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.
The Movie: 5/5
The Cover: 1/5
The Blu Ray Cover: 5/5