A waste of 90 minutes of my life

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

In the 80s, there were some REALLY good movies about the underground music/art scene - Mondo New York, Decline of Western Civilization and Urgh! (just to name a few) but Urgh! takes the cake for me. I put it above the rest because it's all JUST about the music. No blah blah blah...no commercial bull flop - no NOTHING but music and some of the AMAZING musicians that were out performing at the time.I did not like the Police getting 3 tracks however. That smacked of some favoritism but since they were the deep pockets at the time, anything less probably would have resulted in no movie at all. That's why God gave us the Fast Forward and Skip buttons I believe. LOL.Watching this movie gives you a brief albeit somewhat lacking skim of the entire punk/new wave scene at the time, but given the ocean of music that was out there when I was a young pup, it's probably the best possible collaboration given the time and money available for production. It is a MUST VIEW for any music aficionado. Rapidly moving from Wall of Voodoo to Pere Ubu to XTC to OMD and on and on and on is like watching your young life go by (if you were born in the 60s *grin*) on Fast Forward and it is WONDERFUL! That said, it's heartbreaking now to see how young and talented all those folks were and how few remain relevant today...but music today is EXACTLY what Jello Biafra predicted in would be: "If you don't keep your eyes open...you'll be forced to buy skinny tie...pop bands". Well, the skinny ties are mostly gone - but today's bubblegum, idiotic pop music is all powerful and sickening - gone is the creative, roaring flame of the late 70s/early 80s music scene - replaced with vapidness like Britney Spears et al.Urgh! was and still is a testament to what great music and culture are all about. It's an irreproducible miracle of the modern age and we will never see anything like it again short of a new age of enlightenment affecting all mankind. Find it! Watch it! PRESERVE it! COVET IT!! I give it two thumbs up, a snap, a circle twist and 4 zillion stars.

I first became aware of this film,which received scattershot distribution via the midnight movie circuit back in the early 1980's. The film isn't a rockdoc (rock documentary,for the unschooled)so much, as it's a series of clips of various bands live in concert at various festivals & concerts. The Police open & close the film,and in between we are treated to the likes of Devo,The Dead Kennedy's,Magazine,Toyah Wilcox,The Surf Punks,etc. There are at least 2 versions of this film. The one I originally saw at that midnight screening ran over two hours. The version that got a brief release on VHS video ran a hair under two hours (I'm guessing at least one of the bands got left on the cutting room floor for the video release). Perhaps one day,there will be enough interest for a re-release of this great concert flick (I know enough kids who were not even born when it was briefly released that would flock to see it,or even rent it).

Derek Burbidge helmed this document on various music groups of the early 1980s, many of whom (coincidentally or not) had a direct connection to the I.R.S. record label. Some of these acts went on to bigger and better things (Police, Joan Jett, Go-Go's), but most languished in obscurity (Wall of Voodoo, The Fleshtones, The Cramps, Gary Numan). This mixture of heavy-hitters, one-hit-wonders and underground stars should have resulted in a much edgier cinematic experience; instead, the film is far too long and full of peaks and valleys. Shot in a raw, muddy style, the movie was eclipsed visually by the slick music videos of MTV which exploded on the tube around this very same time. Still, it's a time-capsule relic worth revisiting for music buffs and aficionados of the bizarre. Fitfully interesting. **1/2 from ****

This is the ultimate rock movie. It shows how not all rock is about cars, chicks and having fun, it can be about psychosis, political commitment, alienation and all other aspects covered by traditional arts. This makes the movie rather deep; although some performances are rather shallow, the diversity of artistic directions are undeniable, and makes for a great experience and recurring afterthought. The level of experimenting is intense, from the psychotics of Pere Ubu and John Cooper Clarke, via the eerie sceneries of Gary Numan and Gang of Four, to the mutated rock of Devo and Klaus Nomi. A must-see. -r3port3r