REPO YOUR ENTHUSIASM (intro)
By:
April 1, 2024
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of “offbeat” movies from the Eighties (1984–1993, in our periodization schema). Series edited by Josh Glenn.
It’s been a minute since we’ve published a movies-oriented ENTHUSIASM series. KLAATU YOU (2020; pre-Star Wars sci-fi movies) is the most recent one; shortly before that we ran CONVOY YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2019; Seventies action movies), which remains one of my favorites. This time around, I asked HILOBROW’s contributors and friends to write about one of their favorite “offbeat” movies from the cultural era known as the Eighties — 1984–1993, in HILOBROW’s periodization.
“The series is dedicated to post-New Hollywood, pre-Pulp Fiction examples of (what one might or might not want to describe as) ‘post-punk,’ ‘postmodern,’ ‘black comedy,’ ‘surrealist,’ and/or ‘new wave’ movies from the Eighties (1984–1993). Maybe just ‘offbeat’?” is how my call for contributions put it.
The here’s-what-it-isn’t description that I offered of what I intended by the (iffy) term “offbeat” was as follows: “Antidotes, or so I regarded many of them at the time, to the bloated blockbuster actioners and middlebrow dramas/romcoms of the era…”
I couldn’t be more thrilled about how the series lineup has turned out. It’s an outstanding collection of smart thinkers and some of our favorite must-rewatch movies.
Here’s the REPO series lineup:
Annie Nocenti on AFTER HOURS | Lynn Peril on BRAZIL | Mandy Keifetz on BODY DOUBLE | Carlo Rotella on ROBOCOP | Marc Weidenbaum on GROUNDHOG DAY | Erik Davis on REPO MAN | Mimi Lipson on STRANGER THAN PARADISE | Josh Glenn on HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISING | Susan Roe on HOUSEKEEPING | Gordon Dahlquist on SOMETHING WILD | Heather Quinlan on EATING RAOUL | Anthony Miller on MIRACLE MILE | Karinne Keithley Syers on BETTER OFF DEAD | Adam McGovern on WALKER | Ramona Lyons on MILLER’S CROSSING | Vanessa Berry on WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS? | Elina Shatkin on NIGHT OF THE COMET | Susannah Breslin on MAN BITES DOG | Tom Nealon on DELICATESSEN | Lisa Jane Persky on RUMBLE FISH | Dean Haspiel on WEIRD SCIENCE | Heather Kapplow on HEATHERS | Micah Nathan on BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA | Deborah Wassertzug on ELECTRIC DREAMS | Mark Kingwell on WITHNAIL AND I.
REPO YOUR ENTHUSIASM kicks off tomorrow — enjoy!
“A lot of people don’t realize what’s really going on — they view life as a bunch of unconnected incidents and things,” as Miller memorably opines in Repo Man. “They don’t realize that there’s this, like, lattice of coincidence that lays on top of everything.” This series’ installments (the ones I’ve seen as of this writing) form a lattice of sorts, too — a lattice composed of overlapping preoccupations, themes, critiques, memories, and pleasures. Here are just a couple of examples of what I mean.
The Eighties, reviewed 30–40 years on, are terrible and wonderful; these aspects cannot be disentangled. Annie Nocenti, revisiting Scorsese’s spooky-kooky depiction of SoHo in After Hours, recalls her own SoHo experiences in those days fondly and defiantly. Vanessa Berry recounts that upon encountering the “wild combination of camp, depravity and suburban entrapment” that is What Have I Done to Deserve This?, “I both wanted to be in that world, and couldn’t think of anything worse.” Surveying the apocalypse depicted in Night of the Comet, Elina Shatkin isn’t terrified, or even perturbed: “Even at the end of the world, girls just wanna have fun.”
The offbeat movies to which we impressionable moviegoers turned for relief from mainstream schmaltz, back then, were often sardonic, satirical, even savage. Marc Weidenbaum hails Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day for finally breaking through the era’s “veneer of snark and disdain.” I rave about Richard E. Grant’s snarky, disdainful performance in How to Get Ahead in Advertising, a movie damaged by its heavy-handed critique. Carlo Rotella, meanwhile, notes that although RoboCop “aspires to critique” (more or less along the same lines as How to Get Ahead in Advertising), the only thing its director truly cares about is “wrecking bodies.” Contrariwise, Mark Kingwell discovers beneath the highly entertaining spectacle of wrecked bodies which is Withnail and I that Richard E. Grant (again!) soulfully gives voice to “the eternal cry of the lonely.”
In returning to movies we first viewed in high school, college, and/or in our twenties, we are revisiting our own younger selves. Susan Roe, for example, recalls how bowled over she was by the adolescent character Ruthie, in Housekeeping: “Her physical and social awkwardness is beautiful, and so rare in movies.” Lynn Peril wonders why she couldn’t relate, at the time, to the tough and competent character Jill, from Brazil. Mimi Lipson, on the other hand, upon first encountering Eva in Stranger Than Paradise, “experienced a jolt of recognition that approached the supernatural.”
As weird and fucked-up as the Eighties were, finally, in certain respects they were merely a warm-up act for the ultra-weird, horribly fucked-up present moment. Contemplating Walker, a movie set in the 1850s that lampooned Reagan-era shenanigans and atrocities, Adam McGovern notes that it “doesn’t even spare targets that came long after.” Heather Kapplow notes “how deeply cringey it is to watch Heathers in a post-Columbine world.” And as for Repo Man itself, Erik Davis descries in this brilliant movie our present moment: “where alien conspiracies and hippie acid and surveillance tech and mad scientists are all mainstream.” Absit omen.
PS: Here are some other offbeat movies, almost all of which I saw at the time, that I would have been pleased to include in this series.
BUCKAROO BANZAI (1984), THIS IS SPINAL TAP (1984), STREETS OF FIRE (1984), SIXTEEN CANDLES (1984), BLOOD SIMPLE (1984), BEAUTIFUL DREAMER (19884), DUNE (1984), PARIS TEXAS (1984), BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET (1984), THE COMPANY OF WOLVES (1984), PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE (1985), INTO THE NIGHT (1985), LOST IN AMERICA (1985), THE COCA-COLA KID (1985), MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE (1985), TAMPOPO (1985), DOWN BY LAW (1986), BLUE VELVET (1986), SLEEPWALK (1986), MATADOR (1986), MONA LISA (1986), LABYRINTH (1986), THE FLY (1986), RAISING ARIZONA (1987), EVIL DEAD II (1987), BEETLEJUICE (1988), VIBES (1988), DEAD RINGERS (1988), THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN (1988), THEY LIVE (1988), TAPEHEADS (1988), TRACK 29 (1988), VAMPIRE’S KISS (1988), WOMEN ON THE VERGE (1988), POWWOW HIGHWAY (1989), MYSTERY TRAIN (1989), TIE ME UP! TIE ME DOWN! (1989), EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (1990), WILD AT HEART (1990), CRY-BABY (1990), TO SLEEP WITH ANGER (1990), THE WITCHES (1990), NAKED LUNCH (1991), MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO (1991), THE DARK BACKWARD (1991), NOTHING BUT TROUBLE (1991), BATMAN RETURNS (1992), BOB ROBERTS (1992), ORLANDO (1992), TRUE ROMANCE (1993), ARIZONA DREAM (1993).
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!