Cine-Trash

Straight to Hell (Alex Cox, 1987)
by William Ham

After two classic flicks (Repo Man and Sid and Nancy) which merely settled for sociologizing punk, expatriate Brit nutso Alex Cox took it one step further and produced a film that actually embodies anarchy. That is to say, there’s a whole lot of running around, shouting and mindless violence with no real center. It’s a cinematic mosh pit!

The plot: A quartet of bumbling thieves, escaping from their latest botched heist, find themselves stranded in a run-down Central American desert town (which suspiciously resembles an abandoned Western-movie set) lorded over by a coffee-crazed clan of outlaws (portrayed, in their entirety, by the Pogues). Then… I dunno. I’ve seen this three times (yes, I admit it) and still couldn’t follow what comes next. Suffice to say, character and plot development are not the selling points of this mish-mash. In fact, it looks like this movie was made as an excuse for a big all-star party south of the border, and the cast is a cultist’s dream: Joe Strummer, Elvis Costello, Dennis Hopper, Grace Jones and (as the preggers female lead, no less) Courtney Fucking Love! It’s nothing more than a big, wild, pointless fiesta, and my advice it to approach it in the same spirit (i.e. the drunker you are, the better it is). Besides, any film with the stones to introduce a raft of completely unsympathetic characters and the wit to kill off every last one ’em by the end can’t be all bad. (Look for it in the 99¢ bin at your favorite video store.)