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We know Corinne Burns (Diane Lane) is trouble from the outset. She’s already a local star in her hometown of Charlestown, Pennsylvania, for disgustedly flinging her fry-cook apron boss-ward and screaming on live TV, “This town died years ago!”

 

In a more reflective postscript, the 15-year-old fields questions about her family. Both of her parents are dead, a fact she notes somewhat coldly. She and her sister, Tracy (Marin Kanter), live with an aunt (Christine Lahti) and cousin, Jessica (Laura Dern). Her attitude grows more defiant as she applies thick orange eye shadow to her otherwise pristine visage. Finally, her transformation near complete, her interrogator blusters, “Corinne Burns, what are you going to do?”

“My name isn’t Corinne Burns,” Corinne Burns replies.

“What is it?”

“Third Degree Burns,” she says. “I’m the lead singer and manager of the Stains.”



Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains was practically a cult classic from the moment it was released in 1981. After vanishing quickly from the few theaters it played, it enjoyed a second life on cable; I caught bits and pieces on USA’s Night Flight through the 1980s. Out of print for years, Stains was recently issued on DVD by Rhino Entertainment with assorted bonus features, including a fond commentary by costars Lane and Dern and a feature-length reminiscence from director Lou Adler.

 

When Burns claims her town is dead, she’s not kidding. Her own neighborhood’s so rotten that to call it dismal would give it false hope. Aunt Linda and her best friend, Brenda, spend their mornings in robes at the kitchen table, liberally dripping liquor into their Yuban and harmonizing wistfully on pop songs from their youth. Outside the street sags under gloomy rain, and the few semi-livable structures are riddled with decay.

 

Like all teenaged girls, Burns is restless and dissatisfied. But she’s got a plan, and the secret to Lane’s performance is her multilayered portrayal. When I first watched Stains I misread her euphoric expression during a performance by punk band The Looters as a teenaged crush on its lead singer, Billy (played by a lean yet no less pugnacious Ray Winstone), when instead she was seeing her own future once she knocked this posturing sucker out of her way. Youth or no youth, Burns isn’t to be trifled with. Her fiery eyes sting just as sharply as her words, and she gives nothing away.

 

The Looters, backed musically by Paul Cook and Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols and Clash bassist Paul Simonon, are rolling through small towns supporting a wheezy phantom called Metal Corpses, who are exactly that. They’ve been around so long and flogged so many musical permutations they’ve exhausted a zillion lineups under the bloated Lou Corpse (Fee Waybill of The Tubes as a long sigh), who speaks in banal soliloquies like he’s lost in an endless Rolling Stone Q&A.


 

Sadly, the Looters aren’t much of an improvement. Their punk act, with its leather sneer, seems more anachronism than anarchy. They’ve performed their anthem, “The Professionals,” so often they sound polished. When Billy lobs “old fart” insults from backstage at the loathed Corpse, he seems to be fulfilling an obligation rather than denouncing the establishment. What he fails to realize (although Burns spots it immediately) is that he’s a phony, too, of empty raps and slogans. By the end of the film he’s dodging snappy “old fart” bombs from teenaged girls.

 

 

Into their lives step the Stains, a family affair: Corinne on vocals, Tracy on guitar, and cousin Jessica on bass. At their first show they limply perform an original, “Waste Of Time.” After its lackluster reception, Corinne tears off her trench coat/beret stage costume to reveal striking blonde streaks in her hair, a sheer red top, and stockings coasting up long, bare legs. She follows with a vicious tirade and caps it with what will become her band’s catchy mantra, “I don’t put out.” In that one performance, later covered by a local news channel, she rustles teenaged girls from a long, long nap. Soon she’s amassed an army eager to besiege concert halls and shopping malls.

 



 

The Stains’ meteoric rise is never convincing (the story covers maybe a few weeks, with merchandising inexplicably available within days), but Lane’s magnetic performance never strikes a false note. She adeptly conveys Corinne’s initial defiance and sneaky ambition then melts naturally into the kind of gasbag press-goddess she purports to despise. Sadly, the film is so smitten with Lane it ignores her bandmates; Kanter and Dern have little to do but huddle and shudder like frightened church mice while their leader commands center stage.

 

I very much admired what was likely the original conclusion, with its thoughtful freeze-frame on Lane as she realized that her band had failed, but her message had not. The upbeat emergency epilogue satisfies nothing except to, I dunno, assure audiences that the Stains eventually became successful rock stars. The sequence was filmed long after the initial shoot, when the actresses were noticeably older and far more glamour-conscious. They’d gone from “I don’t put out” to sashaying and lip-synching “The Professionals,” now with canned-blueberry harmonies, handclaps, off-set stylists, and Monkees-brand shenanigans, as MTV-ready kewpie tarts. Was this a cynical or happy ending? It’s the bludgeoning denouement to an otherwise fabulous little film.

 

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