This tale of love, loss, and rivalry between a pair of socially and geographically contrasting skateboard gangs lifts much of its structure from the hit musical West Side Story, which shouldn't come as much of a surprise since director David Winters had started out as a Jet in the original Broadway run and played A-rab in the 1961 film version. His acting career largely went into television after that before he turned to directing, starting off with episodes of The Monkees, a pair of extravagant Ann-Margret TV specials, and the immortal, ultra-flamboyant Raquel! (1970). His move to feature films resulted in a bizarre range of credits including the odd racquetball snobs-vs-slobs comedy Racquet (1979) with Bert Convy and the even odder Cannes Film Festival meta-slasher opus, The Last Horror Film (1982), with Caroline Munro and Joe Spinell.
Winters' extensive experience with the music industry and the world of music videos came in handy on Thrashin' when it came to assembling one of its strongest components, a catchy rock soundtrack featuring several acts about to storm the charts including Red Hot Chili Peppers (who perform on screen), The Bangles, and Fine Young Cannibals, plus a few familiar stalwarts like Meat Loaf (who performs the title song), Devo, and synth-pop outfit Animation, not to mention the cult punk bank Circle Jerks.
The idea of doing an '80s skateboard production was largely the brainchild of producer and co-writer Alan Sacks, who envisioned a dramatic portrayal of the feud between the interracial, leather-wearing Daggers from Dogtown and the upscale Ramp Locals from the Valley. Infatuated with the local skater scene, Sacks, the creator of the hit TV series Welcome Back, Kotter, became a skateboard fanatic and went everywhere via that mode of transportation, including tournaments and skater get-togethers. This film would prove to be his most significant cinematic success (especially on home video), following his troubled debut with the bumpy Runaways not-quite-documentary, Du-beat-e-o (1984).
The intricate skateboard choreography was handled by local legend Tony Alva, who ran his own skateboard company, Alva Products, and was a regular part of Thrasher magazine. All of The Daggers were played by real skaters including actor Robert Rusler, who had just made his debut the previous year with Weird Science and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge; suddenly a hot property, he also appeared in two other 1986 productions, the quirky bloodsucker black comedy Vamp and the Cannon Films high school noir Dangerously Close. Many names who would become skateboard legends during the explosion of skater culture in the '90s can also be spotted here including Tony Hawk, Christian Hosoi, Eddie Reategui, and Lance Mountain. Despite the extensive preparation and safety precautions, the show-stopping "L.A. Massacre" sequence ended up sending fifteen skaters to the hospital, with seven admitted as patients.
Thrashin' was announced in the trades as part of a three-film package put together by Fries Entertainment Inc. along with Out of Bounds (1986) and Flowers in the Attic (1987), both of which ended up being released by other distributors. Fries directly handled the release of Thrashin' and gave it a splashy, youth-geared premiere at the headquarters of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences on Wilshire Blvd. on August 25, 1986. The memorable promotional campaign touted it with the undeniably unorthodox tagline, "One is fighting for love. The other for honor. For both of them... it's skate or die."
Not surprisingly, critics were largely baffled by the film and gave it generally dismissive notices, with a little praise dolloped out for leading man Josh Brolin, who was fresh off of his debut in The Goonies (1985). One typical appraisal came from Variety: "For those who enjoy endangering life and limb by hurtling along roads and up and down ramps on flimsy bits of wood known as skateboards, Thrashin' might be a fun way to spend 90 minutes. Since that lets out the vast majority of the world's cinema-going audience, write down this one as very much of a special-interest film." Though not a blockbuster at the time, the film kicked off a wave of modern skateboard films that continues to this day including Gleaming the Cube (1989) with Christian Slater, Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001), Grind (2003), Lords of Dogtown (2005), and Paranoid Park (2007). More importantly, it found a long life on TV and home video where its target audience soon embraced it and now holds it up as one of the first and most important steps in bringing the world of skateboarding to popular awareness, something that would explode with a vengeance during the following decades.
By Nathaniel Thompson
