Party Monster

Fascinating look at gothic humans in this Marilyn Manson type documentary. The biographical story is about a young man who was arrested for the grisly murder of another 'club kid'. I hope this comes out on video because so many don't have the pleasure of having cable network CINEMAX like I do.

I watched this documentary from a different perspective than most, as I knew Alig and James St. James for a brief period in the 90s. I found that the documentary was inaccuarate, poorly edited, and sensationalist. While it does a good job of portraying Alig as the self-absorbed sociopath that I knew him to be, what it fails to do is educate anyone about the real story of any of the events it pretends to cover. Alig's "rise" in real life took place entirely before any of the footage in the film, which is all (rather obviously I might add)culled from the time when the club scene in NY was in shambles and promoters like Alig were basically just pied pipers luring people into drug addiction so that the few remaining club owners could deal them their drugs. Overall, the movie disgusted me, not because of the story it told, but rather in the way it told it.

Ever since my mom and I saw the motion picture "Party Monster", we were curious to learn more about the club kids and Michael Alig and James St. James. In my opinion about the tragic death of Angel Mendaz, I felt it was a fight gone too far because I did find out that Michael is actually despite the drug addiction is a very decent and kind human being. Same with Angel, he was a good friend, again, get past the drug selling, he was another very good human being. But then again I wasn't there, so I can't say this 100% with truth.

But I felt that the documentary was more on getting sympathy for Michael Alig, despite from what I heard and read on websites that he was a very nice guy, he did kill someone. He had claimed it was self defense, but he could've come clean from the get go then. Still the documentary itself on the club kids is a good one, if you are curious about the lifestyle and what it was like to be a club kid, this is a documentary worth watching.

8/10

fascinating. You can't help but watch. This documentary focuses more on the lives and attitudes of Alig and his circle than it does on the murder of Angel. Very strange people in very strange times. James St. James has written a very good book on the subject called DISCO BLOODBATH. The most chilling comment is when Alig says he wants a lighter sentence "so he can have a VCR, because if you are on death row, you can't have one..." You would love to dismiss these characters from your mind, but you can't, they haunt you.

I caught the end of "Party Monster" the movie starring Macaulay Culkin, and it sparked my curiosity to watch the documentary.

This doc is fairly bare bones looking, but it tells the whole story I think. Since this film isn't covering ancient history, there are lots of living people around that can be interviewed for fleshing out the story. However, after watching the movie for 5 minutes you realize that all of these people were more than likely completely zapped on multiple drugs while the covered events were happening, so how much do they remember and how accurate is it? We'll never know. This story sounds really simple to me, too simple really. Michael Alig became very famous for promoting parties, he had access to lots of drugs, and lots of people who catered to this party all the time lifestyle.

I am going to sound like a downer by saying this, but I can't see any substance at all in any of the Club Kids. Was this all their lives was about? Pretty pathetic and meaningless if you ask me. Getting high and dressing up to go to get more messed up with a bunch of other idiots. This wasn't a very entertaining film to me. I guess the story is just all too familiar. Small town kid goes to the big city, gets some success, this causes a tragic spiral towards self destruction, the end. Blame it on the current state of our media if you want, but I am personally not shocked anymore by stories of drug abuse and the crimes committed by mentally unstable drug addicts.