There is order in the universe, after all, and I have correctly perceived it. I hereby pat myself on the back and smile. This Sunday - Hallowe'en - a new, digitally retouched cut of Straight To Hell, dubbed Straight To Hell Returns, debuts in San Francisco. The time is ripe to reevaluate Straight To Hell, I pleaded. I suggested with some arrogance that Cox could even tour with this film. Frank Parnell, here playing a non-radioactive lounge singer) and the inimitable Sy Richardson (Lite, of whom you need no reminding). It also boasts performances - some great, others at worst enjoyably ridiculous - by Strummer, Courtney Love, the Pogues, Elvis Costello, Jim Jarmusch and Dennis Hopper - to say nothing of having at least eleven roles for the cast of Cox's earlier cult favourite Repo Man, including Joe Strummer collaborator/ Circle Jerks' bassist Zander Schloss (Kevin in Repo Man - "there's fucking room to move as a fry cook") Straight To Hell co-author and filmmaker Dick Rude (who'd played Duke - "society made me what I am") Jennifer Balgobin (Debbi, the gang's co-leader) Miguel Sandoval ("King Archie") Fox Harris (J. This despite its being beautifully shot in Almeria on the disused, decaying set of a Charles Bronson western, in the same region where Sergio Leone shot his westerns, and being smarter, funnier, and richer than several successful recent spaghetti western homages like Sukiyaki Western Django and The Good, the Bad, and the Weird. Attentive followers of this blog will know that in July of last year I called out for someone somewhere to project Alex Cox's Straight To Hell, in memory of Joe Strummer and in acknowledgment of the fact that this film, a critical and commercial failure at the time, is "a gleefully idiotic, deliriously inventive, thoroughly postmodern gem," too long neglected, almost forgotten.
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