Repo Man : Recommend Movies Similar to Repo Man

WOA! I just saw a movie that I feel was strongly similar to Repo Man.

Bringing Out the Dead, 1999. If you liked Repo Man, give it a whirl.

Does anybody have any other similar movies 'like' Repo Man that they could recommend?

Maybe it was just the time period, maybe it was because I saw it in the theater with the same group of friends. Perhaps it was the whole 'California working class guy in the middle of wierd *beep* thing, maybe even just the years after with me and my friends always quoting one movie or the other, but "Big Trouble In Little China" has always held a spot in my heart (and my DVD shelf) right next to Repo Man.

On the surface, not very similar, but for some reason I associate the two.

Big Trouble In Little China? seriously? Isn't that some cheesy action movie with Kurt Russel??

Thanks for the recommendations Old Stalker -

"A Clockwork Orange" <- okay, but not really like Repo Man
"The Big Lebowsky" <- also okay, but not really like Repo Man, even though an 'LA' movie.
"Lost Highway" <- haven't heard of it, will check it out
"Zardoz" <- heard of it, thought 'meh', but will check it out
"The Fight Club" <- good, but not really like Repo Man
"Choke" <- heard of it, will check it out
"Liquid Sky" <- haven't heard of it, will check it out
"After Hours" <- great movie, but not really like Repo Man. Bringing Out the Dead is definitely the closer Scorcese movie.
"Uforia" (again Harry Dean Stanton with Fred Ward) <- haven't heard of it, will check it out

I'll also check out those French ones, thanks.

Repo Man is a pretty unique movie, it is hard to find stuff similar. Dr. Strangelove is another one that is vaguely similar, maybe. In that they're both concerned about nuclear weapons and are hilarious, with some dark and some screwball comedy.

"Big Trouble In Little China? seriously? Isn't that some cheesy action movie with Kurt Russel?? "

Like I said, it may have been more the fact that everyone I knew at that time frame we4nt around qouting one or both movies, but yeah, it was a cheesey Kurt Russel comedy.

Sort of an action movie, but not really.

Big Trouble in Little China cheesy? More like quirky and tongue-in-cheek. I can definitely see the connection to Repo Man.

The Hidden is the only movie that I'd say is similar in any way. It has the same punky 80s LA thing going on.

It was intentionally cheesy. It was tongue-in-cheek. I LOVE it, also.
I also love 'After Hours', 'Lebowski' & the unparallelled 'A Clockwork Orange'.

Carpe Noctem!

Maybe you like to check

"A Clockwork Orange"
"The Big Lebowsky"
"Lost Highway"
"Zardoz"
"The Fight Club"
"Choke"
"Liquid Sky"
"After Hours"
"Uforia" (again Harry Dean Stanton with Fred Ward)
The french "Delicatessen", "Les Triplettes de Belleville" & "City of Lost Boys"

ALlright, ran out of titles just try remember odd movies Hope this help you, pal! Let me know.

_._-_._
"There's nothing wrong in your mind set. You're just a moron"

"Brazil"














"I fulfilled a lot of people's predictions about me. I've become a real scumbag."

Danny Vermin

Just watch the rest of Alex Cox's movies. They're all great, and Straight to Hell and Walker both feature much of the same cast as Repo Man. In fact, Sy Richardson essentially plays Lite again in Straight to Hell, though this time his name is Norwood. You can't go wrong with an Alex Cox movie.


I'm only five foot one
I got a pain in my heart

I've got Cox's stuff queued up on Netflix, looking forward to it.

Also watched 'Delicatessen'. Not very much like Repo Man at all, but it was a very hilarious and good movie, thanks for the recommendation.

Great. Now I'm gonna have 'Salsa Y Ketchup' stuck in my head all day.

I can't really think of any similarities between Repo Man and Bringing Out The Dead, but I would second the suggestions above for Liquid Sky and After Hours.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OU3ipljL20&feature=related

The similarities come from the main character cruising around at night with various sidekicks as part of his job, and I thought there was a parallel between Lite and the black man in Bringing Out The Dead, in that they were both kinda unhinged and extreme, plus there is a bleak nihilist overtone in both movies, and depiction of a decayed, poverty and crime stricken city. There is some amount of humor in Bringing Out The Dead too but not so obvious as in Repo Man

Agonotheta gets it. That's the stuff I was talkin' bout.

-Also, just saw another movie that reminded me alot of Repo Man. Different of course, but also had the 'two guys talking philosophically about stuff in a car together', along with intense personal struggles in the main character, set againt a backdrop of a troubled society. The movie was 'EvenHand'. Pretty good, check it out. There was also a shoot-out in a quickie mart. Like 'Bringing out the Dead', it was a much more serious movie than Repo Man, but it did have a good bit of comedy in it too.

