“Introducing the New 2010 Chevrolet Chernobyl with optional power windows, power locks, and death ray emitting trunk.”

This weekend, while working on my Camaro behind the old toolshed & trailer, I busted a fan bracket off the engine block. There’s no nearby Autozone or NAPA dealer, and it was after 5 on Sunday. Luckily, Joe Don’s Salvage Yard is just a hop, skip, and a drunk stumble down the road, and I can always count on Big Joe to still be up watching “Law and Order” re-runs at his front office desk, mostly to avoid his old lady. The man refuses to get cable, and uses an old black and white TV with rabbit ears wrapped in tin foil. Usually I try to sweeten the deal with something deep fried as a gift for Joe. He’s much more willing to help me scrounge around the lot if his veins are immediately filled with salt and nitrates. However, this time I had nothing with me, not even a piece of pocket-warmed beef jerky; I was going into a gun fight without a six-shooter and Joe knew it. He immediately became agitated, cursing and mumbling under his breath, fumbling with the TV antenna, and just waved me off in the general direction of where I might possibly find the fan bracket or get a painful staph infection–whichever came first.

I find the junkyard to actually be a very peaceful place to think and meditate, much like a cemetery… minus the possibility of a spontaneous zombie uprising, though I am well prepared for such a situation. Sure, I always get funny looks at funerals when I carry that machete around, but you can never be too careful. I like to show it to people in the procession and say things like “Yeah, you never know…we might need to bury him twice.”

After hours of dead ends I finally found what appeared to be a Camaro similar to mine, with a heck of a lot more rust. It was a bit hard to tell though, as most of it had been flattened like a PB&J in a kid’s lunch sack, but the engine was still intact, so with my trusty Allen wrench, I removed the fan bracket cautiously. I couldn’t help but imagine the scene of Indiana Jones removing the golden skull from the altar. Checking around for hostile natives, I made my way back and paid the fair price of $25 and the promise of a bucket of chicken for Joe when I came back. Who said you can’t put a price on adventure?

Speaking of pioneers in the salvage industry, Emilio Estavez plays Otto Maddox, a rebellious punk who enjoys head banging with friends and eating his dinner out of dog food cans. Ahh, the rebellious youth of the 80’s. These are the same guys that wore Wham shirts. Howard Dean Stanton plays Bud, a seasoned, disgruntled repo-master who enlists Otto to join his dojo of car jackers. The other beer-inspired repo staff are: “Lite”, a streetwise gun touter, and “Miller”, a hippie mechanic who tries to teach him the repo code of ethics, and hopefully convince him not to make “Mighty Ducks 2.” Taking a few too many head butts at the previous night’s rave, Otto feels a kinship to them and the life of the auto repossessor. Sure the hours stink, but you do get the benefits of getting shot at by enraged Mexican immigrants, or getting the snot kicked out of you by a Mowtown band with guitar cases.

Meanwhile, during all this grand larceny fun, a one-eyed self-lobotimizied scientist, J. Frank Parnell, is transporting glowing shrimp platter aliens in his car trunk across state lines. Besides breaking some food import laws, he’s also encouraging people to look in his trunk, which immediately vaporizes them, leaving behind only the fresh scent of pine. It’s his own Ark of the Covenant on wheels, minus the Nazi’s. J’s plan is to meet up with Leila, one of the few members of the official fan club of UFO’s who isn’t still living in their parents’ basement, and expose the world to the truth. Otto puts some of his smooth moves on her, and she gets Estevezed in the back seat of his car. How romantic, but she hopes the horizontal mambo will encourage Otto to help her find the scientist, so they can  book the intergalactic shrimp cargo on local talk shows.

A $20,000 bounty is put on the Malibu, and soon a secret G-team in rented suits, along with every repo and car theft ring in the county is out looking for it. The G-team is led by a cruel German dominatrix with a mean kung-fu grip robotic hand (do they charge extra for that?), and an unhealthy obsession to get those alien remains at any cost. Otto gets captured  and is tortured by Mrs. Roboto so that she can try to learn the whereabouts of the actual car, but Otto is rescued before his hair gets singed. He later encounters his ex-girlfriend, Debbie, a particularly nasty punk rocker who left Otto for his best pal at a mosh party, leaving him heart broken in his tighty whities. It’s your typical boy meets girl, boy catches syphilis kinda of love story.

Debbie is hooked on speed and sushi eating with her new boyfriend, Boni, when they run into Otto while they’re robbing a 7-11. Everyone has a gun pointing at someone else’s head, leading to a pretty frantic session of scratch and win tickets. Boni however, just wants to settle down, get married and have little spiked hair social deviants. But instead, he ends up getting a shotgun blast to the chest. Just an early preview of married life, my friend; count yourself lucky.

Any semblance of a plot was lost a long time ago, but no one really cares at this point. We meander the city streets at night in glowing cars, have spontaneous shootouts in hospital stairwells, torch street people, and listen to hippie mechanics spouting universal wisdoms about the cosmic order of consciousness and the lattice of coincidence. Gotta love Saturday nights in L.A.

