Local TV Station KTLA introduced me to a lot of movies. Before they were co-opted by the CW, it was not unusual to see the Burbs, National Lampoon's Animal House, or Point Break on a random night after syndicated reruns of broadcast TV shows. It was also where I garnered my love for Raiders of the Lost Ark.
For as much as Repo Man was broadcast on KTLA, I never watched it. It was a movie that was always shown as background in bars in my early twenties along with Night of the Living Dead. The thing about Repo Man is that I should have watched it way earlier than I did. In the next five to six years I would be listening to a lot of the punk bands on the soundtrack and watching movies with insane premises.
Directed by Alex Cox and produced by Mike Nesmith of the Monkees, Repo Man was released by Universal Pictures in 1984. The movie begins with credits of a car being tracked on a digital map as it drives through the American Southwest paired with the title song written by Iggy Pop. Iggy sings and is backed by a band that consists of Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols on guitar, with Blondie rhythm section Clem Burke and Nigel Harrison on drum and bass, respectively. The songs on the soundtrack feel like a punk rock variation on the theme of 1950s detective show, Peter Gunn, written by Henry Mancini. The song Repo Man has a steady beat with lyrics that can only rival Tom Waits's soon to be released Rain Dogs. After the credits, a highway patrolman pulls over a car driven by J. Frank Parnell. When the patrolman goes to investigate the trunk, a white light flashes, only leaving the cop's boots behind.
The film cuts to our anti-hero, Otto, an angry young punk rocker from Los Angeles, who gets fired from his job as a stock boy at a local grocery store for being perpetually tardy. Otto goes to a party at his friend’s Kevin's house and slam dances to the Circle Jerks song, Coup d'etat with the rest of the punks. The song describes the aftermath of citizens who have overthrown their current fascist leader, so that another fascist leader can come in and take over. Could this symbolize that if Otto doesn't change his ways the same thing will keep happening to him? History repeating itself. Otto reunites with Duke, a friend just released from jail.
Otto finds his girlfriend, Debbie, and expects a blow job. Debbie criticizes Otto for folding his clothes nicely and then asks him to get her a beer. He does as he asks. Playing in the background is the Suicidal Tendencies's Institutionalized. I first heard Institutionalized on a mixtape someone gave me in the eighth grade. The song is about a teenager named Mike (Muir), who we are led to believe is having mental problems, but he says he's just trying to figure things out. He tells everyone he's fine, but they just keep asking him if he's fine until he gets angry and comes off as not fine. Soon his parents think he's on drugs because he was staring off into space. His parents feel that he's a danger to himself and decide to put him in an institution. The last line of the song he just sort of gives up and says, “I'll probably get hit by a car any way.” All he really wanted was just a pepsi.
The verses to the songs are spoken like Mike is telling you his problems. Maybe you are his therapist, maybe you're his counselor. As Mike gets worked up about his problems the song speeds up faster and faster until the chorus and Mike's breakdown. The video features Mike Muir acting out the verses to his song while cutting to the band every so often.
Institutionalized was re-recorded in 1993 for an album called Still Cyco after all these years, consisting of other songs re-recorded by the band. The song has been covered a number of times with versions from, Senses Fail, Body Count, Amanda Palmer, and Brak from Space Ghost. Most covers keep the same lyrics, with the exception of Body Count's which updates the lyrics for a more modern time and includes a verse about being interrupted while playing XBox.
Otto comes back with Debbie's beer, but she is in bed with Duke. Debbie calls him a baby while Black Flag's TV Party plays in the background. This is the third version of TV Party recorded. The song shows up on Black Flag's Damaged and the TV Party single. The single version is recorded with hand claps in the background during the chorus. Director Alex Cox requested Black Flag record it a third time for the Repo Man soundtrack. This third version sounds very phoned in and not very enthusiastic. You can hear the boredom in Henry’s voice in the recording. The song was recorded once more with the Rollins Band on a benefit cd for the West Memphis Three in 2002. Each version references a different batch of TV shows in the chorus. A sad Otto is left wandering the streets of Los Angeles singing TV Party.
