Repo Man (1984)
Directed by Alex Cox
A down and out young punk gets a job working with a seasoned repo man, but what awaits him in his new career is a series of outlandish adventures revolving around aliens, the CIA, and a most wanted '64 Chevy.
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3 films that influenced Repo Man
What critics say influenced Repo Man
In the movie, it's filled with a strange, glowing, possibly atomic device; Alex Cox's Repo Man and Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction famously paid tribute to this device.
It introduced me to punk music, and it also referenced many cool older movies, the most obvious being Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly (1955).
The chaotic result is a gonzo slab of 1980s underground grunge that also riffs on Kiss Me Deadly’s famous apocalypse briefcase, dangerous-youth films like Clockwork Orange, the West Coast hardcore scene, and the cults that have long bloomed in the Southland’s smoggy, deadening warmth.
The tangy preamble -- crumby flatlands, "Oh My Darling Clementine" warbled off-key, Kiss Me Deadly in the trunk of a Chevy Malibu, ominous surf-music thrumming -- sets the free-associational guerilla timbre.
There's a reason the Criterion edition of the 1955 film noir Kiss Me Deadly includes a 4-minute tribute by Cox, considering he borrows that movie's visual of an otherworldly glow for his own uncompromising effort.
And while it pays subtle homage to films ranging from Kiss Me Deadly to A Clockwork Orange to E.T., and has itself influenced the disparate likes of Pulp Fiction, Napoleon Dynamite and Southland Tales , it remains entirely sui generis – which is why it seems as fresh and original today as it was in 1984 (the suitably Orwellian year of its release).
And while it pays subtle homage to films ranging from Kiss Me Deadly to A Clockwork Orange to E.T., and has itself influenced the disparate likes of Pulp Fiction, Napoleon Dynamite and Southland Tales , it remains entirely sui generis – which is why it seems as fresh and original today as it was in 1984 (the suitably Orwellian year of its release).
It's not easy reasoning with someone like Leila or, for that matter, with anything that happens in the film, which at times seems like a cross between ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind'' and ''Used Cars.''