Repo Man

with Emilio Estevez, Harry Dean Stanton, Sy Richardson
Written and Directed by Alex Cox
(Universal,1984)
by William Ham

There is no better punk pic than Repo Man. Not just because it features a pantload of scree classics, or even because it includes the Circle Jerks presaging lounge-punk on the screen itself, but because it whisks all the low-culture artifice that fed and nurtured the punk aesthetic into its comic-book cyclone. Emilio Estevez (in the best performance of his career) is Otto, a suburban punk fed up with his dead-end lifestyle and looking for purpose. He finds it in a chance encounter with Bud (the always-great Harry Dean Stanton), who initiates Otto into the world of auto repossessors, spouting off the Repo Code and enlisting him in the search for a ’64 Chevy Malibu carrying something in its trunk that fries people like that mysterious thing in Farewell, My Lovely and is worth $20,000. Of course, everyone else wants the car, too. But I assume you know this already. What makes Repo Man such an unbridled kick is its outsider’s view of America (writer/director Cox is an expatriate Brit) and its dazzling display of verbal and visual gags, layered and stuffed like an old Firesign Theatre album. With as many as four jokes playing on screen at once, this is the rare picture that stands up to dozens of viewings (take it from a guy who watched it every afternoon after school for a whole semester). Generic food, Dianetics, public service announcements, televangelists – every junk food in the 1980’s horn-o’-plenty is stacked on its plate. If you haven’t seen it, you’re an unforgivable schmo. If you have and can’t recite long taffy-stretches of its dialogue by rote, then you can’t be my friend. “Feelin’ 7-Up, I’m feelin’ 7-Up…”