the fans than it did on anyone involved with the film. The commentary by Adler is worth watching, but he seems very removed from the project. Laura Dern and Diane Lane’s track is really entertaining and they have fun reminiscing, but neither really delves into the feminist empowerment messages or the warning against “selling out.” Nor do they mention that minor character Lawn Boy is really the film’s heart and conscience. Ironically, the hysterical Fee Waybill’s washed-up, dinosaur-rock character gives us perhaps the film’s most important message, “If you’re not yourself, you’re nobody.”