Zach Vasquez
The term ‘cult classic’ has lost much of its meaning these days, since many if not most of the hard-to-see films that defined that (admittedly nebulous) category are widely available on physical media and streaming. But there are some titles that, for as popular and even respectable as they’ve become, still earn the designation – none more than Repo Man (1984).
The feature debut of the English-born Alex Cox, fresh out of film school when he directed it at age 29, Repo Man is as improbable a picture as has ever been made, let alone succeed. A zany yet heady blend of science fiction, pitch-black social satire, Looney Tunes-style anarchic comedy, and apocalyptic thriller, the film — about Otto (Emilio Estevez), a “white suburban punk” from Los Angeles who falls assbackwards into a job repossesssing cars under the tutelage of rumpled, pessimistic pro Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) and finds himself on the hunt for a stolen Chevy Malibu that contains the nuclear-powered decomposing body of an extraterrestrial — was meant to be a low-budget indie until it was picked up by Universal Studios, who, for whatever reason, gave Cox four times his initial budget and carte blanche in casting.
Of course, the film that Cox turned in was too original and bizarre for Universal to wrap their heads around, and they pulled it from its small theatrical run after only a month. While it’s too good to have fallen completely into obscurity and would have been rediscovered at some point, said rediscovery came much earlier than anyone expected, thanks to the surprise success of its soundtrack album, an instant punk classic featuring the likes of Iggy Pop (who, along with Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones and Blondie’s Nigel Harrison and Clem Burke, gave the film its main theme), the Circle Jerks (who make a hilarious cameo as a drunken lounge act), Black Flag, Suicidal Tendencies and the Plugz, a Latino punk band whose spooky surf-rock score perfectly encapsulates the homegrown Chicano sound of the times.
The soundtrack’s popularity amongst teens convinced Universal to give the movie another run, and they re-released it that same year. It did decent business and got decent reviews, but would prove difficult to find on home video in the years following. This was actually a key factor to its long term success, as it garnered the film the type of hip, “have you heard of” reputation that used to be the main component to earning cult status. It greatly helps that in the case of Repo Man, the movie itself lives up to the hype.
Shot with desolate beauty and pathos by cinematographer extraordinaire Robby Müeller and filmed on location in “the less glamorous side” of Los Angeles — ”downtown, East L.A., San Pedro, Vernon, and Watts” — Repo Man is one of the key cinematic texts of America in the ‘80s. For as wild a plot as it contains, is really an episodic hangout film that’s far more interested in milieu than narrative: the hardcore music scene of the time, the drab facelessness of increasingly corporatized suburbia (its most iconic and hilarious visual gag being the consumer goods marked, simply, ‘Food’, ‘Drink’, etc.), the smog-choked car culture of cement-covered L.A., so different from the sunny palm trees and oceans of its postcard image. And, creeping in at the edges until it finally takes center stage for the surreal, open-ended finale, the spiritual radiation sickness emanating throughout the land via Ronald Reagan’s nuclear rhetoric.
But Reagan’s name never comes up in the movie, which is appropriate. The early 80s saw a glut of punk movies — including the L.A. set Suburbia and Valley Girl of the previous year — and while some of these titles were more authentic than others, one thing most of them shared was a depiction of the wayward kids that made up the scene either fleeing from broken homes or rebelling against conservative conformity. But hardcore punk was, more than anything, a rebellion against leftover hippie idealism of the previous generation, something that Repo Man understands innately and depicts through Otto’s parents, two aging potheads slowly being turned into zombies by their TV.
The world Otto inhabits is littered with lost souls searching for meaning in the wake of the previous decades’ failed revolutions. They buy into the lies of self-employment and upward corporate mobility, kooky conspiracy theories, nuclear scientism and New Age-y nonsense (Cox includes some hilarious digs at Scientology specifically), and, failing all that, crime for the sake of crime. Ultimately, everyone is out for themselves, willing to betray their friends, lovers, and supposed beliefs at the drop of the hat. Against this dire landscape, Otto, a nihilist to begin with, is the closest thing we have to a hero.
Said landscape is as weird as it is dire, and it only gets weirder as the movie rolls along. During a tense car ride with the mad scientist who kickstarts the whole misadventure, Otto listens to a deranged screed about the creation of the neutron bomb, a weapon that “destroys people, but leaves buildings standing,” and we have to wonder if maybe this bomb didn’t already go off, the few people who inhabit the ghostly version of L.A. being not survivors, but rather, as Miller, the repo lot’s brainfriend mechanic posits, transplanted abductees from the future — a future that no longer exists. Along with those punk movies, Repo Man also came out during the golden age of nuclear Armageddon cinema. It may be the only example to count as both a pre-and-post apocalyptic movie.
In the years following Repo Man’s release, Cox would go on to direct a couple more punk films — including the classic biopic Sid & Nancy (1986) and the more divisive spaghetti western Straight to Hell (1987) — before suffering a career-stalling blow with his surreal and deeply political neo-western Walker (1987). While that film has been reclaimed as a misunderstood masterpiece, its failure at the time forced Cox to spend the next several decades working as the outsider artist he was probably always meant to be. He’s made a number of films since, all of them for extremely low budgets and none of which would achieve a modicum of the attention that Repo Man — canonized within the AFI and Criterion Collection — has enjoyed.
Over the years, Cox had tried to get a Repo Man sequel off the ground. One script, titled Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday — which sees Otto, now going by the name Waldo, return to earth after ten years on Mars — was turned into a graphic novel, while Repo Chick his “spiritual sequel”, was released in 2009, although it doesn’t have any actual connect to the original.
But now, 40 years after the Repo Man’s initial run, Cox has received the greenlight for an official sequel, currently titled Repo Man 2: The Wages of Beer, set to star Kiowa Gordon in a new story that Cox describes as “a mix of punk energy, existential comedy, and unconventional storytelling, navigating the absurd and chaotic world of repo men into a new age of nuclear brinkmanship and driverless cars.” Legacy sequels are a mixed bag at best, but regardless of how Repo Man 2 turns out, its very existence is, like that of the original, a small miracle.
Not bad for a film about how there’s no future.
“Repo Man” is available for digital rental or purchase, and is available on Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection.