While walking through a bad neighborhood. Otto is recruited by Bud to follow in his sick wife's car. When Otto turns on the car a man jumps on the car and tries to stop Otto from taking it. Otto drives off, nearly running the man over. The Plugz’s El Clavo Y La Cruz scores the scene. The Plugz were among one of the first Latino punk rock bands formed in 1977 by Tito Larriva, Charlie Quintana, and Barry McBride. I first heard the Plugz on a compilation called We're Desperate: The LA Scene 1976 -1979. This album introduced me to a lot of LA punk bands including the Germs, X, and the Dickies. That compilation has one track from The Plugz, a cover of Ritchie Valens's La Bamba. The Plugz play most of the background music in Repo Man, which mostly consists of the replicated Peter Gunn theme sound.
Otto follows Bud back to Helping Hands Acceptance Corporation where Bud's story about his sick wife falls apart. Helping Hands offers Otto a job as a repo man, but he refuses and goes home after what was probably a strange twelve to fifteen hours. At home, his parents are hypnotized by a televangelist. When Otto asks for some money they had promised him for graduating college, his parents confess they sent it to the televangelist because they figured he wasn't going to graduate college. Otto takes the job with Helping Hands.
One thing I'm not a fan of is when a movie burns through the soundtrack. While we have made it through the first half of the soundtrack, we are only about a quarter of the way through the movie itself. I found a lot of music on movie soundtracks growing up and feel very spoiled with how spread out through the film they are.
Side two of the soundtrack starts with the Burning Sensations cover of Jonathan Richman's Pablo Picasso. This song plays while Otto is in the middle of a job and notices a woman, Leila, running down the street and picks her up. While the original is a masterpiece, this cover suffices and keeps with the steady driving tone, stopping every once in a while to remind you, “Pablo Picasso wasn't called an asshole.”
Leila is trying to escape some government agents. She shows Otto some pictures of the alien in the back of the Chevy Malibu from the beginning of the film with the Plugz version of Secret Agent Man, Hombre Secreto plays in the background. Soon, Helping Hands and other repo companies are offered $20,000 to retrieve the car.
Parnell has made it to Los Angeles and stops at a gas station. Helping Hands rivals, the Rodriguez Brothers, take the Malibu, but there is a lot of heat coming from the car due to the temperature of the radioactive aliens in the back. When they stop for a drink to cool down, Duke and his crew steal the Malibu and drive to a nightclub where they run into Otto. Otto is somewhat cordial but is also disappointed as he watches the Circle Jerks play a set. In this world Keith Morris and the Gang have given up on punk rock and are now a lounge act. Otto wishes they would have sold out instead of whatever this is and comments, “I used to like these guys.”
The band, dressed in matching suits, play a version of When The Shit Hits The Fan with just Greg Hetson's acoustic guitar and a drum machine. The song, another dystopian tale, talks about the citizens of the United States who will have to rely on government assistance due to inflation and recession. Both of the Circle Jerks songs on the Repo Man soundtrack come from their third album, Golden Shower of Hits. The Circle Jerks are definitely one of my favorite LA punk bands, but despite being called Golden Shower of hits, this is a much more serious album than Group Sex and Wild in the Streets. While the Circle Jerks have always been political, the first couple albums were in the present of when the songs were written, whereas Golden Showers feels very what if. I know a lot of punk does this, but this one in particular feels like a future we aren't too far from
While Otto mourns his youth and meets with Leila, Duke leaves and scolds Frank Parnell when he tries to take back the Chevy Malibu. Duke tells Frank it's his car. Frank plays along and asks him what's in the trunk. Duke's lackey, Archie, opens the trunk and disintegrates. Duke and Debbie run off. Later, before they rob a liquor store, Duke has second thoughts. He asks Debbie to start a family, but soon he comes back to his senses, but are both shot by the store owner during the attempt. In the background is Fear's Let's Have a War.
