Maybe That’s the Real Punk Rock

Movies have always been a part of my life. I grew up as an only child and loved escaping through film. My passion was horror, but I enjoyed action, adventure, comedy, and drama if they spoke to me. Starting at roughly thirteen, I would ride my BMX bike to Almeda Mall to see a movie. Two theaters were on opposite sides of the parking lot, the Almeda East 4 and Almeda West 5. Other times, my mom or grandmother dropped me off to see midnight movies (Rocky Horror, Terminator, Pink Floyd The Wall, Day of the Dead, and Demons, to name a few) with the stoner crowd or go to other theaters around town. Watching the unrated glory of Re-Animator with a Black audience was wild! In 1984, I saw a triple feature in one day. I rode my bike to see Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, snuck into Porky’s Revenge, and then got my mom to buy me a ticket to Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning at the Loews Southpoint theater a freeway exit down. Two weeks later, I saw Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye, not realizing it was the last film I would see before rehab. Before I was locked up, I was extremely stoked about seeing The Company of Wolves. The trailer was cool, the FX looked rad in Fangoria magazine, and the poster with the wolf coming out of the guy’s mouth sold me. I never got to see it in the theater.

In West Oaks, we did arts and crafts (once I leveled up). I drew the Wolves film poster from a newspaper clipping along with other projects, including a Silver Bullet painting like Bernie Wrightson’s stuff and a ceramic Coca-Cola polar bear with black sunglasses that was awesome for stashing things. The staff ended up taking away my books and magazines. After a while, I convinced a therapist that I really wanted to do makeup FX, and she allowed me to have Fangoria again. There was a TV in the rec room where I saw pieces of films like Mad Max and The Amityville Horror. Those were the bright moments, along with the heavy metal tapes for my Walkman, that got me through the drudgery of group therapy, one-on-ones, and schoolwork. Months later, the staff took those of us with higher levels on outings outside of the institution. They were usually trips to AA or NA meetings to hear unhappy older people, but a few were different. We jogged around the trails of Memorial Park, went to the Galleria Mall once, and even saw most of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome within the two-hour time constraint. Brief tastes of the real world made going back to the mental institution feel worse. I preferred confinement on the unit to the tease of freedom.

When I was released, I rented a ton of stuff, including Company of Wolves from Vestron Video, and returned to seeing films on the big screen as much as possible. I was a wild punk kid, so sometimes I was home, and other times I was off on the streets. I saw Sid & Nancy (the Sex Pistols film) when I had a fan mohawk, and a middle-aged man told me I was going to die like Sid Vicious and deserved it for being a punk. I poured my refilled soda over his head, cussed him out, and all of us punks ran off laughing.

During the times I stayed in suburbia, I would get up really early to snatch the Friday newspaper (The Houston Post) from a yard blocks away and return home to scour the ads in the entertainment section for new horror releases. I never realized how lucky I was until I was older and experienced the horror drought of the 1990s. The MPAA and religious groups almost killed horror with censorship, and the studios and even the indies quit making as many films. It was not until December 1996, when Scream became a hit, that horror began its return. Fangoria even disappointed a bit, as it was difficult to look at with its pink pages. I think it was supposed to be blood seeping through the pages, but it looked lame.

Time never stops. My nostalgia films of the 1980s are no different than the ones from the 1950s that the adults back then liked. New generations will always see films in their own way, and that’s cool. I will always like what I like, no matter what.

I always hold out hope for another fun film, and sometimes I am rewarded with cool features like The Wretched, Doctor Sleep, The Sadness, The Passenger, and Halloween Ends.

Now in 2025, I feel like I’m in a different place. I understand how film changes and is almost always geared to a new generation. I still find films I like. It just seems like the ones I do are released fewer and farther between than before. This year so far, I’ve dug the original film, Sinners, and the new slasher, Clown in a Cornfield.

I was skeptical about seeing the new Superman. I grew up with Christopher Reeve and even appreciated the darker version with Henry Cavill. I wasn’t sure about David Corenswet until I saw him in action, and he nailed the charm of the character. Even during the first part, I rebelled against the frenetic pace and Krypto. It was the scene between Lois and Clark, while the Justice Gang was battling a colorful dimensional imp. The conversation about Superman’s unwavering belief in the good of humanity and how maybe that was the real punk rock suddenly made the film click for me. Hearing Iggy Pop and the Teddybears’ “Punkrocker” at the end sealed it. It was the cool feeling I’d been missing, the reason I always returned to the theater.

I may not see almost every film like I did in my wayward youth, but I can change and find my punk spirit in different ways in the few that move me.

Dean Cade

Dean Cade