User Reviews

This is a story of three desperadoes and a girl who accidentally go to a small town after screwing up an assassination job and robbing a bank. The town is owned by the McMahon family (the Pogues with a few others thrown in) all of whom are addicted to coffee and enjoy killing and being all in all bastards. There's tension, characters clashing and sexual. The film didn't have a whole lot of a plot, but that doesn't really matter much because it seems to be more of a spoof on spaghetti westerns and even the actors and actresses themselves. It takes repeated viewing to really get down what is going on and how the parties are related to each other, but that doesn't seem to matter quite so much. All in all, I recommend this film to those of you who love weird movies and everyone who remembers the 80's punk scene.

I've seen this long ago on German TV in a well synchronized version which is unfortunately not available as DVD.

Which I remember best is the cool acting of Grace Jones as "Sonya", (kind of a black 'Red Sonja' in a business suit) the secretary of "I. G. Farben" Dennis Hopper. She did all the needful things for him starting from looking sexy up to execution of his will (he plays a good father like role) by means of a machine gun.

If You are in a too serious analytical mood, You wouldn't have much fun with this. But if You are in the mood for some surrealistic fun, than this is it, just like some of the stuff Jim Jarmusch has done.

Don't expect this move to make sense, just go with the flow; which could eventually mean to take a run ;-)

Imagine a parody of a French art film version of a spaghetti western built entirely out of oddly distorted cliches. Expect it to be every bit as incomprehensible as the stereotypical art film. Don't expect it to have a plot or anything close to a normal gag. If this still sounds interesting then you may enjoy it as much as I did, but I warn you that I'm the only person I know who doesn't think this movie is awful.

FYI - if you're wondering about the scenes where characters are described as being "Shikseh", the DVD commentary shows that this is how Cox and the actors thought the word "schizo" should be pronounced. I don't know, maybe it's a British thing, but I found it very confusing when I first watched the film.

I'd LOVE to be able to say that 'Straight To Hell' is one of the lost classics of the 80s but frankly, it's almost as bad as the mainstream critics make out. I say ALMOST, because it isn't an entire waste of time. Sy Richardson is as cool as ever, and the eclectic supporting cast (Cox semi-regulars like Sandoval, Berkeley, and Yeager, various musos and the king of weird movies, Dennis Hopper) make this worth watching for the "six degrees of separation" game alone.

Now look, I DO like Leone, and I like punk rock and I love Peckinpah, and I can sorta see what the other comments are saying about it almost prefiguring Tarantino, but there's one BIG problem - the lack of a decent script. For every good moment there four dull ones, and some funny lines or interesting characters wouldn't have gone astray.

So basically, if you watch this expecting the worst you'll enjoy it more than if you expect it to be as great as 'Repo Man'. I also would like to point out that Cox's next movie 'Walker' is a 100% improvement on this one, and almost IS a lost classic of the 80s!

Picked up the DVD of this for £4.49 and it's worth every penny. Not only is this film a better spoof of westerns than Silverado but it contains enough weird and wonderful characters to give Lynch a run for his money.

Firstly you have got the superb Sy Richardson as Norwood(Tarantinos inspiration for Samuel L's Pulp Fiction character?), Joe Strummer as Simms(RIP), and the 'runt' Dick Rude completing the main trio.

Also popping their heads round Alex Cox's casting room door are: Courtney Love(pregnant Velma), Fox Harris, Kathy Burke, Edward Tudor Pole, Dennis Hopper (IG Farben), Grace Jones, Jim Jarmusch, Miguel Sandoval(Eastwood impression), Xander Berkley(priest), Elvis Costello(butler) and the Pogues(Mcmahon coffee gang)...Superb!!

There is also the great setting of Almeira, the funny costumes, Pray For Rain music and the priceless dialogue(regional dilects etc). So stop criticising and just enjoy yourself in Cox country!!

This is, as the British might say, taking a p*ss. It's Alex Cox, a usually talented writer/director, taking a cast of rag-tag punk rockers and a capable crew to the Spanish location of an obscure 1973 Charles Bronson film, and going wild. I wish I could say it's an homage, but it might be an insult to the likes of Quentin Tarantino's far more lucid interpretations compared to this. This isn't homage, it's rip-off, like when a 2nd rate punk rock band covers the Who's Substitute for no reason except that it's the Who. And the sad thing is that there are glimmers of really funny, whacked-out humor. I'm sure there even was thought put into this circle-of-hell environment that the characters are in, but in the end it doesn't all gel.

