Box Art Review #13 - Repo Man

Box Art Review #13

Repo Man (1984)

Directed by Alex Cox

Starring Harry Dean Stanton, Emilio Estevez

Repo Man is an 80s movie about the LA punk scene and aliens starring a very young and very pissed off version of coach Bombay from The Mighty Ducks. This movie rules.

The Movie

Repo Man opens with the promise of scifi hijinks as we watch a motorcycle cop pull a crazy guy over on a desert road only to be lazered to death by whatever’s in the trunk of the car. Then the movie jumps genres as we watch the jock from the Breakfast Club play the rebel punk kid from the Breakfast Club. Otto (Emilio Estevez) works a shitty supermarket job for about 2 minutes of the movie before quitting like a badass. He heads to what I assume is a house show, but there’s band in sight so it could just be a bunch of punk kids hanging out in somebody’s house. Otto and his gf are hanging out upstairs at this house when she asks him for a beer. When he returns from the fridge with a blue and silver can with the comical label of “BEER” some other dude is mackin on his girl and she tells him to get lost. Otto wanders the streets of LA in an angry drunken state screaming the lyrics of Black Flag’s TV Party until a guy tricks him into repossessing a car. Otto heads home where his parents are watching a televangelist in a zombie-like state and smoking weed. Otto asks for some money but it turns out his stupid 1980s parents already gave it all to the TV preacher. This is seriously one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in a movie, and it’s all happening while Otto eats food out of a tin can labeled “FOOD.” Hilarious.

And thus Otto’s career as a Repo Man begins.

The movie sort of has a plot; Otto picks up a girl who tells him about the dead bodies of four aliens locked in the trunk of a Chevy Malibu and of course it turns out he has to repo that very car soon after. Really though, the reason to watch Repo Man is to see the depiction of Los Angeles in the 80s, the acting from Estevez, about a million and one subtle jokes and social commentary, a great soundtrack (if you like entry level 80s punk music you can’t go wrong, the movie features songs by Black Flag, Fear, and Circle Jerkz who were all featured in the LA punk documentary The Decline of Western Civilization 3 years earlier, plus Iggy Pop and Suicidal Tendencies) and the kind of enraged punk rock cynicism that could only come from blue collar Los Angeles in ’84.

It’s kinda like Return of the Living Dead without the zombies plus Night of the Creeps without the zombies.

The Cover

There’s really not much to see here. The VHS box art really gives you no clue of what’s going on in the movie. None of the important characters are really placed front and center, which is pretty dumb, and the guy out in front not only doesn’t look like Estevez, he’s wearing some dumb jock outfit like it’s the Estevez from Breakfast Club. There’s some vague green space glow coming from the trunk too, but honestly if you saw this on a shelf at Block Buster you would never guess that this mundane cover is hiding a real gem of absurdity. I’ll give them credit for the logo though, that font is both awesome and appropriate for the feel of the film. The tagline’s not bad, but it’s not good either.

 

I should point out though, that the Criterion Collection Blu Ray release of Repo Man comes out this week and the box design looks fantastic. The cover manages to capture that 1980s punk aesthetic while incorporating the importance of Los Angeles as a setting in the film. Inside, the disc is simply labeled “DISC” which is a cool nod to the film’s subtle brand of humor. Criterion releases are always god tier, so if you like this movie you should pick up the new Blu Ray.

The Movie: 5/5

The Cover: 1/5

The Blu Ray Cover: 5/5

Box Art Review #12 - Death Valley

Box Art Review #12

Death Valley (1982)

Directed by

Starring

The Movie

Death Valley is a lot like the movie Prison in that they both have impressive casts and most people have never seen them. Also, they’re both on Blu Ray through Scream Factory, so there’s that too.