Depends what you mean by "like"

I think some of Jim Jarmusch's material would be liked by fans of Repo Man.

Aki Kaurismki's Drifting Clouds (Kauas pilvet karkaavat) reminds me a bit of it too.

Trainspotting, not for weirdness, but because it is another film with a good soundtrack, and general cynicism about life.

Fight Club has some of the same quirkiness, but is more violent. Also very quotable.

It's not "sci-fi", it's SF!

Definately "Heathers" with Winona Ryder and Christian Slater. I'm surprised no one mentioned it yet.

uh. well, I watched 'Heathers'. It is definitely a similar time period, similar dark humor, strong social critique - but it wasn't nearly as awesome as Repo Man. Plus I'm going to go ahead and say it - it was more from the female perspective. Repo Man is a Man's movie, baby.

Heathers did remind me alot of another funny movie though, 'Serial Mom'.

I agree with gfarrell I thought Heathers was funnier, but Repo Man cooler.


It's not "sci-fi", it's SF!

Emilio's sister, Renee Esteves is in Heathers. She plays an awkward friend of Winona's character. The longest scene she's in is where they play croquet in the yard.

Well I added a bunch of flicks to my queue based on recommendations - I look forward to sifting through these, thanks guys! Will report back in a few weeks probably.

Okay-

Streets of Fire was indeed terrible. Good god, it is like a retarded junior high school dude was told to imagine a plot and write the script. Awful. The stylistic look of the male lead however made me think he may have been an inspiration, subliminal or otherwise, for the look of the male lead in the Sci-Fi Firefly series. They wear literally the same costume at a few points.

Drugstore Cowboys was a good movie. It reminded me more of Trainspotting than Repo Man, but it was definitely good, thanks for the recommendation.

Strange Invaders wasn't quite so good. It was living in the weird space between 'so bad it is good' 'marginally watchable' and 'just plain bad'. All in all I think it was just plain bad. Not bad enough to be good in the MST3K sense. Although I did appreciate the few scenes where the heroin is running around and clearly not wearing a bra.

Alright - and I hit upon another one that I think is an almost perfectly similar to Repo Man. I've recommended 'Evenhand' and 'Bringing Out The Dead', now I give you: "Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise", directed by Danny Boyle.

It is about an old hand door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman bringing on a younger hand. It has alot of the same crap as Repo Man - rules of the trade, of-kilter characters, driving around in a car together, the absurdity of how some jobs in our capitalist system make people try to scam each other, etc. etc. It was okay. Repo Man is still the tremendously superior movie, Vacuuming was a bit weaker. But give it a watch. Be ready for some pretty thick English accents though and some pretty crappy film quality.

Although I would never recommend anyone actually watching it, I must say that the end of Southland Tales has a pretty awesome tribute to the end of Repo Man: a floating, glowing ice cream truck drifting away in the night sky over LA.

I feel that Tarantino's movies have thi Repo man feeling

Maybe try 99's Election? It has some of the same goofy charm while everything is oddly connected.

I can't prove it, but I believe Lite and Sy Richardson were the prototype for Tarantino's Jackson character.

Especially if you watch the "Straight to Hell" (1987), you'll get the impression that if Tarantino saw it, he definitely liked elements of it.

Highway 61 looks pretty nuts, I'll give that one a shot.

Right - I just saw this and was wondering if this was QT's fav flick.

Dude, Where's My Car?

Try highway 61.

I can't believe no one has mentioned walter hill's streets of fire which also came out in 1984 and has too become a cult classic of sorts, along with many other hill movies. in a similar manner it very efficiently combines a variety of genres, such as action, music, romance, crime, etc. a very cool film that has a strong vibe of 50's films, yet features a ton of blaring rock music, all sorts of wacky characters from dirty cops to gangbangers, has an awesome main character, a nice love interest and an odd side character in the form of rick moranis. definitely one you should check out if you enjoy(ed) repo man.

I play cards with J.D. Shelnut, chief of PO-lice! So kiss my ass, you old bastard!

Yeah, I thought Streets of Fire was terrible some corporate guy's fantasy of something he couldn't understand. However, the leads, Michael Pare and Diane Lane, were GORGEOUS. Oh, and it did try to get punk rock cred by having Lee Ving, who also appeared in (ahem) Flashdance.

There have been a lot of good ideas. There are a couple of movies from the same era which I think have similarities.

One is "Drugstore Cowboys" is about a gang of junkies. I don't remember much about it, but I know I was fascinated as I watched it.

On the UFO/Weird angle is "Strange Invaders." A man's ex wife takes their daughter to a small village where her people are. He goes there to get the child back. The people in the villiage aren't normal people.

