Repo Man

During one of the free preview weekends a couple of months back, I recorded the cult 1980s movie Repo Man. It's going to be on again overnight at 1:47 AM on StarzEncore Classics if you have the Starz/Encore package, and will be on again on June 22 on Starz Comedy.

The movie starts off with a sort of prologue. A man is driving a classic car across the New Mexico desert, when he's pulled over by a motorcycle cop. The cop wants to look in the trunk, which the driver, Parnell, suggests is not a good idea. The cop does so anyway, and finds an extremely bright light that vaporizes him, so you can guess there's something radioactive in the trunk. (That, and I'd think it would kill the driver pretty quickly, but that doesn't happen.)

Cut to Los Angeles, where Otto (Emilio Estevez) is an aimless young man into the punk scene, who unfortunately gets himself fired from his job as a supermarket clerk thanks to his incompetent friend. Otto decides he'd like the money that his parents set aside for him to go to college, but they've given it away to a televangelist.

The next morning, Otto is walking along the street, when a guy name Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) who is obviously a scam artist of some sort offers Otto quick money to take "his wife's" car to the hospital. It turns out that it isn't the wife's car, of course, but one belonging to some people who are well behind on the payments on it, although that you probably could have guessed from the title of the movie.

Otto gets to the repo yard, which looks like the automotive version of Glengarry Glen Ross. But Otto realizes that he's good at repoing cars, and now Bud has somebody he can mentor, although the other repo people at the place have differing views on how to do the job.

Meanwhile, that classic car is heading for Los Angeles, and by now there are federal agents on the case, who want the car for whatever it is that's in the trunk. There's a $20,000 reward for the car, which interests Bud and Otto, but also interests some guys from a competing repo company. There are also some old "friends" of Otto's who have gone from punk to petty crime and the opportunity to drive off with a nice car like this is something they'd like. But what is in the back of the trunk, anyway?

Repo Man is a movie that could go in any number of ways. I mentioned Glengarry Glenn Ross above, although I suppose that might make a bit more sense if the movie were about car salesmen, not car repossessers. There's also a fair amount of atmosphere that you could imagine Paddy Chayefsky having written an extremely dark comedy on the repo profession. I could also imagine the material being handled with a much lighter comedic touch, in a style reminiscent of Mother, Jugs, and Speed.

But while there's some of all of those in the movie, there's also the supernatural tone with the presence of that Macguffin in the trunk of the car. To be honest, I think that's where the movie is at its weakest, and I didn't particularly care for the film's actual resolution. Still, if you're up for some dark comedy, there's a lot to like about Repo Man

Repo Man did get a DVD release courtesy of the Criterion Collection, but it seems to be out of print. There's a different movie called Repo Men that is available on DVD, so pay attention. Also, Amazon seems to have Repo Man on its streaming service if you can do that.