Straight to Hell

Rating:
Summary: Alex Cox has been eaten by an alien
Review: "Straight To Hell" is a complete waste of money. The only reason I continued to watch... was to see how Dennis Hopper and Grace Jones could possibly elevate the film, but even their brief and unsatisfying appearances could not resuscitate this dead dog...

Rating:
Summary: I've Been There...
Review: ...just by watching this movie.

Straight to Hell comes off as a purely self-indulgent vanity piece. Like the road to Hell, I'm sure director Cox had very good intentions when he got together with many of his friends in a small Mexican ghost town (actually Spain) and just let the camera roll while everyone improvised. Given all of the peronas involved (including many legends from the early 1980s punk scene and independent filmmakers) you would expect something at least slightly interesting to occur. Unfortunately, the result is just directionless and meandering. Whereas films like Repo Man are iconoclastic and make interesting comments about the disintegration of society, this is just a mess about a bunch of adults acting silly. It may have been fun to film, but it is a chore to sit through.

I wonder if Cox truly felt he had created a worthwhile movie, or if he just tried to salvage whatever he could from the footage he shot after going to the expense. Whatever the case, this disaster bascially ended Alex Cox's career by making it impossible for him to find any further financial backing (he only made one more cheap film in Mexico). Talk about going out with a whimper.

For those who care, this is Courtney Love's first film, from before she became famous through marriage. Everything else about Straight to Hell is equally as trivial as that piece of information.

Rating:
Summary: Clever, hilarious, and surreal parody of Italian Westerns
Review: Alex Cox's "Straight To Hell" is such a strange and unique pop film that I'm not quite sure how to go about reviewing it. Perhaps if I can break down the elements. The film is based round the time of its release and deliberately has all the cliches of the typical 1960s Italian "Spaghetti" Western; the mood, humour, and style is like that of Jim Jarmusch (who plays "Mr. Dade" in the film), David Lynch, and the Coen Brothers; and the cast is a wonderfully entertaining group of New Wave/Punk Icons and edgy, idiosyncratic character actors; the plot: 3 Hitmen and a pregnant girlfriend oversleep and miss their scheduled "hit" and deside to rob a bank to make up for the loss of money, which leads them to hide out and bury the money; the setting: a virtual "Ghost Town" in Spain--I say virtual, but there are a few occupants: a Spanish tavern keeper, hardware/general store owners consisting of a sexy Latin lady and her war-crazed, half-a-man husband, a Priest and Coffin maker, a mobile butler who consitently serves coffee, a flamboyant singer (ala Liberace), a singer/songwriter who sells hot dogs, the gun-slinging, violent, and caffeine-addicted Mac Mahon Gang, and a few crazed others. Acknowledging the cast during the film is quite fun in itself, from Joe Strummer, Sy Richardson, Dick Rude, Elvis Costello, The Pogues (all of 'em!), Courtney Love, Jim Jarmusch, Dennis Hopper, Xander R. Berkeley, and Grace Jones to others who you'll probably see in a Jim Jarmusch film or in Alex Cox's Sid & Nancy. The soundtrack is a pseudo-Western and Latin mixture of Pogues, Pray For Rain, and Joe Strummer, which works excellently in the film, as well as outside it.

Cult stars, guns, black humour, violence, coffee, and a surreal Italian Western setting is what's in store when you go "Straight To Hell". Hilarious!

Rating:
Summary: "A brilliant twist on the spaghetti western genre"
Review: Anglo-Irish punks crossed with Clint Eastwood?! From this odd combination comes a truly entertaining parable of lust and greed. A brilliant twist on the spaghetti western genre, this film features Joe Strummer as a bankrobber, the members of the Pogues as an old west outlaw gang, and Elvis Costello as sheriff.

Rating:
Summary: of course it's weird- it's Alex Cox
Review: I saw this movie once, in college and was boggled by all the randomness- it seems like every character has a different foreign accent, Zander Schloss sings a song about Disco Hotdogs, Grace Jones makes out with Dennis Hopper (and in the 'making of' featurette he forgets her last name!!!! oh my god!!!!!), Joe Strummer gets his vampire love on, and Courtney Love wails a lot of catchy phrases in her pre-plastic surgeries, screechy voice.
It's pretty sweet, all in all.
If you like that sort of thing.
The 'making of' part explains how the film came about and why it's so disjointed.... and it is a pretty sloppy piece of film making... but it's cool that it was made and had enough support to make it out on DVD.
The only thing that disturbs me about the film is that they keep saying 'Shikso' or maybe 'shiksa' when I think they meant to say 'meshuggah' or something. I dunno. It's really odd.
I like this movie in the same way that I like the Fishing with John episodes, Buckaroo Banzai and The South Park Movie...and maybe Liquid Sky.