Let's Have a War" is the first song on Fear's The Record. The song is a laundry list of reasons for starting a war. The most popular reason given, profit. The repeating lines of “There's so many of us”, starts with us as in everybody but as the song progresses the chorus's meaning morphs, too. At first saying there's so many of us, we are a big number and unstoppable but then the first line comes in and the truth comes out. You fight, we profit. The “us,” becomes smaller and smaller. Make more room for us, the wealthy and prosperous, and make soldiers out of the poor and the middle class. We're like rats in a cage. The final verse is where the plan is all laid out. We show the war on TV. The only twist being, they've already done this in every modern war already. In live versions of the song the last chorus alternates between there's so many of us and there's too many of us.
When not doing jobs with Bud, Otto goes on jobs with Lite, played by Sy Richardson. The song Bad Man, a sort of rap with a drum machine, electronic keyboard and guitar is punctuated with quotes from spoken by Lite. The song was put together by Zander Schloss and recorded under the band name Juicy Banana. Zander Schloss is in the movie as Otto's friend, Kevin, a character whose gullibility makes it very easy for almost every character to take advantage of him, but is typically saved at the last minute. In real life after this movie, Zander Schloss went on to be the bass player for the Circle Jerks. After years of ribbing from Joe Strummer, Zander Schloss quit the Circle Jerks and became his guitar player. Sy Richardson and Zander Schloss would go on to collaborate with Alex Cox on other projects including, punk rock spaghetti Western, Straight to Hell.
What type of movie is this? Is it commentary on disillusioned youth? Is it a satire of Reagan Era America? It's definitely both of those, but the better question is what genre. Repo Man proves that punk rock can coexist next to sci-fi and mystery stories and still keep its roots.
The Plugz’s score for the film does this by grounding the story as part noir. The connections are all there. A good number of noir stories were initially set in Los Angeles. The disillusioned detective of the 1940s is replaced by a disenfranchised punk rock kid from the 1980s. The inclusion of aliens disintegrating people from the trunk of a Chevy Malibu is this weird MacGuffin found in the sci-fi comics and B-movies of the 1950s morphs this film into an amalgamation of genres way before Edgar Wright did. The final song on this album, Reel Ten, also by the Plugz, is a surfy space rock instrumental synced to the last scene of the movie, which almost mirrors another Sci-Fi classic, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Close Encounters is about an electrician named Roy (Richard Dreyfuss), who has an experience with aliens when a UFO flies over his truck and lightly burns the side of his face. Roy becomes obsessed with UFOs to the dismay of his wife, played by Teri Garr. His erratic behavior pushes his wife and kids until they physically leave. After seeing a news report about a train wreck near Devil's Tower in Wyoming, Roy and a number of others also mesmerized by these UFOs travel to the location. While most of the people are arrested, Roy is selected by the government as an ambassador for the aliens' mothership. The aliens emerge from their ship and take Roy with them. While Roy feels trapped in his life as an electrician and wants something more out in this giant universe, he still has an obligation to his kids.
Repo Man subverts this in a way. Otto is still young enough to make mistakes. At the end of the film, he has proven to be successful in his job and has his mind set on starting a serious relationship with Leila. There's some direction for the first time in his life despite the sleaziness of his job. When Miller, a mechanic at Helping hands, he beckons Otto to join him. Leila tries to get him to stay citing their budding relationship. Otto says fuck that and takes Miller up on his offer. Otto has spent this whole movie navigating shitty people, including friends and family, who have mostly treated him like shit or used him. Miller is the only person who has treated him right. Plus, the government and the police were after him, how much of a life is waiting for him outside of a federal prison. There are different levels of selfishness and in the scheme of who was right in their selfishness, Roy was wrong.
Repo Man, Directed by Alex Cox, Universal Pictures, 1984. Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/title/60002052?preventIntent=true. accessed 5 May 2024
“Zander Schloss from Circle Jerks, The Weirdos, Repo Man and Joe Strummer.” Turned Out A Punk, From Red Circle, 15 February 2022 https://redcircle.com/shows/turned-out-a-punk/ep/ecc432a6-2675-46f9-92e5-58ff145cabf1
Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Directed by Steven Speilberg, Columbia Pictures, 1977