You get the feeling that writer/director Alex Cox, who was 29 at the time and fresh out of UCLA film school, feels much the same way: Repo Man is his version of doing “110 flat out” while the bad s--t comes down. Made independently on a small budget in the middle of the neoconservative 1980s, Repo Man is a somewhat clumsy, but ultimately unforgettable B-picture—a bizarre, strangely fixating punk sci-fi satire that simply refused to die after developing a devoted cult following at midnight movies and on video, which was partially due to its popular punk-rock soundtrack album. The film’s studio, Universal, had literally no idea what to do with it, and the original poster art, which is clearly meant to invoke gritty action fare like Walter Hill’s The Warriors (1979), is a good indication of just how confused they were by Cox’s genre-defying exercise.

Despite being barely an hour and a half in length, Repo Man is big enough to include dead aliens being driven around in an old Chevy Malibu by a scientist with a lobotomy, punk rockers terrorizing liquor stores, and pre-X-Files government officials snooping around and declaring with solemnity that sometimes people just explode. People do explode in the movie (disintegrated, really), guns are waved around, and the ending is an inexplicable fusion of science fiction and the punk longing for escape from the face of the earth. The movie would seem to have a mad rush of adrenaline, yet strangely enough, it has a fairly languid pace. The story has its share of action and strange events, but much of it is long-winded weird dialogue that only makes sense (and is only truly funny) after you’ve seen the film a couple of times.

This, more than anything, accounts for why Repo Man became such a cult phenomenon on the midnight circuit: It is a movie that only rewards with repeat viewings. The first time you watch it, you might mistake it for a slightly dull, whacked-out flick made by stoned amateurs who had little idea what they were doing. The film has the overall flat look of a made-for-TV movie, characters fade in and out and have no real definition, events are never clearly explained, and certain sequences seem to have no narrative purpose of any sort. It’s European art cinema fused with Iggy Pop.

Yet, first appearances can be deceptive, and Repo Man emerges as a much different experience once you’ve seen it a few times and allowed yourself to soak up its bizarre view of the world. Set in a polluted, neon-lit Los Angeles, it follows the exploits of a group of repo men—professionals who repossess cars on which the owners have not made payments (considering the American obsession with the automobile, this movie could have only been made in the U.S., even though Cox is British). Things heat up (literally, in fact) when a mysterious order comes in for the repossession of a certain 1964 Chevy Malibu, the reward for which is $20,000. We know right away that something is not right with this particular car because, in the opening sequence, we see a highway patrolman fried in his boots when he opens the trunk and is bathed in a creepy golden light that immediately brings to mind the atomic suitcase in Kiss Me Deadly (1955).

The movie is replete with weird characters and peculiar dialogue that is spoken with such straightforward earnestness that it is hard to tell if it should be taken seriously. Perhaps the strangest character of all is Miller (Tracey Walter), an odd little janitor who rambles on about how people who mysteriously disappear have actually been taken away in flying saucers that are, in fact, time machines from the future. The irony is that, by the time the movie is drawing to a close, Miller doesn’t seem so weird because his paranoid, conspiracy-driven world view is the same as the movie’s.

Cox, who would go on to make the excellent Sid and Nancy (1986), a portrait of the tumultuous relationship between Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious (who can be seen on a character’s T-shirt in one of the film’s early scenes) and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen, and Walker (1987), a biopic of a 19th-century American mercenary who became president of Nicaragua, has a smart sensibility and wicked sense of humor. Although he is obviously interested in the surface lunacy of Repo Man, he also infuses the narrative with a vein of social satire that gives every frame an extra kick. He is especially clever in critiquing capitalism, consumerism, and all forms of mass control. Most consumer products in the film are generic, meaning they come in white packages with bland descriptive names on them. Thus, when one Bud says Otto, “Let’s get a drink,” the punchline is a close-up of a six-pack labeled “Drink” being set down next to a liquor store cash register. At one point, Otto eats directly from a generic can labeled “Food” while his zombie-ish suburban parents stare mesmerized at a TV evangelist to whom they have just given all their money. (Meanwhile, most of the characters are named after well-known brands of beer: Miller, Bud, Lite, etc. Are we becoming what we consume?).

Repo Man is a small gem of independent filmmaking, the kind of movie that doesn’t appeal to everyone, but is undeniably creative and original in many striking ways. I often lament in my reviews that too many movies lack inspiration; they are well made and professional, but don’t have that spark to set them apart. Repo Man, while not as well made or professional as many other movies, definitely has that spark.

Copyright ©2013 James Kendrick

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