Rudie Can’t Fail

I know exactly when and why I queued up Alex Cox’s Straight to Hell (1987): When I saw it mentioned in a Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule Film Quiz, 2 years ago. For all that time, it’s been languishing in the Saved queue. I even saw a friend pull it out of the Bargain bin at the Logos bookstore in Santa Cruz when they were going out of business. Well, Netflix finally came through.

It stars Dick Rude, Sy Richardson (who seems to be doing Pulp Fiction’s Sam Jackson, 7 years in advance), and Joe Strummer (of the Clash). They play incompetent hit men, who miss their chance at the target because they oversleep. Courtney Love, playing Richardson’s fat whiny girlfriend, wakes them up and they gop rob a bank, so that the day won’t be completely wasted. It’s a very sloppy affair, with bills flying everywhere, and the getaway car breaks down in the desert.

They find their way to a rough little town that seems to be run by a petro-gang of coffee-drinkers (or caffeine gang of oilmen), played by the Pogues. There’s a bar, some hookers, and a folk singing hotdog man, who everyone beats up (Zander Schloss from the Circle Jerks). Elvis Costello plays a butler. Dennis Hopper and his girlfriend Grace Jones blow in, arm everyone and leave. Jim Jarmusch, the guy who ordered the botched hit from the beginning, wants the gang dead. By the end, pretty much everyone has shot everyone else.

All of this is good low-budget fun, but not as much as I expected. First, there’s less good music than you’d think - one Pogues, one Costello, one Strummer, and that’s about it. It looks low-budget, but not aggressively so. Cox (Repo Man) is too much of a pro for that. So it doesn’t look goofy and cheesy, but it doesn’t look exactly polished. The plot is a shambles (in the classic sense), which isn’t a problem, but isn’t exactly a point in its favor.

So in the end, it was fun to see all our punk faves, even if they aren’t doing much. It was worth the watch, but maybe not worth the wait.