by Phillip Ellis

Created on: May 06, 2008

The older ones out there may well remember a weird looking bloke who would introduce late night films on BBC2 in the early nineties. Well that man was called Alex Cox and 'Repo Man' is the movie that made his name and got the guy the kudos for that BBC gig, his equally weird and whacky movie one of the great low budget Indies of the 80s, ranked #7 on Entertainment Weekly's "Top 50 Cult Films of All-Time. Cox's inspiration for the film came from the fact he was a repo-man (someone who repossess cars with what ever means he has) for three years. Alex cameos in his movie in respect of that rare breed early on. Rather ironically, the only car they had to make the low budget film with was a 1964 Chevvy Malibu, which was stolen two days into filming! It was the LAPD, and not Cox, who recovered the car undamaged.

Cox didn't really go on from this intriguing little movies cult success and is still messing around in the same genre some thirty years on trying to trump it, Sid & Nancy the only other film he made you may have heard of. But at least he bought us something interesting and different, which can't be said of a lot of generic directors these days in Hollywood.

Shot on a very low budget (and famed for its sly product placement for everything from 7-UP to those pine air fresheners you get in cars), we are introduced to a very young Emilio Estevez, an earring on one ear and a girl always nibbling on the other in the angry actor's boozing heyday. Sadly his ego got bloated like his gut and we never saw much of his genuine screen presence after the early nineties. Alongside him hear is one of Hollywood's enigmas, Harry Dean Stanton, the man the likes of Sean Penn and an aging Brando looked up to, very much the west coast method school of actor. Believe it or not but he went to law school with Tony Blair.
Stanton really did waste his talent and was prepared to take all manner of minor roles to pay the bills and meet his vices, the Oscar nominee first to be eaten on Alien. They guy was a real acting purist, once quipping that: "Spielberg isn't a filmmaker; he's a confectioner".

-The Plot-

Street punk Otto (Estevez), in a huff after discovering his parents have given away his college fund to a televangelist, things getting worst when he's fired from his supermarket job some two hours later. Re-employment accidentally comes along the same day, tricked into 'boosting' a car by a man in dark shades and a cheap suit called Bud (Stanton), Otto soon ingratiated into the iffy world

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