Who’s seen the movie? I got to go a couple of days ago to a little independent theater in Mobile. I’d been obsessed with the soundtrack ever since some of my online friends started telling me about it. The movie turned out to be fantastic, a true gem, and with the online buzz it’s been getting it seems likely to become the Rocky Horror cult film of the 21st century. In fact, I’ve heard it described as Rocky Horror-meets-Sweeney Todd, which is accurate, but I’d throw in a little touch of Blade Runner, too.
The plot really fast: in the future, an epidemic of organ failures has crippled the globe, and many of the survivors are addicted to painkillers, plastic surgery, or both. GeneCo, led by the despotic Rott Largo (Paul Sorvino) rents organs to those who need them, but there’s a catch – if you miss a payment, he sends the Repo Man (Anthony Stewart Head) after you, and then your time is up. A young girl, Shilo (Alexa Vega), who is suffering from a rare blood disease, yearns to join the outside world but she’s kept in seclusion by her loving but overprotective father (Anthony Stewart Head).
Let’s get this out of the way: Repo! is an opera. The entire movie is told through song; there’s about four lines of spoken dialogue. You can’t seperate Repo! from it’s music, and if you don’t like musicals or don’t like the songs, the movie probably won’t work for you. The standout songs are the industrial “Zydrate Anatomy”, a charming little ditty teaching kids how to use drugs with a bass line that could blow your eardrums out; “Chase the Morning”, a more operatic number featuring Sarah Brightman and Alexa Vega; “Legal Assassin”, a solo number by Anthony Stewart Head, who desperately deserves recognition for more than just playing Giles; and “Didn’t Know I’d Love You So Much”, a delicately beautiful father/daughter love song between Head and Vega’s characters; and “At the Opera Tonight”, an ensemble piece featuring the entire main cast that has a glorious rock-opera feel. This isn’t a old school musical, though – the characters sing, but don’t usually dance, they go about their (frequently unsettling) business. There’s a hilarious moment during the jazz-tinged “Thankless Job” where Nathan (Head) is disembowling a man and reaching into his guts to wiggle a tendon to make the corpse sing along with him. Well, hilarious if you’re ME.
Furthermore, this movie has possibly the single strangest cast ever assembled. Anthony Stewart Head, Broadway star Sarah Brightman, Alexa Vega from Spy Kids, Paul Sorvino, Ogre from Skinny Puppy, Bill Moseley from Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Paris Hilton (yes, Paris Hilton), and Terrance Zdunich, who’s most notable work before this film was as a storyboard artist for Into the Wild. Zdunich is the real discovery here – he plays the lovable rogue Graverobber, a drug dealer who robs graves (does what it says on the tin) and he also co-created the film and stage play it was based on, and co-wrote the songs. He puts his baritone to good use here – as one of my friends puts it, “it’s like he’s fucking you with his voice”. His duet with Vega, “Needle Through a Bug” that plays over the end credits, is possibly the sexiest song ever recorded that is not specifically about sex.
Anthony Stewart Head, as I mentioned before, is so good that it’s criminal that there’s not more roles for handsome middle-aged men in rock operas. He and Brightman are simply the two most talented singers in the cast (and Brightman is GORGEOUS. I hope I look that good when I’m 40-something). The entire movie would fall apart without him, and that’s not hyperbole. Everyone is really good in their roles, but I want to point out the three most controversial names – Moseley, Ogre, and Hilton, who play the three spoiled and degenerate Largo children. Moseley and Ogre play the walking personifications of Rage and Vanity, respectively, and they’re also the comic relief (Repo! being Repo! the comic relief is supplied by a murderer and a rapist). They are indeed very funny, especially Moseley, and their duet together, “Mark It Up”, is hilarious but sadly too profane to post any lyrics here. Hilton is where a lot of people write this movie off. Before you turn tail, let me say that she’s playing a junkie whore who’s addicted to plastic surgery, and when you have a role like that, you don’t go to Helen Mirren – you go to Paris Hilton. She’s great, she really is. She doesn’t sing much, so if you’re terrified you’re going to be trapped in a theater for an hour and a half listening to her warbling, calm down. She only has one brief solo – “Blame Not My Cheeks” – and bit parts in a few other songs.
The movie was made on a shoestring budget – the director, Darren Lynn Bousman, practically had to beg Lionsgate to let him make it, and most of the props are stolen from the Saw sets – but it doesn’t look cheap at all. It’s stylized, but the special effects are all well-done, and the movie looks beautiful. There’s also a lot less gore than I thought there’d be, especially considering Bousman directing a couple of the Saw movies – there’s like three scenes of people being gutted, one woman stabbing out her eyes, and a man being shot, and that’s it. There are some brief scenes of scalpels and plastic surgery, so if that makes you queasy, be warned.
If you love rock operas, cybergoth culture, or biting satires of the modern obsessions with money and beauty, then Repo! might be for you.