Jon Moritsugu’s grungy biker flick Mod Fuck Explosion (1994) must have been the epitome of cool two decades ago, when it debuted in town at the Chicago Underground Film Festival. Screening this weekend at Music Box in a pair of midnight shows, the movie has crossed over from cool to cute, but like the teenage heroes, it goes its own way. A retro plot about warring gangs of mods and rockers collides with Moritsugu’s more timely exasperation with Asian stereotypes in U.S. media; obnoxious punk conceits such as a garden of raw meat are undercut by a tender romance between two virgins deeply concerned about their sexual adequacy. With its unprintable title, sick jokes, and defiantly low-grade look, Mod Fuck won’t be showing up on Netflix anytime soon, but no one can say it hasn’t survived its moment.
In the end, though, what keeps Mod Fuck Explosion fresh is the innocence and vulnerability of London and her schoolmate M16 (Desi del Valle) as they fret over their virginity and sniff around each other sexually. Near the end of the movie, London circles the darkened floor of a factory, pistons pumping all around her as she lists the things she worries about: “Exams . . . fucking things up . . . terminal cancer . . . getting kicked out of school . . . not knowing how to fuck . . . not having ever fucked . . . getting old . . . going nowhere . . . being no one.” That’s funny—I worried about the same things 20 years before Mod Fuck came along, and teenagers are still worrying about them 20 years after the movie was released. There must be quite a blast radius from this explosion. v
Directed by Jon Moritsugu. 67 min.
