Repo Man (1984)

Starring: Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton
Grade: B

The obnoxious cross earring that Emilio Estevez proudly wears at the beginning of the film had to have been his idea, especially because of how prominently it’s displayed. You already know he was trying to get his money’s worth.

Summary

In the Mojave Desert, a cop pulls over a crazy old man with one lens knocked out of his sunglasses in J. Frank Parnell (Fox Harris). He asks Parnell what’s in the trunk, but he tells the cop he wouldn’t want to look. This forces the cop to open the trunk but once he does, a blinding light shoots out of it and incinerates the cop. Parnell then drives away.

In a Los Angeles supermarket, we see young douchebag Otto Maddox (Estevez) at work. After yelling at his co-worker and friend Kevin (Zander Schloss) for singing, their boss yells at Otto for being careless about his job. After being pressed for a response, Otto tells him to fuck off and he pushes Kevin into a bunch of products, getting them both fired.

That night, we see Kevin’s house is the hangout spot where Otto and all their delinquent friends mosh pit and listen to horrible music. In the middle of the pit, Otto’s friend Duke (Dick Rude) returns from jail, so him and Otto greet each other by throwing each other around happily. Later, Otto is with his girlfriend Debbi (Jennifer Balgobin) at this same party, and before things heat up between them, she asks Otto to get her another beer. He gets one from the kitchen but when he gets back to the bedroom, she’s already cheating on him with Duke and doesn’t care whatsoever. Pissed off, Otto leaves. The next day, a car driven by Bud (Stanton) drives by Otto on the street. Bud tells Otto his wife is pregnant with twins, and he has to get her to a hospital. However, he can’t leave her car in this bad area they’re in. He offers Otto $25 and gives him the keys to “her” car. It turns out Bud is actually a repo man and needed another person to drive the car away from the guy’s house because of his missed payments. The guy runs after Otto, and he’s barely able to escape with the car. They get back to the Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation where Bud works. One of the workers gives Otto a beer. After Otto sees they’re all repo men though, he pours the beer directly onto the ground of the office. They still offer him a job though and secretary Marlene (Vonetta McGee) pays him, but Otto still refuses to work for them.

Back in the desert, a woman from some secret organization is investigating the death of the cop from the opening of the film and people with hazmat suits are everywhere. To the shock of the on-duty cop, she tells him they’re going to label it as a death of “natural causes”. The woman goes into her high-tech van and looks at a computer. The screen says Parnell is a suspect and to not notify the police.

Once Otto talks to Kevin about his dream of them being sixty-five-year-old bellhops in Miami, he goes home to his parents. They are glued to the television, entranced by some televangelist directly asking them for money. Otto reminds his father about the time he offered Otto $1,000 to go to Europe if he finished school. He says he finally wants to finish school, but he wants the money first. Sadly, the parents admit that they don’t have the money anymore because they sent it all to the televangelist. This forces Otto to take the repo man job, so he drives with Bud the next day to discuss details like how they work on commission and how the more expensive the car they repossess the bigger the money they get. Another important detail are the crazy hours they work. Of course, this basically requires them to do speed which Otto has no problem with. After Bud grabs some beers from the liquor store with him, they leave. Right after, we see that the cashier of the liquor store is being held up by some of Otto’s disturbed friends.

The next day, Bud and Otto are driving and Lagarto (Del Zamora) and Napolean Rodriguez (Eddie Velez), known as the Rodriguez Brothers, pop up next to them and they all start yelling at each other. They’re fellow repo men, but they can’t stand Bud’s crew and vice versa. They start chasing each other in their cars, but Bud gets stuck in a puddle while the Rodriguez Brothers drive off. Even so, Otto is impressed with all the action he sees as a repo man.

