Cheap Straight to Hell (DVD) (Sy Richardson, Joe Strummer) (Alex Cox) Price

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Customer Reviews of Straight to Hell

Drug induced western spoof
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

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I've Been There...
...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.

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of course it's weird- it's Alex Cox
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.