Plot? Um... I guess all it is is a few criminals donned up in black suits and skinny ties take a suitcase of cash into the desert to hide out and await orders from their boss Mr. Dade. But the car breaks down, and they wind up in the weirdest town. When I mean weird, this is an understatement: there is no order to anything, not even to the group of gunslingers who ride into town every so often, get drunk off their asses and do sing-alongs to "Delilah" and "Danny Boy", or they shoot one another for the hell of it, or pick on the poor hot dog vendor. I guess that's it, and then uh, someone else dies, there's a funeral that's not real since the guy isn't dead, and uh, Dennis Hopper shows up too giving advice of "there's no two bosses, only one boss". Did I mention Jim Jarmusch shows up in the one truly funny cameo as Mr. Dade?

What is Straight to Hell? It certainly has nothing to do with the song by the Clash (I imagine that's not the only reason Joe Strummer was here- he lived in Spain for a while so maybe it was a free trip and time to hang out with the Pogues). It's more akin to Rob Zombie's the Devil's Rejects, where the purpose isn't so much to follow outlaws and killers in a plot but rather to hang out with them: this is their world, we're guests, and all be damned if we get caught up in the anarchy. And Cox like Zombie, or visa-versa, displays some true moments of brilliance in terms of outrageous button-pushing. Some of this is very funny. But it takes so long to get to some of these scenes; we see characters talk complete bulls*** in odd-for-the-sake-of-odd framing, and we see dynamics that have no reason or development. It's sad to see it as such as it is, which is what happens when writing is rushed such as this. I don't even blame the cast so much since they fill in their not-all-there roles to the best of their abilities.

It's an oddity that is not total fiasco or a surreal masterpiece none of us "get". It's a pretentious bummer with some fantastic photography sprinkled here and there and a few clever lines.

"Straight to Hell" follows a trio of criminals (with a female sidekick, making them a quad) who rob a suitcase full of cash and take off into the desert to go into hiding. Their car breaks down, leaving them stranded in the middle of a desert valley, where they find a seemingly abandoned ghost town. The next morning, however, a band of wild, murderous cowboys roll into town with guns, whiskey, and... espresso machines.

This utterly insane late '80s western romp pays homage to spaghetti westerns, Sergio Leone, and Clint Eastwood in equal measure, but drowned in such heavy idiosyncrasies and whacked out writing that the audience can do nothing but sit back and attempt to take it all in. In all truth, the writing here is completely underdeveloped, and the film feels like a melange of punk rockers and culture icons thrown in front of a camera in the Spanish desert—because that's kind of what it is.

Alex Cox, who infamously directed "Repo Man" and "Sid & Nancy," is the director and co-writer here, and while the script is delightfully absurd and full of issues (it has been said that Cox and his co-writer came up with it in a matter of three days), the direction is decent, and the film seems to rise above its production values on a visual level. It utilizes the western ghost town sets in Almeria, Spain, which were historically used in many spaghetti westerns, and even some Eastwood films, and the dusty desert atmosphere is laid on thick.

The real attraction of this film is its cast, largely made up of musicians—we've got Joe Strummer, Sy Richardson, and Dick Rude as the three bandidos, with a pre-Hole, pre-rhinoplasty Courtney Love playing their screeching yet somehow endearing pregnant sidekick. Rounding out the cast is The Pogues, Xander Berkeley, Elvis Costello, an insouciant Grace Jones, and Dennis Hopper, mad as a hatter. The film really seems like an excuse for this ensemble of punk rockers, rejects, and icons to run around the desert dancing, shooting each other, and drinking coffee, and that's just the pretense one has to accept with this film.

All in all, "Straight to Hell" will be a chore for many to sit through, but for anyone who appreciates bizarre cinema, spaghetti westerns, or exploitation trash will have a great time with this film (watching it through, one can see the referential moulds which Quentin Tarantino would come to bring into the cultural lexicon several years later). The narrative is almost completely nonsensical, but the visuals, paired with what is probably one of the weirdest casts in film history, really make this not only a time capsule, but a complete and utter anomaly. 7/10.

Apparently this film was made because a bunch of musicians realised that it would be more profitable to make a film than to hold a big tour. I'm not a fan of any of the artists in this film; but to be honest, I'd rather them have done the show - because at least then I wouldn't have had to suffer it! Quite what this film is supposed to be is anyone's guess - the humour isn't funny, and the Leone spoofs aren't very well worked. The violence isn't shocking and the story isn't interesting - so what's the point? It's a shame really because the idea of a bunch of punks getting together and making a film has 'cult' written all over it, but unfortunately this lot couldn't deliver something worthy of the name. There's barely anything good I can say about this movie - not even the desert setting looks nice. There's a small role for Dennis Hopper, which is always nice; but the rest of the performers are all pretty dire. It would seem that the cast and crew thought that their mere presence would lead to a good film so the story isn't important. They were wrong, Straight to Hell is a sprawling, boring mess of a film and it's one that I don't recommend sitting through.

