'Straight to Hell' (1986), featuring Elvis

Pretty self-explanatory
johnfoyle
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Re: 'Straight to Hell' (1986), featuring Elvis

Post by johnfoyle »

June 1 - June 11, 2012
The Anarchic Imagination of Alex Cox

http://www.jaysmovieblog.com/2012/06/ne ... ng_07.html


The Harvard Film Archive has the second half of The Anarchic Imagination of Alex Cox, with Cox on-hand for the Friday and Saturday shows - Straight to Hell Returns (a modern pastiche of spaghetti westerns featuring Elvis Costello, Courtney Love, Dennis Hopper, Joe Strummer and more) and Searchers 2.0 (in which two actors seek revenge on a writer). His Three Businessmen plays Sunday night, alongside his student film "Edge City", while there's a second screening of Highway Patrolman on Monday.

http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2012aprjun/cox.html
johnfoyle
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Re: 'Straight to Hell' (1986), featuring Elvis

Post by johnfoyle »

I was at a Ancient Music Of Ireland show last night. Part of it was a playing on harp , by Siobhan Armstrong, of a Counsellor McDonagh's Lamentation by Turlough Carolan.

Here's a piano version of it


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EFp8c6O9AI


I kept thinking I know that tune or wondered where else I'd heard it etc.

Then it hit me - it's just about the same as this -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCt1bJgOsk0

The MacManus Gang - Big Nothing , from The Straight To Hell soundtrack

Does anyone else hear it?

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... ig_Nothing
Last edited by johnfoyle on Sat Aug 24, 2013 6:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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John
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Re: 'Straight to Hell' (1986), featuring Elvis

Post by John »

They are definitely similar John - you are not going Elvis mad!
johnfoyle
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Re: 'Straight to Hell' (1986), featuring Elvis

Post by johnfoyle »

Going Elvis mad? Too late - I'm already that!
johnfoyle
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Re: 'Straight to Hell' (1986), featuring Elvis

Post by johnfoyle »

I inflicted my query on Ms Armstrong -

http://www.siobhanarmstrong.com/

She comments -


I hear a few similar motives all right but it also sounds quite different in places, to me.



She has recorded the tune on this album -


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lord-Gallaways- ... B00AJ6GCSE
johnfoyle
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Re: 'Straight to Hell' (1986), featuring Elvis

Post by johnfoyle »

I happened on my copy of the DVD of Straight To Hell , the film from 1986/7 that Elvis appears in as Hives The Butler. I've only recently figured out how to do screenshots so here are few random images. When I get time I'll go through it and make a more comprehensive selection.

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emotional_fascism076
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Re: 'Straight to Hell' (1986), featuring Elvis

Post by emotional_fascism076 »

I haven't watched this one in a while but it is a fun movie. I have to dig it out now.
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sweetest punch
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Re: 'Straight to Hell' (1986), featuring Elvis

Post by sweetest punch »

http://www.undertheradarmag.com/reviews ... al_edition

Straight to Hell [Director’s Cut Special Edition]

Following the knockout one-two punch of his first two films, Repo Man and Sid and Nancy, Alex Cox was one of the most promising filmmakers on the independent scene. He had channeled some of this hard-earned cache into organizing a punk rock concert tour across Nicaragua featuring artists such as The Clash, Pogues, and Elvis Costello in support of the Sandanista rebels. In the end, funding never came together but Cox still had the touring time committed by all of these high-profile musicians; instead of a tour, he decided to shoot a movie featuring many of them in starring roles. He and actor-writer Dick Rude bashed out a script in short order, gathered a few of their regular collaborators, and zipped off to Spain to shoot this surreal, 1987 pastiche to Spaghetti Westerns.

Three inept hitmen (Rude, Sy Richardson, and The Clash’s Joe Strummer) botch a job for a dangerous mob boss, and so they quickly knock over a bank and hightail it into the desert with a pregnant girlfriend (a pre-Hole Courtney Love) in tow. They find themselves in a burned-out ghost town occupied by a band of bandit coffee addicts (played by members and roadies from The Pogues.) This is where the movie’s story more or less ends and is replaced by a series of increasingly weird and violent vignettes.

It’s hard to point at any one scene which exemplifies Straight to Hell’s bizarreness, but one strange moment of song comes to mind. At one bandit gathering, they force their abused hot dog vendor – who’s beaten and insulted through the entire movie – to sing a catchy jingle for “disco weenies.” The entire cast eventually sings along, seeming to be genuinely moved by the song’s silly lyrics about salsa and ketchup, and getting up to dance. (The poor hot dog vendor continues to be beaten throughout.)

Aside from rock luminaries like Strummer, Love, and Shane MacGowan, the film also features cameos from Elvis Costello (who gets slapped around a bit, and not much else), Dennis Hopper (as the ghost of an oil executive), Grace Jones, and Jim Jarmusch. The movie fell flat on its face in its initial release – the first in a string of flops which torpedoed Cox’s shot at a traditional Hollywood filmmaking career – but plays quite a bit better three decades later. Viewed purely as a bunch of cult rock stars making a nutso Western while on Spanish holiday, it’s easier to appreciate the movie’s surreal highlights and overlook the gags which land with a thud.

Kino Lorber Studio Classics’ new edition presents the lengthened director’s cut in 2K restoration. Extra features include a feature-length commentary by Cox, archival tours of the shooting locations, and a retrospective Making Of documentary filmed by Cox himself in the early 2000s.

Image
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Hawksmoor
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Re: 'Straight to Hell' (1986), featuring Elvis

Post by Hawksmoor »

Inspired/reminded by this thread, and with vague memories of having seen this (back in the early 90s?) I decided to give it a try. Wow. It is utterly hopeless, clearly unplanned and make-it-up-as-we-go-along, and everyone's drunk. But it's loads of fun. Drink enough tequila and you'll have a great evening with this film, although perhaps not one you'll want to repeat any time soon.
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