Victory Tischler-Blue couldn’t be better qualified to direct this searing 2004 documentary about the rise and fall of rock legends the Runaways. She was at one time Runaways’ bassist “Vicki Blue”, and she held a front-row seat to the musical mayhem that the band both created and endured.

As this year marks the 30th anniversary of the formation of the band in Los Angeles, the timing of the release of the film to DVD couldn’t be better. In the documentary, band members Cherie Currie (vocals), Lita Ford (lead guitar), Sandy West (drums), and Jackie Fox (bass) recount their induction into the world of rock, and do so with varying degrees of amusement, longing, and regret.

Formed in 1975 by rock impresario Kim Fowley, the young women left high school to tour the United States and eventually the world. The adult Fowley promised their parents that he would provide safety, stability, and success. Instead he pushed the Runways beyond their physical and emotional limits with brutal working conditions, verbal and sexual abuse, and cruel psychological tactics that kept the girls competing with each other instead of banding together against him.

Blue employs crafty editing techniques to recreate some of the more memorable events in the band history as told from the perspective of each member. It’s like a rock n’ roll Roshomon, with the truth being relative to the teller of each tale.

One of the most interesting things about the film is the opportunity it affords viewers to get to know the women of the Runaways as individuals. They have distinctive, strong personalities and clashing opinions about what really happened in their band.

Curie’s appeal as flirty front woman is still apparent decades after the fact, and she brings a dramatic flair to her storytelling. She is unflinching in her description of Fowley’s verbal, emotional, and sexual abuse. But she is quick to exalt the thrill of being a sixteen year old rock star, stomping around on stage half-naked and reveling in her rebellion.

She proudly admits to romantic liaisons with both Sandy West and the most famous Runaway Joan Jett, invoking the “Bowie defense” as an explanation for her queer behavior then (it was the Seventies, Bowie was bisexual, she loved Bowie, so….).

Lita Ford hisses and spits like a rattlesnake, funny and brutal in her honesty and oddly indifferent to the suffering of her band mates at the hands of the man who wanted to make them stars. Ford’s ambition is boundless, and it’s evident that Fowley’s promises of stardom to her fifteen-year-old self made a lasting impression.

Vicky Fox struggled as the odd girl out, without any real alliances, wounded by the combative environment and driven to the brink of self-destruction by the emotional abuse she endured.

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