The Doomsday Gang

The name Doomsday Gang comes to Coby in a dream, and so with no particular goal in mind he enlists his four virtually homeless buddies--losers all, like himself--and tries to organize them with a roll call, votes, and everything ""done right."" But the gang never does shape up, and whether the project is trashing a school, shaking down a local merchant, facing up to a tough Chicano headman (this is L.A.), or deciding what to do with a gift of valuable ammunition, they accomplish merely one ""fuckup"" after another--all accompanied by constant bickering in their very limited, four-letter-word vocabulary. Caught on the sidelines of another gang's war, retarded Gooch ends up dead and the other four land in the hospital--but Platt could have killed them all off and it would hardly matter. In Platt's downbeat Headman (1975) there was some tension between hope and what turned out to be inevitable defeat. These five are already defeated; their fate won't bring you down as they start at rock bottom and never show a sign of moving up--and there isn't even any punk humor to their stunted conversation.