This is one of those films that just happens to be on the Criterion Collection’s list, but not on the 1001. That comes as somewhat of a surprise as the film is a remarkable low-budget achievement but was also a contender among a year of incredible films that are all on the list that I am constantly revisiting. Ghostbusters, The Terminator, Amadeus, Beverly Hills Cop, Paris Texas, I mean, the competition was over before it began. But Alex Cox’s introduction to the world, presenting Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton (whose performance under Wim Wenders in Paris, Texas is the much more deserved film to be on the list) is an unforgettable one of brotherhood, satire, science fiction, and the unique American brand of violence.
The film tells the story of a kid unintentionally wrapped up in a series of high-stakes repo jobs in the Los Angeles area. Short on cash, he takes $25 offered to him for randomly driving a vehicle to a repo yard, and there begins his career as a reclaim agent at a firm that has more people pass through its doors than a truck stop bathroom. One of the big hits is an unassuming ‘64 Malibu, mainly because it has something strange in the trunk worth a lot of money. Eventually, we learn that it isn’t drugs or some important briefcase from a foreign land that will disrupt America, rather, it is highly radioactive aliens that have learned how to travel through time and space, and can vaporize anyone that casts a gaze in their direction. Pretty wild stuff.
What is most interesting about this film is how it really breaks the mold of storytelling and does so in the confines of being an extremely cheap film to make at just one and a half million dollars. Cox doesn’t mess around when it comes to breaking the narrative, budgetary, story, and stylistic confines of the mid-eighties, and the direction clearly uses the American pulse to satirize anything and everything above the low-class hard-scrabble and hard-living protagonists at the center of the film.
This is a dark comedy that is difficult to place into a category. It isn’t entirely a science fiction movie, not entirely a comedy, not entirely a horror film, nor is it a commentary that is definable. In its best essence, it is a film that makes it easy to interpret as a commentary on American culture that is as easily projectable upon as the They Live products in the hands of every character. Which beer is it they are drinking? What is the meaning of the flying car? Where do they go? Why the bloodbaths? These are the same questions we ask ourselves every day. In the 80s, this must have been an earth-shattering revelatory, confounding, exciting moment in cinema that is oft-imitated today in literature, art, and film.
And man, do I love it. Definitively punk, and a great bookend to another of his films, Sid and Nancy.
The book that accompanied the Criterion release is a well-curated collection. Sam McPheeters delivers an essay about the film and the production that is a perfect post-viewing accompaniment. There is a visual and highly illustrated production diary by Cox, as well as an interview with a real-life 1987 Repo Man Mark Lewis. Cox is a genius in the way this piece is constructed and presented with side-material, approximating the closest to a ‘zine narrative as I have ever seen both on film and in the accompanying print book. Well worth the time one spends with it. This is a story that shows how cruel the world can be with “quadriplegic stereo.” The inventor of the neutron bomb, who when faced with the violence of the film was asked if it was too violent, he replied, “Absolutely not.”
Garrett Zecker 