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