I said, back when we drunk-watched Cats, that I wanted to tipsy-rewatch Repo! and discuss it on here, and last night we did, in fact, tipsy-rewatch, so here we are discussing. With a lot of images, just fyi.
I’m just going to come out and say it. At this point in my life I can honestly say that Repo! The Genetic Opera is one of my favorite movies. Not one of my favorite weird movies, or favorite bad movies, just one of my favorite movies. It’s super weird, yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s not. It’s actually really well done, in my opinion, and interesting, and unique, and I’m just gonna say it, the soundtrack slaps. I was saying last night that if I was going to make a Tik Tok account, the only purpose would be to lip-sync to the entire Repo! soundtrack in order, in perfect detail. I would do that, then never make another Tik Tok. I’m not actually going to do that because I have no desire to make a Tik Tok account, but just know that the world is forever going to be deprived of my fucking stellar one-girl rendition of “Everyone’s a Composer” and that’s a fucking shame.
Anyway, I unironically love this movie and so does drift partner. When I first heard about it, way back when, I couldn’t make heads or tails of what was going on. QPS got to see one of the first screenings in New York and I was intensely jealous, and I made sure — god this sentence ages me — to go to the Blockbuster Video near my college campus the day it was released on DVD to purchase it. That semester at college, my friends and I watched it at least five times, usually while dressed up in weird outfits pulled from our lingerie drawers and my costume box; I ended up being Blind Mag for Halloween that year, and my cosmic twin was Shilo (telling, perhaps, that about 80% of that costume was just pulled from my own closet at the time; I was not and have never been fully Goth, that would take too much energy and I like colors too much, but I have pieces here and there). In following years I made it my mission to show this movie to as many people as possible, largely because no one in my life knew what it was unless I brought it up and I thought that was a shame. Cosmic twin and I went to a shadowcast one time (the Portland one) and it was great, although since there’s less of a specific script for audience participation than there is for Rocky Horror the audience shouting was largely this one guy in the back shouting incest jokes and that was kind of odd. Drift partner and I have watched it every Halloween season we’ve spent together, not to mention whenever else we feel like it. But I didn’t actually come to think of it as a Favorite Movie until recently. I think because it’s so weird and so niche and so whatever I was like “ah yes, this wonderful guilty pleasure.” But it’s not. I’m not guilty about the pleasure this movie brings me at all, actually. So I’m saying it: Repo! The Genetic Opera is a good movie and I’m not looking to fight anyone about it.
Full story here.