INSTALLMENT 5:
In Which The Left Hand Giveth Praise And The Right Hand Sprayeth For Worms Of Evil

I have suffered for your sins, children. I have seen Buckaroo Banzai (20th Century Fox). So you don't have to. An unintelligible farrago of inaudible sound mix, bad whitefolks MTV video acting, blatant but hotly denied ripoff of the Doc Savage crew and ouevre spiced with swipes from Mike Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius stories, a plot that probably makes sense only in Minkowski Space, six funny lines, four clever sight gags, and billions of dollars' worth of promotional hype such as Big Brother-style rallies at sf conventions—all intended to make this "an instant underground cult classic."

Were you to fail to heed my warning, you might go to see this village idiot of a movie; and you might go back to see it three or four times more in an effort to unravel a storyline in which mindlessness reaches deification and in an effort to decode the garbled soundtrack; all in aid of gleaning some sense from a film you'll be told is "fresh and innovative."

But if you are thus foolhardy, you will find yourself at one with Brother Theodore's monologue about rats, in which he says: "You can train a rat. Yes, if you work for hours and days and months and years, you can train a rat. But when you're done, all you'll have is a trained rat!"

This has been a homiletic analogy. God knows I've done all I can.

What Buckaroo Banzai pretends to be (and with the pretense brings new meaning to the word boredom), Repo Man (Universal) sure as hell is. Cleverly constructed, freshly mounted, engagingly acted, bizarrely inveigling and, in the words of Pliny the Younger, sui generis. Ninety-two minutes of enthusiastically nihilistic anarchy.

This is a first feature for writer-director Alex Cox and as a virgin effort indicates arrival on the cinematic scene of a quirky, elitist (in the positive sense) intelligence worthy of our close attention. Through word-of-mouth prior to its initial release, I had been advised there was "something special" going on in Repo Man, and I shouldn't miss it. As I had not been as warm to Quadrophenia or Liquid Sky—"punk" films about which I'd heard raves—as I'd hoped to be, I didn't expect much from Repo Man. In fact, as a "control" element of viewing, I took along both a devotee of the music of Steve Reich (which music makes my headbone throb) and a Jewish American Princess. My thought was that these disparate world-views would provide insights into my own opinion. The overage new-waver burbled with joy, and the Beverly Hills materialist grew more and more bewildered. But when we emerged from the screening, both admitted the film refused to let go of their risibilities.

My Reichfreak contends Repo Man is about belief systems. My social butterfly insists it's about people purposely alienating themselves from reality.

I think both of them have too much book-larnin'. This movie is about Otto, a spike-haired layabout who falls in with Bud, a car repossessor; falls in lust with Leila, one of the happyface-wearing numbers of the Smiley cult who live by the tenets of a philosophy to be found in the book Dioretix: The New Science of the Mind; falls into trouble with the thuglike car thieves, the Rodriguez Brothers, with Agent Rogersz and her cadre of secret service bloodhounds, with his ex-buddies of the pink&purple hair set whose collective social conscience is best expressed by Duke, who says, "Let's go do some crimes," to which Archie responds, "Yeah, let's go order sushi and not pay," and falls into the middle of a situation in which the burned-out nuclear scientist J. Frank Parnell tries to stay ahead of all or some or none of the above who are trying to filch his '64 Chevy Malibu, in the trunk of which reside deadly aliens who can fry you to taco chips with a hellish blast of light.

That's what it's about.

And get away from me with that strait jacket.

If for no other reason—and don't tell me the plot as outlined above doesn't make you go squishy all over—the acting by the inimitable Harry Dean Stanton as Bud, and Emilio Estevez as Otto makes this a don't-miss flick. Throughout my screening of the film I kept mumbling, "That kid playing Otto is a dead ringer for the young Martin Sheen, even the way he walks, the way he stands, jeez it's uncanny," until my maven of minimalist music thumped me and pointed out that Marty Sheen's real name is Estevez, and that Emilio is his kid. Oh.

Dozens of little touches in the movie provide a deranged superimposed reality that draws nothing but admiration: all the food is generic, including blue-striped cans that are simply labeled FOOD; Otto's family is mesmerized by TV evangelist Reverend Larry and his Honor Roll of the Chariots of Fire; no faintest touch of sentimentality is permitted onscreen distraction, as when Otto is about to fly off with the aliens and Leila screams, "But what about our relationship?" and Otto remains true to the tone of the film by replying, "Fuck that!"

Repo Man, when first released, drew such confused reviews that Universal pulled it back quickly. But true madness cannot long be squelched by the mentality of accountants; and now this looney thing has been let loose again. Look around and find it. Unless you are one of those dismal unfortunates who thinks Jerry Lewis is funny, you are guaranteed a filmic experience that can only be compared, in terms of a good time, with watching Richard Nixon sweat on television.

Ghostbusters (Columbia), as most of you know, was the box-office smash of the summer. Good. It is more wonderful than one would have expected from the directorial paws of Ivan Reitman, source of Cannibal Girls, Animal House, National Lampoon's Vacation and Heavy Metal, among other class acts.

But Harold Ramis, Bill Murray, Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis, Annie Potts and Dan Aykroyd all running amuck chasing demonic presences in what starts out to be an urbane yet cockeyed slapstick fantasy that smoothly turns into something Lovecraft might have scripted if he'd beaten the Man with the Scythe and lived on into the era of SFX, provide Reitman with such a gobbet of goodies that Ghostbusters emerges as one of those films you see again and again for mounting pleasure.

Had I not spent two columns on the Stephen King essay, and had I not been captured by extraterrestrials masquerading as Moonies, who spirited me away to their underground lair beneath Orem, Utah, where they tortured me with Naugahyde and hot fudge sundaes, thereby causing me to miss my deadline last issue (you don't think I was intentionally late, do you?)—I'd have had this review of Ghostbusters to you in time for you to have made an informed viewing decision, rather than just stumbling across it in the twelve hundred theaters where it was blockbooked through the hot months.

And you'd also have gotten my vituperative observations about an evil little item called Gremlins. But that will have to wait till next time, when We Who Have Gone Blind From Watching Awful Films On Your Behalf return with the startling conclusion of (wait for it) Worms of Evil!

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction / January 1985