The price of man's obsessions are a trip Straight to Hell (in a rented red import no less). There is no nuance in this movie, just blood, money, coffee, guns and sexual tension. There is a pregnant demon named Velma and a Christ figure named Karl. All but two of the characters in the movie are hardly characters at all, just expressions of lust and obsession. Conveniently they are all played by non-actors (Musicians that couldn't get the backing to do a concert in Nicaragua in '87). Dennis Hopper plays what is essentially Mephistophilis calling all the players home to hell. Sy Richardson's Norwood is the only character who is not ruled by his obsessions. In this morality play that is what separates his fate from everyone else's. An important commentary on our modern world. Or maybe it was just all that mescaline.

Seriously folks cut Alex some slack. The picture is beautifully filmed. The people who can't act are given one dimensional roles which is highly preferable to giving someone that has no acting ability a role with weight and importance (Daryl Hannah in Wall Street, Keanu Reeves in Much Ado About Nothing). It's got a fantastic soundtrack and Karl doing the Weiner Dog Song is one of the funniest things ever. Really. Ever.

I hadn't watched any of Cox's films prior to this one, but had always appreciated his knowledgeable input on the DVD of many a cult item (most recently several "Masters Of Cinema" titles).

Well, this turned out to be a major disappointment – considering its Spaghetti Western references (of which Cox is a devotee and, indeed, the end credits include a special mention to, among others, Giulio Questi – director of DJANGO, KILL! [1967]) and the cast made up of several rock performers (who, apparently, had been convened together for a concert which never materialized!); though I knew beforehand that Leonard Maltin had rated it a BOMB in his Film Guide, so I guess I only have myself to blame!

Anyway, the film is a test to anyone's patience with its gallery of utterly dislikeable characters (a rather plump Courtney Love being especially irritating – a far cry from her subsequent appearance, in both senses of the word, in Milos Forman's THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT [1996]!), hopelessly amateurish presentation and the inane attempts at genre spoofing…though, to its credit, the soundtrack is pretty good (which was to be expected, after all). Also featured in the cast are Dennis Hopper, whose one scene barely registers, and director Jim Jarmusch (turning up in front of the camera towards the end) as a baddie!

This movie is kinda funny when you watch it sober. It is much better when you are drunk. Me and my buddies came up with a few drinking games for this movie. Our favorite is to take a shot of whatever we are drinking whenever Courtney Love whines. You will be really drunk in about 20 minutes. The Weiner-Guy Song is also a wonderful scene when you and your buddies know all of the words and are wasted, singing along, loudly. You should really buy this movie and try it.

Well, i find it difficult to enjoy a film where nothing makes sense! In fact all of it is utter nonsense! I know that there are a lot of films out there which are nonsense and yet are brilliant films, Straight To Hell doesn't quite make it. The film starts abruptly and jumps straight into a complicated sequence of events that lead them to hell. I found it very difficult to understand what was happening, and i resorted to reading the blurb on the back of the DVD box to follow the storyline. While watching you find yourself shouting at the screen "What the hell is going on?!" It is absolutely awful, stupid and makes no sense, and most of the characters are impossible to like and annoying. All in all, it is a terrible film.

There are several other people out there who liked this movie. In fact, I went so far as to buy the movie and the soundtrack. Anyone who likes the Pogues should put this on their must see list. If you want to see a movie full of shoot-em-ups, car chases for no reason and lots of dialogue that will make you say to yourself, "Did he say what I think he said?" then turn your brain off for an evening and watch this.

Filmmaker Alex Cox followed up his previous efforts "Repo Man" and "Sid & Nancy" with this deliberately stylized and off-the-wall ode to Spaghetti Westerns. Sy Richardson, Joe Strummer, and Dick Rude (the last having co-written this with Cox) play an inept trio of hitmen who bungle a job, take it on the lam, rob a bank for some quick cash, and make it to a tiny desert town. There they hope to hide until the heat from their botched assignment dies down, and until they have a prime moment to retrieve the money, which they've hidden outside the town.

Overall, "Straight to Hell" is lacking in the wit and spirit that marked "Repo Man", instead resorting to random bits of oddness, with a generous array of loud & flamboyant characters who often don't care WHO they shoot. This results in a true bloodbath of a finale, which will undoubtedly turn off some viewers. The movie is at the least not boring, and was of some interest for this viewer due to its extremely eclectic cast, which is full to the brim with stars of the music industry. There are also cameos for the likes of Dennis Hopper and Jim Jarmusch (both seen much too briefly). A young Courtney Love (22 at the time) is overly shrill as the protagonists' pregnant female tag-along; Xander Berkeley has a small role, and Fox Harris is a hoot as a REALLY cheesy singer.