Rating:
Summary: When Widdle Binky died I swore I'd never love again...
Review: If the best of British New Wave took over the set of The Quick and The Dead, and based their performances on memories of the one time they'd seen High Noon on a UHF channel that was just outside the broadcast radius at about 3AM, you couldn't have gotten a funnier film than this.

Just remember folks, Courtney Love is now a respected actress, and this is her first film.

It's a Who's Who (Who Was Who?) of 80's rock, and cameos by Dennis Hopper, who decides to simply hand everyone in the film weapons, and Jim Jarmusch ("No sorry, you cops'll have to just throw rocks") just send the film over the top.

Yeah, you have to have found Repo Man to be a masterpiece to really appreciate this film, but that's not too hard.

Rating:
Summary: The Most Important Work of Art Since The Vagina
Review: Leonard Maltin, a guy I normally admire, just doesn't get it. This movie is wonderful, as long as you accept it on its own terms. It is a bit of fun, with a fair swipe at the love of money. The music is fantastic, and really is one of the best soundtracks you will ever find. A group of friends and I have claimed it as "our movie" for years, and I'm sure many who have seen it share the same fanatic devotion. And yes, I know way too many lines of the film by heart to be considered "employable." I should only give it four stars, since I would like to have seen some outtakes, but no matter! Five it is! Mr Cox, we are still awaiting "Back To Hell!"

Rating:
Summary: Drug induced western spoof
Review: Making sense of this spaghetti western parody is about as easy as witnessing Shane Macgowan performing all his songs coherently and bearing a perfect set of teeth. Well, you can at least do the first part by watching Straight To Hell. In fact, Alex Cox recruits quite a number of well known celebrities to make came appearances in the film. The Pogues play a family of caffeine addicts, while Grace Jones and Dennis Hopper make notable cameo appearances. Also, Elvis Costello appears here and there as Hives the Butler.

The film is full of amusing moments, but the storyline is almost nonexistent. That's okay, it's an Alex Cox film. What does make this movie worthwhile, despite it's weak story, is Alex Cox's form. His main characters are played out well, with Richardson, Strummer, and Rude giving good performances. Courtney Love's performance, however, leaves much to be desired and is a far cry from some of her later film roles. What one will find here, amongst all the incoherent ruble, is a film that must have at least been seen by Quentin Tarantino (and of course, only a video junkie of his stature would have seen this film).

Not a great film, but certainly influential. Alex Cox has great form and the host of indie celebrities are amusing.

-Tim

Rating:
Summary: joe strummer rulez man
Review: ok, but really he is the coolest dude.

if you get this for elvis costello's cameo you'll be bummed. get 100 cigarettes or whatever that is instead. joe actually acts (acting actually as actors actually act hm) here. it's one of the first great rock & roll cult movies.

if you wanna get th honey, don't go killin all the bees...

Rating:
Summary: What in the world were these people thinking?
Review: Straight to Hell (Alex Cox, 1987)

Alex Cox made a very fast name for himself in the mid-eighties, releasing two classic films in the space of three years, Repo Man and Sid and Nancy. Then the downward slide began, and precipitous it was. Straight to Hell, Cox's fourth film, may well have been the nadir; it's hard to imagine a filmmaker this talented making a film this bad, and impossible to imagine a filmmaker this talented making one worse.

Straight to Hell is a spaghetti western that's ingested a large number of psychedelic drugs. It follows three hitmen (scriptwriter Dick Rude, ex-Clash guitarist Joe Strummer, and the only actor in the bunch, Sy Richardson) through a couple of botched jobs in Mexico, after which they flee to the strangest desert town to be found outside Jodorowsky's similarly muddy western El Topo. In fact, not only the town has Jodorosky written all over it in unreadable graffiti; the whole film, with the exception of the added love interest, could have been cut from the same cloth as was El Topo. There are, no doubt, art film fans who would consider that a boon, but I always found El Topo to be the weakest of Jodorowsky's movies, and Cox undercuts an already unstable base with amateur acting, and then adds the always-annoying Courtney Love in a major role. The project was bound for disaster from day one. If you've seen El Topo (or the better distillation of it that is the last third of David Lynch's film Wild at Heart), you can safely pass this up and head straight for Cox's more recent documentary work. * ½