Repo Man.

Review #2338: Repo Man.

Cast:

Harry Dean Stanton (Bud), Emilio Estevez (Otto Maddox), Tracey Walter (Miller), Olivia Barash (Leila), Sy Richardson (Lite), Vonetta McGee (Marlene), Richard Foronjy (Arnold Plettschner), Susan Barnes (Agent Rogersz), Fox Harris (J. Frank Parnell), Tom Finnegan (Oly), Del Zamora (Lagarto Rodriguez), Eddie Velez (Napoleon "Napo" Rodriguez), Zander Schloss (Kevin), and Jennifer Balgobin (Debbi) Written and Directed by Alex Cox.

Review:

"Nuclear War.  Of course. What else could it be about?  And the demented society that contemplated the possibility thereof.  Repoing people’s cars and hating alien ideologies were only the tip of the iceberg.  The iceberg itself was the maniac culture which had elected so-called “leaders” named Reagan and Thatcher, who were prepared to sacrifice everything — all life on earth — to a gamble based on the longevity of the Soviet military, and the whims of their corporate masters."

Admittedly, it isn't every day you get to cover a director who basically used up Hollywood for a few movies and then got shuttered into independent work in the span of a decade. Cox was educated at the University of Bristol in film studies and got a scholarship to UCLA with its School of Theater, Film, and Television. Repo Man came about when Cox approached two UCLA friends about producing a film (since they were doing commercials), having failed to get a script about a World War I deserter off the ground. Cox wrote a script about nuclear blast veterans and thieves that was thought of as too expensive, so he then went on a script that was based on "my own personal Los Angeles horrors" along with a neighbor that happened to be a repo man. A key influence was also a script called "Leather Rubberneck" that had been written by an acting student named Dick Rude that had insight about punk culture (incidentally, Rude plays a minor character in this film). Eventually, "Repo Man" attracted enough attention to get Universal Pictures to do distribution, although the studio dragged its feet in actually releasing the movie for a time (to the point where the soundtrack probably had more to do with the movie getting out than anything). The movie was a light success at the time it was released in 1984. His second venture with Sid & Nancy (1986), a loose biopic of Sid Vicious and his relationship with, well, Nancy Spungen, has become a cult curiosity in recent times. Straight to Hell (1987) wasn't exactly a commercial hit (he elected to make it rather than Three Amigos), but any movie that tries to play Spaghetti Western with cameos that revolve from Dennis Hopper to the Circle Jerks can't be all bad. And then there was Walker (1987), a movie released by Universal Pictures that was filmed in Nicaragua during the Contra War loosely based on the life story of William Walker (a "president of Nicaragua") that received polarized reviews and got Cox on a "blacklist" from the major studios when it came to distribution. Cox could not find a job in Hollywood because of the failure of the film and also because he was blacklisted from the Writers Guild because of his work on scripts during a strike in the late 1980s. Cox persisted on with productions that would be made in a variety of places such as Highway Patrolman (which premiered in its native Mexico in 1991), Liverpool productions in Revengers Tragedy (2002), "microfeatures" in Repo Chick (2009) or crowdfunded ventures with Bill, the Galactic Hero (2014). Overall, Cox has directed thirteen films (with plans for a movie of the novel Dead Souls possible, even in his seventies) while also serving as a professor in film production and screenwriting at the University of Colorado at Boulder for a number of years.

