Uncut, September 2004: Difference between revisions
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IT’S BEEN FETED as the last spaghetti western, and damned as the final pathetic death spasms of punk rock. To some it’s the postmodern cult masterpiece that patented most of Tarantino’s riffs half a decade before ''Reservoir Dogs'', to others a stunningly incoherent home movie of a million-dollar piss-up in the Spanish desert. Almost 20 years later, director Alex Cox’s sprawling gonzo-punk black comedy ''Straight To Hell'' still fiercely divides opinion even among those who starred in it. | |||
{{ | “Straight To Shit’s what I call it’ Kathy Burke tells Uncut. “Bollocks.A great laugh, but that’s what the film looked like —‘look at us lot having a laugh But it was fantastic, sitting up on a mountain with Elvis Costello.” | ||
Speaking to Uncut in the late ‘90s, Joe Strummer took a different view. | |||
«A cinematic triumph,” argued the late Clash frontman. “The film’s a bit rough to watch, but what a fucking great time we had! The Pogues, me and Elvis Costello out in the desert — absolutely unbelievable. The stuff they cut out of that film — there’s a shot of Cait O’Riordan, Elvis Costello’s tied in a chair and she’s slapping nine bells of hell out of him! And they cut that out of the movie!” | |||
More than 15 years later, Cox is unrepentant about the booze-fuelled rock’n’roll romp that almost killed his career after the acclaimed ''Repo Man'' (1984) and ''Sid & Nancy''(1986). “A good spaghetti western should be chaotic, demented and hard to follow,” the Scouse director insists today. “It wouldn’t be a spaghetti western otherwise, would it?” | |||
CHAOTIC AND DEMENTED doesn’t even begin to describe ''Straight To Hell''. Opening with a bungled assassination, it follows three renegade hit men (Strummer, Sy Richardson and Dick Rude) and their mouthy moll (Courtney Love) as they lie low in a one-horse desert town ruled by the savage McMahon gang — played, in an inspired piece of casting, by punk-folk ruffnecks [[The Pogues]]. The two groups establish an uneasy truce, but simmering sexual tension and interference by an American oil tycoon (Dennis Hopper) eventually ignites an orgy of carnage that wipes out most of the cast. Along the way there are homages to Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah, plus moments of Buñuel-esque surrealism, all laced with random torture and cruelty. And, erm, did we mention it’s a comedy? | |||
Named after a track on The Clash’s combat Rock album, Straight To Hell<br> | |||
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Revision as of 22:34, 27 September 2016
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