Sleeper Films: “Repo Man”

I thought it might be interesting this week to bring to the attention of the GITS community favorite movies of ours that might have slipped beneath the radar. They could be indie features, foreign movies, or older films, but while they may not have achieved much in the way of notoriety, something about them clicked with you — memorable characters or scenes, compelling plots or dialogue. What are some of your favorite ‘sleeper’ films?

My recommendation today is the 1984 surreal comedy Repo Man, written and directed by Alex Cox. Here’s a summary from IMDB:

Frustrated punk rocker Otto quits his supermarket job after slugging a co-worker, and is later dumped by his girlfriend at a party. Wandering the streets in frustration, he is recruited in the repossession of a car by a repo agent. After discovering his parents have donated his college fund to a televangelist, he joins the repossession agency (Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation) as an apprentice “repo man”. During his training, he is introduced into the mercenary and paranoid world of the drivers, befriended by a UFO conspiracy theorist, confronted by rival repo agents, discovers some of his one-time friends have turned to a life of crime, is lectured to about cosmic unconsciousness by the repo agency grounds worker, and finds himself entangled in a web of intrigue concerning a huge repossession bounty on a 1964 Chevy Malibu driven by a lunatic government scientist, with Top Secret cargo in the trunk…

The movie has a great cast including Harry Dean Stanton, Emilio Estevez, and Tracey Walter, and is replete with inside jokes and commentary on capitalism, religion, authoritarianism, and the absurdity of life. Plus the soundtrack cranks featuring songs by Iggy Pop, Black Flag, Suicidal Tendencies, Circle Jerks, and The Plugz.

Here’s an excerpt from a review by Roger Ebert:

I saw “Repo Man” near the end of a busy stretch on the movie beat: Three days during which I saw more relentlessly bad movies than during any comparable period in memory. Most of those bad movies were so cynically constructed out of formula ideas and “commercial” ingredients that watching them was an ordeal. “Repo Man” comes out of left field, has no big stars, didn’t cost much, takes chances, dares to be unconventional, is funny, and works. There is a lesson here.

The movie’s trailer:

Miller explains time travel:

The repo code:

Alex Cox has a website and if you go here, you can read about the history, making, and impact of Repo Man.

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