Are They Hostile – movie assessment Are They Hostile

Are They Hostile (2022)

Director: Mark Williams

Forged: Griff Griffiths, Peter Fox, Adrian Winchester, Eddie Turtle, Roland Skeleton, Dave Reeves, Mark Brabbs.

Runtime: 1h 50mins

Restricted pre-release DVD

Combatants from the Seventies Croydon punk scene that spawned The Damned and Johnny Moped relive their youth on this function size documentary.

Charming is actually not a time period often related to punk rock; significantly the soiled gritty DIY three chord punk rock of the late seventies. But, that’s the solely approach I can describe this documentary / movie: Charming.

Each city, each neighborhood (in all probability worldwide) can inform their very own story, or two, based mostly across the traits of punk rock and their half in its historical past. Some areas will accurately personal bragging rights and boast ‘greater names’ – like Croydon, house of The Damned.

The brainchild of Mark Williams and Griff Griffiths, Are They Hostile takes its identify from the 1980 single by Croydon band Dangerous Actors and, to me, is the stand out music on the accompanying compilation album. Griff is a Dangerous Actor, he was a fifteen-year-old drummer within the band. He’s additionally our heat and pleasant compere. Griff takes us on a sequence of interviews with the individuals who emerged from the scene in Croydon. Many on the coat-tails of the primary wave of punk rock, but additionally as an entity in their very own proper. Because the seventies was the eighties and when post-punk and new romanticism hit the streets, different bands of different genres would pop up. Nevertheless, they nonetheless (in Croydon not less than) shared that sense of neighborhood round venues like The Greyhound, The 101 Membership and The Star.

If you’re acquainted with Son Of Invoice Productions on YouTube, you’ll know the format; the interviewee is in a pub and tells you tales of yore. Often, I discovered that the background ‘pub chatter’ and overdubbed music misplaced the dialogue in components, however general the perception was intriguing. 

Croydon was a hotbed of expertise, of bands that just about made it huge and maybe greatest recognized for the legend that’s Johnny Moped, whose band members are interviewed to virtually kiss ‘n’ inform ranges. Folks of a sure age will recall names they learn within the small print of the music press, like Case, The Straps, The Daleks, Color Code, The Fanatics, The Heroes. All are represented right here and the tales they inform make me really feel that Mark and Griff additionally have to doc this in print, only for anoraks like me.

You get a terrific vibe from the anecdotes; and as there’s no footage from these days, just because Don Letts was the one particular person in the entire of London to personal a video digicam, the bands paint many an image of their escapades. It was about being younger, being enjoyable, being passionate and being a part of one thing. It’s additionally essential to level out how shut knit these bands all had been, how they’d help one another by attending every others’ gigs, sharing tools, lending band members and so forth.

For those who’re searching for yet one more punk documentary that cuts ‘n’ pastes footage with some flashy results however tells you nothing new then this isn’t for you. Nevertheless, if it’s informative conversations from the mouths of the horses that ran these programs, then Are They Hostile is true up your avenue. All dialogue and no soundtrack (that comes on the album of the identical identify launched by Broken Items) this is a crucial piece within the punk rock jigsaw.

No theatrical launch date but, however a little bit chook tells me the DVD is at present out there from Broken Items Information in a restricted version of solely 150 copies – however provided that you ask them properly.
Broken Items Information

Neil Crud presents the Monday evening Punk & Past present on Louder Than Struggle Radio – observe him on Twitter