This is less similar but might appeal to people who like "Repo Man." "Near Dark" has a gang of vampires who travel around in a van. Some of them are punkish. It has some weird sick humor.

The first-page recommendation of "Liquid Sky" is pretty close. Be prepared, though; it's a much "artier" film, much of the acting in is wretched, and the soundtrack is purposefully grating. Penelope Spheeris's "Suburbia" is probably most like "Repo Man," but it's almost impossible to find.

I'm surprised that no-one mentioned The Doom Generation.

Or Tapeheads

"Son-of-a-bitch must pay!!"

Watched The Doom Generation a couple weeks ago now there was an utterly effing awful movie.

The Hidden was hilarious. I wouldn't say it is nearly as great or awesome as Repo Man, but it was definitely hilarious.

I thought "Clerks" (1994) had some pretty hilarious dysfunctional humor


and how about "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension" it has got Aliens and some good tongue in cheek laughs not so much of the punk attitude though

Street Trash

Masterpiece of the highest caliber

The burbs, Rubin and Ed, Tremors, Things, Night of the creeps, and Rivers edge

Dellamorte Dellamore, AKA, Cemetery Man (1994) - A zombie film with Rupert Everett about a man cursed to guard a cemetery from the living dead, along with his dim assistant. It has a lot of bizarre humour and pathos, romance and surrealism. It's similar in some ways to Repo Man, both are dark and quite edgy.

'Last Night' (1998) is a film about the last day on Earth before some event (unexplained) will destroy the planet. It's not a comedy (more a human drama) although it has funny moments and a great sense of apocalyptic doom running through it.

'Liquid Sky' is one of the films I immediately associate with Repo Man, I discovered them around the same time and love them both.

I would also recommend Alex Cox's own 'Walker' and 'Three Businessmen', and if you like those then try 'Highway Patrolman' although it's more of a drama and less funny.

Lastly, Gregg Araki's 'Nowhere' is a film that I feel owes a debt to Repo Man. It's a very colourful film full of strange characters, although it doesn't add up to much. It's also about lost youth and the end of the days (sort of).



He left a note. He left a simple little note that said "I've gone out the window."

It's not necessarily similar to Repo Man thematically or stylistically or anything, but for me Suburbia will always go hand in hand with it, simply because it's another "LA/SoCal early 80s punk rock" movie. I watched them both over and over back then.

There was another movie called Suburbia that came many years later, I don't know anything about that one. The one I'm talking about is from circa 1983 directed by Penelope Spheeris.

Thanks for the recommendations guys. 'Liquid Sky' unfortunately does not seem to be available on netflix, but I added a few others and look forward to watching them.

by extension, when I think of Liquid Sky, I think of After Hours (same period, both NYC/SoHo) but that isn't much like Repo

by extension, when I think of After Hours, I think of Something Wild (same period, both NYC, similar plot, sort of) but that isn't much like Repo either

Somehow, Big Lebowski comes to mind, but it isn't so similar either, other than having a slacker in LA as the "hero". Big Lebowski's soundtrack wasn't that great either. But as a movie? Big Lebowski is a Top 5 comedy of all-time.

someone here mentioned Fight Club I would say that the attitude the repo men have when they all get together, and when they are battling the Rodriguez brothers, is very similar to the sheer unholy anarchy of Fight Club. The way one of the characters says that repo men are just like the Rodriguez brothers, but they battle them anyway. That always makes me think of Fight Club for some reason.

Who's laughing now?!? BZZZZZZ (hack hack spurt spurt) HA HA HAAA BZZZZZ HA HA HAAA

Strange how many of the films mentioned in this thread are hard to track down/not even on dvd.

I suggest Static (1985) and Freeway (1996). Neither are hugely similar to Repo Man, but do fit into the same oddball category.

Walker
Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas

Driller Killer just popped into my head; which is more of a wired, scuzzy punk psycho-drama than a horror film.

As soon as I remember something better I'll post back here, cuz it slipped my mind

But for now the movie I'd recommend which I do recall is Requiem For a Dream.

Although it has far less humor and driving cars, most parts felt similarily absurd. Except it had the whole drug addiction element making it more like Trainspotting (already been mentioned).

Maybe even Cronenberg's Cosmopolis, cuz the main guy rides around in a limo and weird sh!# happens, but again lacking humor and that ellusive 80's urban summer punk feeling.

EDIT/UPDATE:
Another movie that I think goes well with Repo Man would be Vanishing Point, it's probably not the one I originally had in mind, but ah well, it's gone.

-"But you know what's on my mind right now? It AIN'T the coffee in my kitchen"