Repoman is a definitive cult classic that gets even better upon repeated viewing. A special Roadside award goes to Emilio Estevez, whose role as Otto redefined the anarchist punk rocker, and Howard Dean Stanton, who fit his role as a crusty, seasoned car reposessor perfectly. If I saw either of these two guys near my car, I’d be getting nervous. Retroman says check it out, and be sure to order the all-you-can-eat sushi buffet.

- Obsessive air freshener collecting
- Generic food in a can
- Radioactive intergalactic calamari
- Devo radiation suits
- Mace to the face
- Rat tossing
- Coffee to the face
- Emilio Estevezing
- Mexican rockabilly Vegas lounge singers
- Levitating cars

Rated 9.3 out of 10

“Don’t fear the Repo…baby I’m your man…we’ll be able to fly now”… man, those lyrics ring so true now.

Check out the trailer for Repoman

The results are in… After receiving and reviewing the submissions it is time to announce the winners. It was very difficult to select three winners out of all the entries because everybody came up with a variety of solutions to Ben’s hypothetical situation that were funny, clever and very creative. We would like to give a big thank you to everyone who entered the contest. And congratulate those of you whose submissions were selected. Below are the winning entries. The original scenario has been re-posted for your convenience. Enjoy!

Scenario:

After a hard day’s work at Fright Rags, Ben has just drifted off into a very sound REM sleep when all of a sudden he’s jolted awake by loud noises that sound like they’re coming from the storage area where the all the printed shirts are stored. Ben immediately springs out of bed, grabs a baseball bat, and cautiously goes to investigate the disturbance. As he makes his way toward the room, the strange sounds are getting even louder. When he reaches the storage area, an eerie blue light can be seen from underneath the door. Those unrecognizable noises now appear to be a series of growls and tortured groans, like something from a horror movie. Ben’s heart is really pounding now. He pauses for a few seconds to collect himself and then, after gathering up enough courage, he begins to slowly turn the door knob. Upon opening the door, Ben sees a truly shocking sight: all the characters from his printed T-shirts have somehow come to life. So, what do you think Ben should do?

Kim Smith

Thinking quickly and knowing he is highly outnumbered; Ben lobs his baseball bat at the throng of creatures. He misses them all, instead hitting a large, 80s style boom-box. Static crackles and the CD begins to play Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” The characters are amused by the irony of the situation and start dancing to the beat. Ben shrugs his shoulders. “If you can’t beat them, join them,” he thinks, falling into step. Ben and his new-found friends dance well into the night. That is, until a new song begins and the monsters turn on their creator.

Ben’s screams of terror cannot be heard over the wailing tones of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.”

Jason Crampton

“Holy Crap,” Ben says. “I should have made more shirts with good guys on them.” With all the chaos happening in the room, nobody seems to have taken notice of him just yet. Zombies fighting Jack Torrance fighting the Wolfman fighting The Thing fighting Ash—wait, “Ash!” Ben hopefully calls out.

Ash looks up from chainsawing the head off of a giant shark that was thrashing about in the corner, just in time to catch a pick axe to the face from Harry Warden. “Oops,” Ben mutters, and slowly lets his baseball bat slip from his fingers to clatter loudly on the floor. He has now gathered the attention of more than a dozen horrible monsters, and as they slowly inch closer to him, he can only think that Ash may have been his only hope. But then he hears the unmistakable sound of the M41 Assault Rifle from Aliens. “Bill Paxton!” Ben remembers. “I mean, Pvt. Hudson!” “Game over man!” Hudson yells as Cujo is mauling him.

“Game over!”

“Oh, right. Great.” Ben scans the room for anyone else who might be able to help him. No sign of the Brothers Frog, but then again, they were like twelve years old or something. Ben feels bad for dragging them into this mess. As Ben starts to accept his now inevitable fate, he can only hope that it will be quick, and not a slowly eaten kind of death. The unstoppable Jason Voorhees is at the head of the pack, and Ben starts to think a well placed machete to the brain might not be a bad way to go. Then he hears a chainsaw, and assumes it must be Leatherface. Wait. He thinks, I haven’t made a Leatherface shirt! Then, the blade of a chainsaw bursts from Voorhees’s chest, and he is tossed aside, to reveal a bloodied Ash. “Thank God I made two of you!” Ash gives him a quizzical look.

“Come again?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ben says. “Let’s just get out of here.” Ash carves a path to the door, and they quickly shut it behind them. Ben trips on a severed arm that made it through the door. He falls, but when he lands, he’s not on the floor. He’s in his bed. A dream! He is relieved, but also a little disappointed that Ash isn’t in his house. He decides to prepare for the future, and heads straight to the drawing board to create even more Ash shirts. An Army of Ash’s!

Jim Tomarchio

Ben bursts into the room and proclaims “NOT TODAY!” He then rushes towards the various horror characters who are now growling, snarling, and poised to attack him. Ben started to flail his baseball bat at the monsters and other various creatures in an insane and violent manner then very quickly stopped. He realized they were not attacking him, nor doing any damage to his AMAZING printed shirts. Ben blurted out “What are you doing here!?” The monsters then turned and pointed. Simultaneously they roared… “BEER!”

Ten minutes later, Ben and his horde of horrific creature friends were all seated around a table laughing and cracking jokes on each other. The characters from his shirts had to go back to the stellar shirts from which they came and with them they took beer, new jokes and a box of fabric softener.