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