(re)search my Trash

<body> <div align="left"> <table border="0" cellspacing="0" width="800" cellpadding="0" height="100%"> <tr> <td width="100" rowspan="3" background="../stylepix/square.gif" valign="top">  </td> <td width="4" rowspan="3"></td> <td width="592" height="1%" valign="top">  </td> <td width="4" rowspan="3"></td> <td width="100" rowspan="3" background="../stylepix/squareright.gif" valign="top">  </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="592" valign="top" height="99%">    <p>Somehow, a quartet of incompetent gangsters - boss Norwood (Sy Richardson), his pregnant moll Velma (Courtney Love), Willy (Dick Rude) and Sims (Joe Strummer) - manage to pull of a heist, but getting away through the Mexican desert, their car breaks down, so they bury the money and hit a village in the middle of nowhere, where they rather by accident pick the right side in a gunfioght ... and are suddenly made the guests of honour by the village's crooked leader Frank (Biff Yeager).<p>At first, everything in this little town seems to be just like one big party, even if the villagers all seem a little on edge because they are totally hooked on coffee, and they might also seem a bit quick in drawing their guns. Then though the townfolks also learn about the buried money, and they try one trick after another to make our four heroes tell its location - without success though, but things do get a little worrysome ... until one I.G.Farben (Dennis Hopper) stops by with his bodyguard Sonya (Grace Jones), and since Farben runs an urban renewal project, he is very much interested in the town blowing itself up and to that end leaves Norwood and company with a suitcase full of automatic weapons.<p>The big shootout does finally begin when Dade (Jim Jarmusch), the boss of Norwood and company whom they tried to escape, shows up, sides with Frank and the villagers - and just like Farben planned, everything soon goes up in flames, most of the villagers are mowed down by machinegun fire, and several of them use the occasion to get even with each other too.<p>Sims and Willy, though severely wounded, make it to the location the money is hidden and dig it up ... only to then shoot it out with each other, and ultimately being shot by Frank, who has in the meantime teamed up with Velma. But when the two make an escape with the money, they have to realize their car has no breaks and ... well, they crash.<p>Norwood is among the few who survives the ordeal, and he teams up with a gang of amazons to take the war to somewhere else ... but on the way there, their car breaks down, pretty much at the same spot the car of Norwood and gang has broken down at the beginning of the movie.<p>   <p>Probably my synopsis of <b>Straight to Hell</b> doesn't sound like much, but that is because the story of the film takes backseat to pretty much everything else - to the film's advantage, actually. <p><b>Straight to Hell</b> is the punkrock version of a spaghetti Western, an over-the-top comedy with an extremely high body count, an action movie held together by its bizarre elements, the funniest shootout ever ... and all of this is just beginning to describe a movie as mad as <b>Straight to Hell</b>. It's a film in which characters can be found spontaneously breaking out into songs, shootings or philosophical dialogues, and in the context, all of this makes sense, in which screen violence turns into silent movie-style slapstick just like that, in which a silly genre parody can turn into intelligent commentary and vice versa. Maybe this is the film to end all parodies, without actually being a parody movie. But above all, this film is just lots and lots of fun, and without ever becoming just plain stupid.<p>Highest recommendation. <p>  </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="592" valign="top" height="1%">  <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript"> currentyear = "2008"; </SCRIPT> <SCRIPT language="JavaScript" src="../scripts/endcredits.js"></SCRIPT> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript"> dosworsdonn(); </SCRIPT> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </body>