Duke, Debbi, and Archie (Miguel Sandoval) rob some convenience store. Immediately after they leave, Otto and Bud enter. This is where Bud tells him about how the Rodriguez Brothers are two delinquents “responsible for at least thirty vehicles in the field”. After co-worker Lite (Sy Richardson) plays a prank on Otto and gets him pepper sprayed by a woman, Otto and Bud go to some millionaire’s place because he’s somehow six payments behind on his car. Despite the man carrying a permit for a pistol and Bud insists he goes, Otto runs out and does it instead. After driving the car for a bit, he tries to pick up a girl named Leila (Olivia Barash) who’s clearly in a hurry, but he crashes into some garbage cans. After arguing with the old lady whose garbage cans he ran over, Leila decides to get into the car with him. Otto lies and acts as if this is one of his many cars, but she’s not buying it. As they drive, a car next to them approaches and the men inside glance over inside Otto’s car. Leila hides in her seat and forces Otto to take a turn because these men are apparently after her.

Why is this you ask? Well, she shows him a picture of four dead aliens. She plans on letting every newspaper know about it. She’s part of a secret network and in this network is the scientist Parnell. He smuggled the alien corpses off of an air force base. Now, he’s got them in the trunk of his car.

She’s looking for Parnell and plans on having a press conference to tell the world about the existence of these aliens. By the time they pull up to her work, Otto’s laughing the whole way and doesn’t buy a single bit of it. He asks her out, but she says she’ll be busy with work, so he acts like a total dick to her. This somehow works for her, and they go back in the car and have sex. Back at the office, the repo men are offered $20,000 for a Chevy Malibu (Parnell’s car). However, Otto is distracted by a newspaper headline talking about aliens. As you can see, it will be a race to get this car. The repo men want it because of the money, but they have no idea about the alien life inside of it. They don’t realize how much trouble they’re actually in because this secret organization, and the government, will do anything to get it as well.

My Thoughts:

The 1980s was such an underrated time in the film industry. It may be just me, but I felt like there was a level of imagination and creativity during this decade almost untouched by any other. There were so many productions during this time that contained the intangible “movie magic” that seems to be lost in a lot of mainstream films today. Repo Man is a great example of this. Despite its overall weirdness, as it teeters the line of campy and satire, this forgotten, off-the-wall sci-fi movie will stay with you for better or worse.

It’s a movie that grows with time. You may not appreciate its complexities in a first-time viewing because you’ll be so caught up in the style of the movie. It’s low-budget, its humor is harsh, and the characters are scumbags.

It’s Los Angeles in the 80s!

It starts with Otto Maddox. Emilio Estevez plays a piece of shit so convincingly, you’d think he actually was the 18-year-old dropout ready to cause chaos at the drop of a hat. Havoc is his MO. He’s the angsty teen we’ve seen many times before. He’ll tell someone how he feels with no reservations whatsoever. Whether Otto’s talking to his boss or his friend, he’ll tell you to “fuck off” if he’s in the mood. After Leila, a woman he’s trying to pick up early in the movie, turns him down, he tells her that the least she can do is give him a blow job. You see what we’re dealing with here? Otto Maddox is a genuine piece of shit. If you’re not down with what whatever he’s doing, he wants nothing to do with you, will tell you about it, or he’ll go out of his way to make sure you hate him. For some reason however, he’s not completely detestable as to where you don’t care what happens to the character. I’ve seen movies before where I hate the main character so much, the end result doesn’t matter. However, Repo Man is so interesting, and the tone is so set in stone with how the characters act towards each other and others involved, Otto fits the rough vibe of the movie and eases into the role of protagonist because of the craziness that surrounds him is much bigger than his attitude.

It’s also possible that we know Emilio Estevez is 5’5” and either the actor or the character is compensating for it. Even if “Otto” doesn’t deserve it, he’s not entirely detestable. I guess that’s what star power will do sometimes.

What’s different about the character of Otto is how he’s influenced directly by the underground punk rock scene that gained so much traction during the decade. I’m talking about the underground punk rock scene of guys like GG Allin. These aren’t people you want to hang with unless you’re disturbed or come from a bad home life. The influence is not only in attitude and the Los Angeles setting, but it’s also in the look and traits of the character. Even the music throughout is darker, non-radio friendly punk music to keep this sketchy and scummy vibe. It works too because all the characters involved are messed up in some way. Even the seemingly nice Leila ends up torturing Otto for information at one point!