For a feature debut, this is a pretty slick movie. It will vary a bit in how much time it takes to really get into its satirical bent, but it ends up delivering a few good laughs with a worthwhile atmosphere that seems strangely in-tune to the times of now when it comes to the wide variety of characters one sees in the film that range from working men with habits (read: speed) to punks to strange travelers that wander in and out of the plot while one can see packages of food or drink with generic labels (evidently there was a time when one really could just buy generic-brand stuff at a market). Basically, it is the kind of movie that would fit right in being paired with Suburbia (1983) or a Roger Corman type of feature, complete with abject paranoia built right in. The days of living by codes or standards are flying by the wayside so one might as well live with the chaos that reigns free in "society among us". Estevez achieves that tightrope that arises in detached timing that sells the disillusionment that comes in growing youth and seeing hucksters all along the path that makes for a few good amusing lines, mostly because he sells the trip in actual commitment to what a punk looks like without just being a mug. Stanton has the disposition of a guy ripped out of a Western that he sells for a grizzled sense of charm and, well, humor in causal intensity, one that actually has a quote about hating ordinary people, which, well, it does kind of ring true for a certain type of working man. The rest of the cast is comprised of a few good kooks that range from Harris and basically being a man of both the background and foreground (consider where the movie jumps after the start) or the wide expression in Walter. The 92-minute runtime coasts along with confidence for its quirky characters and blend of genres for a fun time to think about when it rides off to the climax. Cox had an idea for a sequel in the late 1990s but never got to do it the way he wanted. Named "Waldo's Hawaiian Holiday", it was adapted into a graphic novel in 2008. In general, what we have is a pretty decent comedy that runs the gamut in punk flavor for expressing a howl at the times one is living in when it comes to consumerism and the presence of nuclear war in the face of all absurdities for a strange little fable.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Might as well update you with the upcoming stuff ahead as we march onto the last few days of New Director Month:

Pedro Almodóvar - Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown 

Todd Haynes - Safe (1995). 

However, I have a special surprise coming up on Sunday, after not being able to do so last January. Be ready.

They Live.

Review #1298: They Live.

Cast: 
Roddy Piper (John Nada), Keith David (Frank Armitage), Meg Foster (Holly Thompson), Raymond St. Jacques (Street Preacher), George Buck Flower (Drifter/Collaborator), Peter Jason (Gilbert), Sy Richardson (Black Revolutionary), Susan Blanchard (Ingenue), and Norman Alden (Construction Foremanst) Directed by John Carpenter (#068 - Halloween (1978), #634 - Escape from New York, #712 - The Thing, #732 - Escape from L.A., and #1221 - Dark Star)

Review: 
It should only make sense that the only way to see aliens of the subliminal kind are a pair of sunglasses. The idea for the film came from the 1963 short story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning" by Ray Nelson, which he subsequently adapted with artist Bill Wray into a graphic comic named "Nada" in 1986. As such, the screenplay credit went to Frank Armitage, a pseudonym for Carpenter (who naturally also co-wrote the music score with Alan Howarth). In any case, it really is a variation on Invasion of the Body Snatchers (why else would you have the aliens shown in black-and-white for most of the film), only if the aliens were already here and ready to help people sell out and obey in the vein of an sci-fi action thriller. In that sense, it works out pretty well in the film's favor, one that is packed with plenty of entertainment that is derived from clever subversive material and a mold of action and humor to go alongside it that never seems dull or too convenient. The film holds itself on the every-man in Piper, who signed onto the film after Carpenter met with him in the middle of his run as a professional wrestler. He can play the parts of the action hero like one could see in a b-movie (with that noted bubble-gum line seeming right out of his one-liner notebook) that comes in handy when needed that surely paved the way for other wrestler-turned-actors, but he plays himself with careful simplicity that seems just right for a guy like him. David does a fine job with a quasi-sidekick kind of role, where he can join alongside the action against sellout aliens or even the fight just to believe there even is one needed, which leads to the key highlight for both actors: a five minute fight scene between the two where they just take it to the other. It really does prove astounding how one can make such a scene that is so memorable (imagine having to rehearse that for three weeks) while not leaving the film off balance during the other parts of its 94 minute run-time. Foster is fair and subtle, and the other castmates pull their momentary plays on screen with interest in making a small environment like this seem like one to look at for a while and think about. The effects involving the aliens (resembling ghouls) looks pretty neat for the intent that the film wants to do. The action is also pretty well-done with blending with the rest of the film without suffocating it, and the climax is a nice touch. Of course a film that is meant to be subversive has its shares of political devotees, which are either people who understand the film or partisan ghouls for a certain supremacist side (I only include this sentence lest someone actually think this film is about anything but yuppies and unrestrained capitalism) or nearly as annoying Marxist hacks. In any case, one can enjoy the film for either its action content or its attempts at saying something about the nature of our society when it comes to commercialism through the lens of science fiction that delivers plenty of thrills and thought to go around.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.