Given an appropriate score & assortment of songs by The Pogues and Pray for Rain, "Straight to Hell" is mildly amusing as far as it goes. It really does attempt to get all the mileage it can out of its cast. Strummer (from The Clash) and Richardson are simply too cool for words.

Filmed in Almeria, Spain, where a great many of the Spaghetti Westerns of the 60s and 70s were also shot. The whole thing really does have the feel of an in-joke, except that it's not really that funny (for one thing, actor Biff Yeager plays a guy named Frank and actor Frank Murray plays a guy named Biff). At best, it produces modest chuckles, but not consistently enough.

Six out of 10.

This movie has at least one enjoyable scene, but it comes 45% of the way through the movie. By that time, you've invested significant time and attention, but you're still not close enough to the end to just grit your teeth and keep on slogging.

While a few of the actors turn in very good performances (particularly Sy Richardson, Sandoval, Hopper), the majority of them are about like you'd expect...musicians forced to perform in an unfamiliar genre.

If you're looking for good parody, this isn't it. Spaghetti westerns and Leone are beyond parody.

Several reviewers have stated that this film will be of interest to those who enjoy "Repo Man". Where this idea came from, I have no idea. A few of the themes are somewhat similar, but the scripts, acting, plot, intelligence, and humor are light-years apart.

Finally, could someone explain to me how this film was R-rated? The special effects (gunshots, violence, etc.) are not only amateurish, they are not at all graphic or explicit. There are a few sexual situations, but I don't remember a bit of actual nudity. There's not even any significant profanity.

Overall, this film is a big disappointment and, frankly, a waste of time.

On the other hand, after watching and listening to Courtney Love, I have a bit more sympathy for Kurt Cobain.

This apparently (I say apparently because I honestly have no idea why this film was released, let alone made) was an attempt at a spoof of spaghetti westerns, something like Blazing Saddles, albeit with no discernible gags and no discernible plot. It looks like something you would get if you took a bunch of indie actors and post-punk musicians to a holiday resort, got them drunk, then asked them to improvise a series of disconnected sketches based around spaghetti westerns with "they're all addicted to coffee, ha ha ha" as the only direction given. Which for all I know, is probably exactly what happened. The cast at least look like they had a good time of the "Look at me I'm in a film" ilk. It is very much like watching amateur video of a private party, and about as much fun for the audience. I am a huge fan of the Clash and the Pogues and Jim Jarmusch, and this is truly an amazing cast, but a cast does not make a movie. I must admit, though, that it was fascinating to see Courtney Love of all people being plucked from obscurity years before she became famous and put into a leading role in this film, despite looking even more hideous in her youth than in middle age. Although she was even less talented an actress than she was a musician or stripper, for me the only laugh in this chode of a film came unintentionally, when one of the characters says, referring to Courtney Love: "You have a beautiful wife." The cast, and the excellent Pogues theme song "Rake at the Gates of Hell" were the only things I enjoyed about this movie, and are the only reason I'm not giving this a minimum score. The one good thing about this movie's release is that it killed the talentless Alex Cox's directorial career.

I saw this twice during its too brief(one week!)run in Seattle in 1987 and i was always showing it to people later on video who thought i was INSANE, which may or may not be beside the point, but this is one of THOSE movies, like Big Trouble in Little China, that can inform you about someones personal sense of humor and taste. Either you get it or you don't. I think this movie is some kind of psychopathic classic that perfectly sends up the extreme amorality of the spaghetti westerns and prefigures the homicidal men in black suits later to turn up in Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. And few films can top it for sheer nihilistic rip-it-apart glee. I am glad it is finally being seen on DVD in its original aspect ratio, because in the theaters it had very carefully staged WIDE-SCREEN compositions which were lost on video. The cast is uniformly weird and wonderful: Sy Richardson, channeling pure self-righteous macho bad-assness, Joe Strummer, showing a surprisingly light touch for comedy, Dick Rude,hilariously channeling a psycho-punk James Cagney,Courtney Love gives a truly committed performance as a shrill whiny Nancy Spungen caricature, the Pogues almost manage to say their dialog, Elvis Costello doesn't have much dialog but acquits himself well. I could go on and on about the rest of the cast, and there's plenty of them still to mention, including and especially MIGUEL SANDOVER, who does the greatest Clint Eastwood send-up i have ever had the pleasure of watching.