Otto hangs out at Kevin’s house with a bunch of other troubled young adults and all they do is fight and cause shit. At one point, Duke, one of Otto’s on/off friends, says to the others, “”Fuck this. Let’s go do some crimes”. The movie knows how ridiculous the line is. We’re all in on the joke and the crazy shit that happens. This is what’s so much fun about Repo Man. One my favorite lines was when Duke is shot and, on his deathbed, he tells Otto that society made him who he is and he’s just like, “No, it didn’t”. I don’t know why, but stuff like that is so funny to me.

Along with its humor, its whole style is something you haven’t seen before. At the very least, I promise you that you’ve never seen this combination of ideas mixed into a single movie before. How many movies have you seen about repo men? There aren’t many, right? Now, throw aliens into the mix. Have you ever seen that?

The reason that Otto’s general demeanor works is because of how well he meshes with the repo men of Los Angeles. They all got something wrong with them too. Dealing with bad people so much, you start to become one. They have no problem taking someone’s car, no matter the situation. They’re about the money. Whether it’s some poor family trying to earn just enough to scrape by, or an asshole millionaire that neglected to pay, the repo men are taking the car by any means necessary. In fact, they thrive in tension-filled scenarios and excitement. It’s exactly what a rambunctious person like Otto lives for. Initially, he sees the job as essentially being a narc, but once he sees they’re all pieces of shit too, he starts to get into it. He loves the car chasing, the fighting, and the arguing. He does it for fun anyway because he’s a born dickhead. Why not get paid for it? When you combine this with the insane hours these guys work, you start to collect every bad trait under the sun to keep going. As Bud puts it, “Get in at 3AM. Get up at 4. That’s why there ain’t a repo man I know that don’t take speed”. Additionally, they drink whether they’re on the job or not. After frequenting the streets at all hours of the night, it’s as if they have become a part of the lawlessness that occurs on it.

At one point, Bud event talks about how he hates “ordinary people”. This is how far removed the repo men are from the rest of society. These are the wise words guiding Otto too and influencing him further into a profession that most people hate.

To continue with this trend of odd/bad people, every other repo man that works with Otto all have their own philosophies on life that are weirder than the last, especially Miller’s (Tracey Walter) theories of UFOs being time machines. The thing is they all think they’re teaching Otto something. It gets to the point where even he realizes they’re all nuts. It’s like how the kids in South Park, though containing their own issues, realize that the adults are the idiots that act like they know better. It’s a lot of fun to watch. Even though it’s well planned out within the screenplay, it’s set up like Otto and the gang are wandering aimlessly day-to-day and stumble into this alien plot by sheer luck, along with other situations they shouldn’t be a part of because of the job. It’s this level of unpredictability that is so endearing about this eccentric, underground narrative. Moments like Bud accusing Otto of being a communist for talking about healthcare in Russia and telling him he doesn’t want commies in his car, or Christians (the latter being completely unprompted), is the unpredictable nature that makes Repo Man the movie it is.

I understand that the production values are kind of cheesy for today’s crowd and not every idea the film has translates in your first viewing of it, but Repo Man is a movie you have to walk into with an open mind. Understand the time period, understand that every character is a dickhead, and understand that this is a movie that thrives on the unorthodox. I know that’s asking a lot of you, but I have to explain how and why I like this movie as much as I do after all these years. It overcomes its obvious faults with its inventive style and “out there” plot. Its trashy, fun, creative, and hysterically bizarre. It has no problem in sticking out and being one of the most unconventional movies of its generation. Now, Repo Man is far from a perfect movie and it’s definitely not for everyone. I can’t stress this enough. Still, there’s a lot of grimy fun to be had.

…and even if you don’t like it, it’s hard to forget it.