When it comes to movie sequels, part 3 is usually never as good. This is how I felt about this third and final entry in The Decline of Western Civilization series. This one feels more like a documentary about the homeless rather than a music oriented production. The first two were pretty enjoyable and offered interesting and often profane insight into two popular genres of music. The first film focused on punk while the second focused on metal. For part 3, Penelope Spheeris decided to cover gutter punk, a subgroup of punk culture which exemplifies a type of vagabond lifestyle. Most (if not all) of the musicians being recorded and interviewed are homeless, and just like the punks from the first movie, they don't view authority favorably. In fact I think it's worse here, because some of them appear mildly psychotic. One girl they interview (Spoon I think) has a ring of circular shaped burns wrapping around her arm. She says they're marks left by cigarettes after some of her friends used her skin to put them out. In spite of the fact pressing a lit cigarette to your arm would be incredibly painful, she tells Spheeris how she wants a complete ring of burn marks on her arm. Most of the kids Spheeris talks to in this film are similarly weird and hopeless (for lack of a better word). Lots of them give the same answer to Spheeris when she asks them where do you see yourself in five years: dead. They don't even really seem to care about how their own lives turn out, because many of them came from abusive households that they were happy to vacate, which explains why they're homeless in the first place. Some of them are so pathetic they have to beg people for money or agree to have complete strangers take pictures of them in exchange for money. After all this, the money is mostly spent on beer and drugs anyway. The film still has the saving grace of the footage of the band performances, but the cynical and jaded attitudes that the majority of people featured have gets old pretty fast. When I said some of the kids here are pathetic, I wasn't kidding. One of them says how he has to break into people's houses just to get food, and he has no remorse because he feels it is necessary for his survival. At the end of the film, it says how shortly after it was made, Squid (one of the punks interviewed) was stabbed to death by Spoon, his so called girlfriend, and she's awaiting trial in LA. Just what I expected. To make a long story short, I mostly found this movie disappointing. The first film is great because it shows punk as a brand new and fascinating genre that is just getting started. By the late 90s, punk is a shadow of its former self, and so are the people partaking in it. Even the rebellious musicians from the first movie would probably be embarrassed to be lumped in with the kids talked about here. Doing drugs, stealing from people, and getting into street fights with wannabe nazis are all they seem to brag about. It's over 2 decades later, and punk is mostly a forgotten genre. If the people interviewed in this movie are what's considered true punk fans, maybe that's for the best.

As lack of, and, declining access to mental-health care and social/housing and programs due to current pandemic(s), the issue of the street-kid, while they may have become less visible, certainly has gotten no better.

The current pandemic (not to mention the ongoing fentanyl one) have shifted focus and goals of the current programs and they have either been reduced or completely decimated.

Sadly, like at the end, they talk of the kids who died between post-production of this and release, kids on the streets are dropping in record numbers due to unreliable drug sources and just overall compassion being down to the point of non-existant.

I love Spheeris, and highly recommend this, or better yet, Suburbia : the ultimate fictional look into too real problems. Both that and this film still are incredibly relevant and don't feel any less watchable due to the movement of pop-culture. The names of the styles have changed ; the faces and the kids are still the same.

This isn't as easy or as fun of a watch as the other decline movies, but it is just as important, if not more so. While the other films showed us a glimpses of the dark side of the punk world, this film throws us right in the fires with those who have little hope of escaping. It's a harrowing look at a lifestyle many of us might drive by on our way to work everyday and never even think about. I would recommend this film much like I'd recommend the others in this trilogy, though I'd recommend preparing yourself for this one.