Death Valley opens with a kid and his dad palling it up in New York for like 5 minutes and the music makes it seem like you’re about to watch a family film. Then you realize that the kid is Ralphie from A Christmas Story and you really start to wonder if this is a family film. Sidenote: The guy that directed Christmas Story (Bob Clark) also directed Black Christmas which is considered by many to be the first slasher film (or at least the one that kicked off the 80s trend (there’s a good argument that Psycho is the first slasher film and a lot of people claim a lot of other movies were the first slasher movie too, so…) and supposedly is where John Carpenter got the idea for Halloween. Also, if you wanna get real fuckin tangential, the kid that played the bully, Farkus, in A Christmas Story was in Freddy Vs. Jason. A Christmas Story has a long reach in the horror genre apparently.

As soon as Ralphie starts talking, you realize how much of an asshole this kid is. He can’t take a hint when his dad tries to tell him that there’s no way he’s getting back together with his mom and makes him deliver possibly the coldest analogy for divorce that I’ve ever heard. Then he hits the road with his mom and her new bf, who seems to be a nice enough guy, and just puts the guy on blast the whole drive.

Another reason I’m surprised Death Valley isn’t more fondly remembered: this is one fo those movies where they went way over board designing a special car for the villain, and it looks totally badass.

Some random trailer trash get their throats slashed open and you start to realize it’s not a family film when you see a woman’s boobs. Ralphie happens upon the trailer where the bare boobed lady got killed and stupidly steals the bad guy’s weird hippie frog necklace. Then the whole family meets up for lunch where the mom and her new man both order chili and Ralphie gets a burger. But, and here’s where things get crazy, the mom orders and orange juice with her chili, the new man orders a milk with his chili, and Ralphie orders his burger rare. What planet do these people live on? Oh yeah, and the waiter has the same necklace as the one Ralphie stole earlier.

Ralphie and his mom and his not-dad hit the road again and see the wreckage of the RV from earlier where that chick got her throat cut for not wearing a shirt. Wilford Brimely stops by on his way to the set of John Carpenter’s The Thing (Death Valley was released a month before The Thing in ’82) to play the sheriff who knows a dark secret. The rest of the movie is set in Knott’s Berry Farm style ghost town where cowboy serial killer twins (not as dumb as it sounds) stalk Ralphie and his new family unit. Somehow, the movie manages to make a reference to the daydream scene with “Black Bart” from A Christmas Story a year before it actually came out (I doubt it was vice versa, but maybe).

Death Valley isn’t the kind of movie that looks good on paper. Reading the description, I couldn’t help but remember the terrible 90s slasher Leprechaun. They both have low budgets, stupid concepts, and cast members that went on to do bigger and better things. But somehow, possibly because it stars a little kid, Death Valley strays pretty far from the usual slasher territory and is more like a neo-noir thriller, especially given the setting and a lot of the background music. Unfortunately it never really does anything too memorable, all the kills are literally the same and the cool car barely sees any action. It may sound kinda stupid, but I recommend Death Valley for anyone who wants to see the kid from A Christmas Story in danger of getting murdered, or also if you’re a horror fan who hasn’t seen this one yet, but really, it’s fucking Ralphie from A Fucking Christmas Story in a fucking slasher movie.

The Cover

I’m sorry, but Ralphie looks like a creepy sex doll. Like, for real man. The cover is very reminiscent of Home Alone already, and that weird wide open circular gaping mouth brings these uncomfortable thoughts about Michael Jackson to my mind. Maybe that’s just me; maybe I’m fucked in the head or something. Regardless it’s a really lazy cover design. The cover doesn’t do anything to really clue you in on what the plot of the movie is, and what’s worse, is that the only sign of any danger at all is this tiny knife reflected in the sunglasses. This is a movie about cowboy killers in the desert, you’re telling me they really couldn’t find some kind of western imagery to throw in there and play up the cowboy angle? On top of that, the villains drive this really badass car, why not put that on the cover? It would be one of those cases where the movie doesn’t really deliver what’s on the cover, but it would at least be interesting, which this cover is not.

The Movie: 3/5

The Cover: 1/5