Straight to Hell (1987)

“A story of blood, money, guns, coffee, and sexual tension” [1]. A surreal spaghetti western spoof directed by Alex Cox (Repo Man) that was meant to be a modern adaptation of the Italian spaghetti western Django, Kill (1967). A trio of hitmen and a pregnant woman end up stranded in a strange desert town and encounter even stranger groups of people that have an addiction to coffee.

The main reason that the film has a cult status is because of the cast, consisting largely of Alex Cox regulars, some directors, and various members of punk rock bands. The cast includes Sy Richardson, Joe Strummer (lead singer of The Clash), Dick Rude, Courtney Love, Dennis Hopper, director Jim Jarmusch, Elvis Costello, and members of The Pogues, Amazulu, and The Circle Jerks. There wasn’t even supposed to be a movie, all of these musicians in this were supposed to do a concert tour in Nicaragua that was going to be filmed [2]. So they quickly decided to make a motion picture in Spain, with the script being written in a few days and the shoot taking only four weeks [2].

It received mostly negative reviews when it initially came and made some lists of the worst films of that year [1]. Director Alex Cox had built a pretty strong reputation as an up and coming independent director, with Repo Man and Sid and Nancy. This movie and his next film Walker pretty much destroyed that image and hurt his career, despite that he has continued to make movies but they fall somewhat under the radar. He actually turned down directing Three Amigos to make Straight to Hell.

This is viewed as a precursor to the Tarantino violence infused criminal worlds of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, with the Norwood character being very similar to Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Pulp Fiction. The over the top gore and violence depicted in this represents both the future crime films that would come around in the 1990’s and the earlier bloody spaghetti westerns from the 1960’s and 1970’s.

It received an updated director’s cut version in 2010, titled Straight to Hell Returns. The new version has been digitally restored; it was color corrected, has better audio, and has five minutes of new footage added to it, along with the addition of digitally added blood to the violent sequences [3].

There really is no middle ground on this film, you’ll either love it or totally hate it.

Works Cited

[1]	"IMDB," IMDB, 24 3 2016. [Online]. Available: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094048/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1. [Accessed 24 3 2016].
[2]	"latimes," latimes, 14 4 2016. [Online]. Available: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov/15/entertainment/la-et-alex-cox-20101115. [Accessed 14 4 2016].
[3]	"dvdtalk," dvdtalk, 14 4 2016. [Online]. Available: http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/46591/straight-to-hell-returns/. [Accessed 14 4 2016].