Watch this film ...you'll either get it...or you won't. I laughed like hell.

I love all Spaghetti Westerns, 'The Pogues' and 'The Clash' but not a big fan of Alex Cox as a movie maker. He is a great critique of Italian Exploitation and despite the wonderful cast and the promise of great fun hardly, if any of it translates over to the audience. The film poster pictured here and featuring the great Joe Strummer is 10 out of 10 (Joe never changed out of the suit the enitire shoot) but the movie kinda sucked. Go to hell.

Cox doesn't go for the obvious jokes in this bizarre send-up of the spaghetti Western, Peckinpah-esque genre. I believe it's just incredibly funny even if you don't know who the players are. In any case, what's appealing to me is the over-the-top visuals and violence while the jokes regarding the idiom itself aren't the usual "stinking badges" or eyes looking around ones. Instead Cox has fun with the strange aggressive sexual tension of the idiom and the amorality it tried to represent.

OK, so I usually don't do this, but I felt compelled after watching this film to ward off other viewers who might be interested. I am a lover of bad movies and trash flicks. Troll 2 was hysterical, Showgirls is on my top 20 favorites, and there will always be a special place in my heart for Ray Dennis Steckler (far more deserving than Ed Wood of worst/underrated director). All that said, Straight to Hell sucks. And not in a "so bad its funny" or in any cool cult way (yes Grace Jones, Joe Strummer, Dennis Hopper, The Pogues, and Dennis Hopper are in it). It's boring. Like really boring, and not in an interesting Andy Warhol/European art film way. The plot of a bunch of bungling bandits who encounter a small town controlled by the Pogues that leads to a bloody showdown is muddled by, well, its hard to say. The director's films aren't bad, Walker is totally underrated (oh and do not believe for an instant anyone who states "if you like Repo Man, you'll like this". You won't.)The cast isn't really that terrible either. In fact the bad acting might of worked for the film. Even Courtney Love who gets a lot of sh*t for her obnoxious whiny role might have been mildly entertaining (though there is a lot stacked up against her outside this film I guess to warrant contempt). The setting is well realized (easy, a desert sh*thole). The problem is the execution of the script, if there was one. One does get the feeling this was just a big excuse for some hipster party, and we, the outsider audience, are left with the consequences. But there is no build up in tension, character interactions are proved meaningless or are not developed by the films end, there is a lot of standing around talking about coffee, Elvis, sex, and other pseudo-pretentious whatever, which is fine and dandy except it amounts to squat. Characters come and go, and unless you're REALLY paying attention, you'll get an explanation. And the purposeful jokes fall flat due to the bad execution of timing. The film drags. Even Dennis Hopper's cameo is deadened by the supposed rivalry between the two gangs (and the fact his weapons are useless, another unfunny joke). Oddly enough, the film might of fared better if it focused more on Grace Jones and Hopper, as their (very) brief appearance usually gets credited as the best part in the film. I'm being as honest as I possibly can be, this is an awful movie. If you want bizzarro convoluted Western weirdness, watch Alejandro Jodorwsky> If you want a cameo filled punk film filled with dated pretension, watch Jubilee. Hell, re-watch a movie you really really love instead. Let this film be forgotten. Really.

Even though I am a huge Alex Cox fan, I still had a large problem with even finding this gem. It is definitely one of the most crazy, funny, and unpredictable films ever made. I kept thinking that if David Lynch had directed THE WILD BUNCH you would have STRAIGHT TO HELL. It is chock full of a rogues gallery of unique and unforgettable characters. Basically a group of renegade criminals flee to a little dump town in the middle of nowhere to hide out for a while. The result is chaos and more chaos as they try to escape the hell they've found. Don't expect any traditional Hollywood storyline or plot here. Just sit back and enjoy the ride. And you might just realize that Quentin Tarantino wasn't that revolutionary after all.

P.S. > Norwood is the man!

I can't believe that this movie came AFTER Sid and Nancy. I can't believe that it is from the same director. You know, Chloe Webb wailed a lot as Nancy in Sid and Nancy- but it was a great role, in an even greater movie. Here- a chubby Courtney Love, screams and wails her every line- sounding freakishly like Nancy on Acid. Very grating. Horrible movie- was there a plot? Awful editing. Just all around bad.

Easily the worst film I've ever seen. Which is really, really odd since Repo Man and Sid N Nancy (Alex Cox's other films) are some of the best films ever made. This should have been the 1980's version of Blazing Saddles, but it's really just horrible. Unwatchably bad. I can only explain its high vote average with the notion that only hardcore fans have bothered to vote for it. I recommend it only to film students who want to see how one really bad film can completely destroy your career.