Review by Stephanie Scaife
“A repo man spends his life getting into tense situations.”
I should start off by saying that Alex Cox’s (Sid & Nancy, Straight to Hell) Repo Man is one of my all time favourite movies, making this review a little tough to write as it’s near impossible to be objective when wearing the rose tinted spectacles induced by a dearly loved classic, whose flaws you’ve overlooked for years. This endlessly quotable off the wall comedy satire sci-fi hybrid has retained its popularity over the years for a reason: it’s so unique and of its time that it remains relevant today and never seems tired or dated, making this new disc a much welcome addition to Blu-Ray.
I went through a phase a little over ten years ago of trying to catch up on all of the cult classics that I’d somehow managed to miss over the years. I was working in a record store where we were allowed to borrow the movies for free, so it provided the perfect opportunity. Harry Dean Stanton has been a long standing favourite actor of mine and I’ve loved him in everything from Pretty in Pink to Alien, so on this particular occasion I had decided to do a double-bill of Repo Man and Paris, Texas which was to provide an unlikely but rewarding double-bill viewing experience, culminating in both films immediately going into my top ten list.
Anyway, I digress, back to a review of Repo Man… what first stuck me about the film was its nihilism and irreverence combined with a wicked sense of humour and a post-punk fuck you aesthetic. Repo Man starts off as it means to go on, with a batshit insane opening sequence where J. Frank Parnell (Fox Harris) is pulled over by a cop as he drives a Chevy Malibu though the desert. The cop opens the trunk of the car, releasing a mysterious light from within (the contents of Tarantino’s infamous suitcase in Pulp Fiction clearly owes a debt here). We the viewers do not see the contents of the trunk but the cop is frazzled on the spot, leaving nothing behind but the smoking stumps of his legs still standing in his motorcycle boots. Parnell speeds off into the desert, leaving a trail of dust in his wake and the fantastic Iggy Pop theme tune kicks in. Straight away you know you’re in for something very different here.
We meet Otto (Emilio Estevez), a punk kid who gets fired from his job as a shelve stacker at a local supermarket. (One of the ongoing jokes of the film is that all the produce you see is completely generic: think a tin that is simply labelled “Food – meat flavoured” and cans that are labelled “drink.”) Upon returning home Otto discovers that his hippie stoner parents have donated his college fun to a TV evangelist and that his girlfriend is cheating on him with his friend Duke (Dick Rude). In his dejection he takes to the streets where he has a chance encounter with Bud (Harry Dean Stanton), a repo man who works for an amusingly named auto repossession company, the Helping Hand Acceptance Company. After being tricked into aiding Bud in a repossession Otto finds himself seduced by the quick cash he earns and throws his morals to the wind before buying himself a suit and joining the ranks of the reprehensible LA repo men, including Bud, Lite (Sy Richardonson) and Miller (Tracey Walter). All amusingly named after major American beer brands, despite the only product placement in the film actually granted was by the company that provides those car air fresheners shaped like trees.
Soon word goes around that there is a $20,000 reward on offer for the repossession of the Chevy Malibu we saw at the start of the film and it’s every repo man for himself. Otto soon finds himself up against not only his co-workers but rival repo gang The Rodriguez Brothers (“Goddamn-dipshit-Rodriguez-gypsy-dildo-punks”), not to mention that he’s being tailed by suspicious government agents and unwittingly teamed up with Leila (Oliva Barash), a UFO enthusiast who believes the Chevy contains the carcasses of alien specimens stolen from Roswell. Add to this a healthy dose of 1980s Regan era satire, an awesome west coast punk rock soundtrack and some rather remarkable cinematography from Robby Muller (who funnily enough also worked on Paris, Texas and is a regular collaborator with Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch and Lars von Trier) and you’ve got the genre bending Repo Man, the very definition of a cult classic if ever there was one.
This Blu-Ray release from Eureka’s Masters of Cinema series is a pretty appealing package; it looks and sounds fantastic in this newly re-mastered edition. It also comes with a host of extras, although somewhat disappointingly none of which are particularly new, including an interview with Harry Dean Stanton from 2004 where he proves himself to be a particularly difficult character, resolutely refusing to stick to the topic of Repo Man and instead choosing to talk about his love of Marlon Brando and his somewhat defiant but occasionally zen views on life and the world we live in. He casts himself as the crotchety old eccentric you’d expect, especially after hearing Cox lament the number of times Stanton stormed off set, and having to rewrite scenes because he believed him too unpredictable and dangerous. The disc also includes featurettes, commentary (which includes executive producer and Monkee Mike Nesmith), the hilarious TV edit of the film which includes some creative dubbing over the profanity (“flip you, melon farmer!) and a new 10 minute introduction by Cox who is as likeable and unconventional as always; I particularly enjoyed his story about where the “John Wayne is a fag” dialogue came from. Overall an acceptable package for a fantastic film.
Repo Man is available in the UK from 20th February on Blu-Ray from Eureka.