The Cramps: Live At The Napa State Mental Hospital

Reviewed by: Erik Swift September 2004

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At first, the DVD release by Music Video Distributors & Target Video of the “The Cramps – Live At The Napa State Mental Hospital” sounds like a cruel joke. After only a few minutes, the image of the guy hopping from one foot to the other while singing into an imaginary microphone is one of the best from this very raw but hysterical June 13, 1978 film.

The psychobilly quartet, led by Eric “Lux Interior” Purkhiser and featuring guitarist Bryan Gregory, Kirsty “Poison Ivy Rorschach” Wallace on bass and Nick Knox on drums, blast through 8 songs in twenty minutes. The bad part is that forty minutes of Target Video promos follow, so the sixty-minute running time is somewhat misleading. Hey, if you want to check out the legendary California-based punk film dispenser’s clips of Throbbing Gristle or people playing garbage can lids that was avant-garde at some point, go ahead. The visual and audio quality of the Cramps’ performance leads to doubt that they would be of value.

It’s hard not to laugh in a Farrelly brothers kind of way when Lux tells the crowd he doesn’t think they’re crazy. The set is great – most notably a distorted “TV Set” and a great run through the hit single “Human Fly” that features the singer getting bum-rushed by several patients who snare the microphone from his hands while moaning unintelligibly – but it was filmed on a Sony VHS port-a-pac, one of the first cameras of its kind. The audio comes from a single microphone and videotape flickers from its VHS master appear often. Most annoying are the Target Video graphics that run on the bottom of the screen during the entire show.

In the middle of the first series of promo clips, there is one that stands out. The band Crime did a gig at one of California’s finer state penitentiary locations, proving that Crime does play. Those little Cramps - starting a trend at CA institutions those others could only merely follow. But then, those CBGB favorites have been doing that for a long time. Unless you’re a huge Cramps fan or love punk and psychobilly…

Reviewer’s Opinion: FORGET IT!!