26 Films: Dudes

I have written about Dudes, the 1987 Punk Western, before many times and am not sure why I keep coming back to it. The plot is a combination of the road film, the fish out of water film and the revenge film. Its stars are solid b film actors, Jon Cryer, Daniel Roebuck, Catharine Mary Stewart and Lee Ving, who all do an admirable job with the material. The script is also solid, with moments of better than average dialog. Direction by Penelope Spheres keeps the film and the action moving forward along with the music (which I am going to talk about on Thursday). I also want to point out the great cinematography, which showcases the landscape of the west as good and often times better than other films of the period.

     So what is it that keeps me coming back to the film? Part of it is the nostalgia, the fact that it was a film that I ‘discovered’ and embraced when I was an impressionable teen. The fact that while the most current reviews of it I have seen are positive, that it has yet to reach the cult level of Rock and Roll High School or Suburbia by fans of punksploition. Maybe it’s that I am baffled at it being ignored wholesale (along with The Running Kind) by the growing legions of Alt Country fans who are likely to see something of their youth in the film.

I don’t have the answers to these questions yet, and I might never have them. What I can say is that it’s a film that means a lot to me, even if I don’t watch it often. I can say that if it ever gets a proper DVD or Bluray release I will have it pre-ordered the first day that I can.


Dudes writer Randall Jahnson has a nice website where he talks about Dudes Here