Repo Man is by far one of the most oddball movies that Emilio Estevez has ever been in. The whole story fixates on a car that has something in the trunk that vaporizes people and is giving off so much radiation by the time the film is nearly over that just approaching it will make people burst in to flames. Otto, who’s had a serious run of bad luck after losing his job, his girlfriend, and the money that his parents were supposed to be giving him, takes up the role of a repo man and eventually runs across this same car.
This is a very strange, yet compelling movie.
10. It didn’t take any special effects to make the Chevy Malibu glow.
The car was covered with 3M reflective paint that cost about $600 per bucket. Hopefully it only took one to two buckets to cover it al.
9. The picture that Leila shows Otto is just two water-filled condoms wearing grass skirts.
I suppose from a distance or with enough blurring of the image that it could resemble aliens in some obscure way.
8. The Malibu was stolen during filming.
This was a disaster because they only had the one car for the movie. They had to scramble and find another Chevy Malibu and by the time they started shooting again the first car was found.
7. Dennis Hopper was considered for the role of Bud.
He was considered for the part but never cast since this was filmed during a very dark point in his life when he was entirely unpredictable and not quite as reliable.
6. The cybernetic arm was really just a glove made from metallic-colored cloth.
The agent was supposed to have a cybernetic arm but the special effects budget wasn’t all that great for this film so they were reduced to the bare minimum when it came to giving the agent a metal hand.
5. A lot of the food items in the movie were made generic on purpose.
This was a bit of satire on the part of the film makers to show just how sluggish the 80’s economy was and how generic foods had kind of taken over.
4. Harry Dean Stanton didn’t get a lot of leeway for what he wanted to do in the film.
Suggestions he made were often dismissed, his use of a real bat almost got him into trouble when he was so adamant during a scene in which his character was fending off a gang, and small things that he thought were important were often not even considered for the film.
3. There was an alternate ending that never got filmed.
It showed Otto joining up with a band of revolutionaries in South America, though to be honest it doesn’t seem like it would have made a lot of sense.
2. Stanton almost got written out of the script.
He and the director were constantly getting on one another’s nerves.
1. Emilio Estevez apparently liked parading around in his underwear.
Obviously he wasn’t the shy type on set. I kind of wonder if this was just his personality or if something else was going on.
Like I said, this seems like a very odd movie.
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