Suburbia (film)

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This article is about the 1984 film. For the 1994 play, see suburbia (play). For its 1996 film adaptation, see SubUrbia (film).
Suburbia (film).jpg
Video release cover
Directed by Penelope Spheeris
Produced by Bert Dragin
Roger Corman
Written by Penelope Spheeris
Starring Bill Coyne
Chris Pedersen
Derek O'Brien
Jennifer Clay
Timothy Eric O'Brien
Wade Walston
Michael "Flea" Balzary
Music by Alex Gibson
Cinematography Timothy Suhrstedt
Edited by Ross Albert
Distributed by New World Pictures
Release date(s)
  • April 13, 1984 (1984-04-13)
Running time 94 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $500,000[1]

Suburbia, also known as Rebel Streets and The Wild Side, is a 1984 film written and directed by Penelope Spheeris about suburban punks who run away from home. The kids take up a punk lifestyle by squatting in abandoned suburban tract homes. The punks are played by Chris Pedersen, Bill Coyne, Timothy O'Brien and the Red Hot Chili Peppers' bassist Flea, amongst others.[2]

With the exceptions of Chris Pederson, who was a professional actor, director Penelope Spheeris recruited street kids and punk rock musicians to play each role, rather than hire young actors to portray punk rockers.

Suburbia was filmed in and around the cities of Downey and Norwalk in California. The abandoned housing tract was a former neighbourhood which was placed-along the west-side of I-605, around the Alondra Bl offramp; Firestone Bl CA 42 was to its north, with Alondra Bl to its south. The entire area was Eminent Domain starting in the late 1960s / early 1970s, wherein it sat mostly-vacant until its demolition in c.1990; some houses still had inhabitants up until c.1980. This was a gang-infested area; many abandoned houses were "drug houses", or, just as in the film, "crash houses" (e.g. the "T.R. House" ). I-105 now occupies most of the property, and has since the early '90s.

Vincent Canby called it a "clear-eyed, compassionate melodrama about a bunch of young dropouts" and "probably the best teen-agers-in-revolt movie since Jonathan Kaplan's Over the Edge."[3]

The movie contains live footage of D.I. performing "Richard Hung Himself", T.S.O.L. performing "Wash Away" and "Darker My Love," and The Vandals performing "The Legend of Pat Brown". In turn, the movie inspired the Pet Shop Boys song "Suburbia."

The film is a part of Shout Factory's Roger Corman Cult Classics series, reissued on DVD in May 2010.


A hitchhiking teenage runaway, Sheila (Jennifer Clay), is picked up on Interstate 605 in the Greater Los Angeles Area by a woman with a toddler. When the car gets a flat tire, they find a telephone booth on the edge of an abandoned tract housing district. While the mother is on the phone, the toddler is attacked and killed by a stray dog.

Another teenage runaway, Evan Johnson (Bill Coyne), leaves his suburban home and alcoholic mother, ending up at a punk rock concert by D.I. Keef (Grant Miner) slips drugs into his drink, and the concert ends abruptly when a female attendee has her clothes torn off by the punks in the audience. Jack Diddley (Chris Pedersen) offers Evan a place to stay at "T.R. House", a punk house in the abandoned tract housing district off Interstate 605. Along the way they pick up Joe Schmo (Wade Walston), who also intends to move into the house. Joe changes his mind when he learns each resident must be branded with the letters T.R., for "The Rejected", but winds up coming back and accepting the brand after discovering his father with his homosexual lover. He begins to form a romantic relationship with Sheila, who has also moved into the house.

The next morning, several men from "Citizens Against Crime" including Jim Tripplett (Lee Frederick) and Bob Skokes (Jeff Prettyman), drive through the neighborhood shooting at the packs of wild dogs that roam the area. T.R. kids Razzle (Flea) and Skinner (Timothy O'Brien) confront them, but police officer Bill Rennard (Donald Allen), Jack's African-American stepfather, defuses the situation. Jack, Evan, and Skinner steal food for the house by raiding the garages of a nearby suburban neighborhood, and further irritate Jim and Bob by disrupting their garage sale. When Evan sees on the news that his mother has been arrested for drunk driving, he brings his younger brother Ethan (Andrew Pece) to live at T.R. House, where Sheila gives him a mohawk. Sheila tells Joe that her father physically and sexually abused her.

During a T.S.O.L. concert, the T.R. gang get into a fight defending Skinner. The men they were fighting with enter the concert and stab a security guard, framing the T.R. kids for the crime by using the knife to hang a flier with "T.R." written in blood. Jim and Bob next witness the T.R. crew vandalizing a convenience store. At a meeting of the Citizens Against Crime, they accuse Bill and the rest of the police of not doing enough to curb the teenagers' criminal behavior, declaring their willingness to take the law into their own hands. Bill goes to T.R. House and implores the teens to stay out of trouble. That night, Jim and Bob invade the house, threaten the teens, and assault Sheila. The next morning, the kids find that Sheila has killed herself by overdosing on Keef's drugs. Not knowing what to do, they deliver her body back to her parents. When the T.R. kids come to the funeral, Sheila's father (J. Dinan Myrtetus) insists that they leave. Joe reveals his knowledge of Sheila's abuse, and a fight breaks out, hospitalizing Sheila's father.

That night, Bill drops by a Vandals concert and warns the gang to vacate the T.R. house immediately, before their actions bring the Citizens Against Crime down on their heads, but they decide to stay. Learning of the violence at the funeral, Jim and Bob show up at the house and the teens attack and eject them. When they bring their car back for another pass, they accidentally run over Ethan, killing him. Bill arrives, just too late.


  2. ^ Suburbia at the Internet Movie Database
  3. ^ Screen: Down-And-Out Youths In 'Suburbia' - New York Times

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