REPO MAN – Story of the Month (from March 2017)
Repo Man (1984) – not at all the same movie as the rather odious Repo Men – would be my current candidate for the “greatest movie ever made” (as I have been telling Peggy for the past year) that I never get tired of watching. The story is a wicked mixture of science fiction, action movie, and sight gags, with a wild array of mostly unknown character actors, and Harry Dean Stanton and Emilio Estevez as the stars.
The soundtrack, Repo Man: Music from the Original Motion Picture collects a variety of punk rock classics plus others made especially for the film. The opening theme music “Repo Man Theme” (a gut-busting, guitar-driven instrumental that is the best music of all, though it is not on the album) and the title song, “Repo Man” (performed over the ending credits, which crawl downward rather than upward) are by Iggy Pop, while the score is performed by L.A. punk stalwarts the Plugz. I have watched Repo Man a few times with subtitles; that has helped me follow the stream-of-consciousness lyrics in the Iggy Pop song and pick up on some of the other fine points of the movie. For instance, Dr. J. Frank Parnell is mumbling “Oh My Darling, Clementine” to himself in the opening scene, where he warns the doomed motorcycle cop when he asked about the trunk: “Oh . . . you don’t want to look in there”.
(September 2017)
