Customer Reviews

Richard Hell & the Voidoids - Blank Generation

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Worth buying for the live performances alone. The only high quality video (or audio for that matter) footage of Richard Hell & the Voidoids available - outstanding! I only wish there was more band footage.

There are really only 4 reasons to watch this film.

1. The scenes of Richard Hell & the Voidoids performing at CBGB.
2. The beautiful cinematography capturing the Lower East Side of New York in the wintertime in 1978.
3. Elliot Goldenthal's wonderfully atmospheric soundtrack.
4. Hell's bluntly honest interview about the film.

Otherwise it's pretty dire - badly acted (as Hell admits), directionless, nonsensical. Ulli Lommel (who would go on to a thriving career in straight-to-video horror flicks) clearly had no idea where he was going with this movie or even what "blank generation" meant. Worth your time only for any combination of the bullet points above.

blank generation is a little quirky but quite good. There are a resonable amount of performance scenes which makes the film worthwhile. If you like punk music you should see this movie. There's some great footage and great sound quality. Andy Warhol's brief apperance is interesting and its just a good movie to see. Not outstanding, but good enough.

Great scenes from Richard Hell and The Voidoids Live at CBGB's in the late 70's, the movie is not that good, but having the chance of watching one of the greatest american punk bands of all times is worth the time.

In no way is this movie great "Art" but it is entertaining. Bouchet may have been beautiful, but incredibly bland while Hell was simply great fun to watch. Enjoyable, not even an arthouse winner, but still amusing and the performances are just great.

Now this is really a bad movie. Ok I Like Richard Hell...and he does appear in this movie...Carole Bouquet is beautiful but this is one unnecessary pretentious movie. It is worth it for the live segments but otherwise...

When Carole Bouquet was an aspiring young French actress she accepted the starring role in this film about an egotistical, abusive rock star creep (played by Richard Hell, who previously played an egotistical, abusive rock star creep in "Smithereens").
The only way this film should be viewed is with the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 gang seated front row center. I'm sure Crow, Tom Servo, Joel and Gypsy would have some prime zingers to shoot at this depressing, pretentious piece of New York trash.

I basically bought/watched this video for 2 main reasons.

1) the cameo of Andy Warhol
2) I am a guitar player

My reaction was "eeh"---the movie is so-so. I'm not a huge fan of Punk Rock anyway...interesting to see a group where the Bass player is out front as lead singer. I guess I was expecting something with a little more edge...I didn't dislike the movie,
but it never really "grabbed me" either. Warhol got his own proverbial 15 minutes (ironic!) and that was that. The NY Jewish chick/filmmaker was cute--when she dropped the silly wig.
The French girlfriend, ah well...she was just as indecisive as the lead character. Like the other reviewer here, I would have liked to have seen more footage of the band and more music.