Flame

FLAME DIRECTED BY RICHARD LONCRAINE SHOUT FACTORY GETTING TO KNOW the grit behind what made glam Glam seems to have become a sport. The dismal outlooks behind the dazzling directorial efforts of Todd Haynes (Velvet Goldmine) and John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) merely wetted a 21st-century boy's appetite for what was the destruction of glitter's ghoulishness.

Think the Darkness have it sussed? No. Despite the yodel à la Mael/Mercury (the better through which to hear those razor-like Ronson leads, my dear) that Justin Hawkins made newly famous, he thinks camp puts a crimp in his un-chinked metal armor.

Think director George Hickenlooper's new documentary on Rodney "English Disco" Bingenheimer, Mayor of the Sunset Strip, is a senseless romp through eye-lash-batting and lip-glossed blowjob androgyny? No. It's a bristling musical but bitterly elegiac flick that shows off Hickenlooper's distaste for the sound and subject matter. Moreover, it's a sensationalistic, grimy peek at Bingenheimer's unusually sad life, peering through the haze of dum-dum-celebrity-dom, sleazebag "producer" Kim Fowley's sex drive and Runaway Cherie Currie's groupie gruel. So tragic is this film that I had to start wearing mascara again just to feel good about the music. (The soundtrack is great on its own.)

So it's Slade to the rescue? Yes. The ugliest pop stars in Brit-pop's stakes of the 70s (bangs! sideburns! tartans!) showed off their bricklayer charm and battering-ram anthems on albums like Ballzy, Coz I Luv You, on other z-themed hits ("Mama Weer All Crazee Now," "Cum on Feel the Noize," "Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me") and sundry other Cockney smashes. How is it they made the best glitter-rock movie, Flame-better known as 1975's Slade in Flame?

One, the band went back to its own pre-glam past, when they played pubs for scraps and suds, dressed like skinheads and were managed by the Animals' Chas Chandler. Chandler's un-charming look at the 60s-whether it was the dirtball nature of managers, played with long-nosed scummy éclat by Tom Conti, the disregard of the British press and groupie scene, the shipwreck that is an up-then-plummeting musical career-is captured with a dour, deft ferocity by screenwriter Andrew Birkin (The Name of the Rose). More prominently still, director Richard Loncraine-known for his rainy, downbeat demeanor from the equally overcast Brit-films The Missionary and Brimstone and Treacle-made the blue-collar rocket blast of stardom that Slade's singer Noddy Holder went through seem blithe, faceless and dreary. That's cold. Colder still is that Slade hardly show off their chops. Miraculously, Flame isn't kitsch; it's a rubbed-raw portrait of rock 'n' roll's suicide that Ziggy could only have hoped for.