Repo Jake (1990)

Tagline:

Jake was ready to lead a quiet life... but things just keep hotting up.

Back of DVD:

Jake Baxter takes a job as a repo-man with hopes of living the quiet life. Plans go sour when he's whipped into supersonic action involving a vicious crime lord, a mob of angry car owners, a sadistic porno ring and lastly a brutal, illegal and very lethal car race known throughout L.A.'s underworld as the "Slam Track".

Movie Review:

Dan Haggerty (famous for being Grizzly Adams) stars in this earlier production from PM Entertainment and it's a seriously mixed bag. It starts off brilliantly. Jake is this loveable, huggable lumberjack type who is moving to LA to earn the big bucks as a repo man. Swinging harmonica blues plays in the background as Jake shuffles off his coach and walks down the street carrying a portable TV. He's such a nice guy he pays the first busker he sees. Right in front of him a woman is mugged by some thug and Jake is immediately to the rescue, catching the guy and throwing him through the window of a pizza shop multiple times. This heroic display pleases the woman, Jenny (Dana Bentley), who suggests Jake rents a room in the same building she is in. His landlord looks like Elvira in a wedding dress.

So Jake starts his job repossessing cars and we meet the most cliched team you could possibly find in 1990. You get the tall guy with long blonde hair - called Blondie I might add - that looks like Dave Mustaine from Megadeth, the wiry old man that's been in the job since ought six, the accountant-type of guy that's never managed to successfully repossess a single car, the "ethnic" guy with a heavy New York Italian accent they refer to as a spick and the morbidly obese black guy that writes impromptu rap songs. They all work for an irritable guy called Bulldog. I'm not making this shit up.

Jake goes on many repo jobs and they all end in various "hilarious" ways. The first one he gets chased by the owner and pinned to the windscreen while the car does donuts. Hysterical! The next one he uses his past military training (I forgot to mention, he's an ex marine! This guy that could push a tree down, an ex marine!) to repossess a helicopter which he can't fly properly and the owner hangs onto the side of when in mid air. Amazing! He goes after a car at night owned by a huge ex-con type who he calls Tiny and get's thrashed around the parking lot, until Jake grabs him by the balls and won't let go. Side-splitting comedy! All the while the worst, absolute worst, Casio keyboard demo music is playing.

There are some serious random scenes in this, but none more so than the scene where Jake goes back to his apartment, switches on his black and white TV and watches some cowboy movie while drinking soup and eating half a loaf of bread. This goes on for a minute. THAT'S IT. It went absolutely nowhere! Jake and his new neighbour Jenny also try developing a romantic relationship which is so funny to watch, especially when during a reading for a play she is auditioning for - again, I'm not making this up - she leans in and kisses his walrus face. I burst out laughing. I'm sure bearded guys need love too but man did it make me laugh.

Ultimately Jake gets involved in a derby race by one of his colleagues who has a muscle car that "can't lose". They even managed to make the race scenes tiresome unfortunately, and it gets worse when the local pimp puts a 50K bet on Jake to win and uses his new girlfriend Jenny as collateral. The pimp has a sidekick that has the best flattop hair I've ever seen though.

There are also boobs. Not only do we get to watch Jake try to repossess cars, but we see some of his colleagues too. One of them falls for the old "maybe we can work something out" routine and has ridiculous sex with a bimbo girl in an RV. There's more boobs when we see the bad guy pimp filming a porno movie. The scene was purely there so they could say they had boobs in the movie.

You would think this all sounds awesome, a veritable goldmine of craptacular entertainment. And you'd be right for the first twenty minutes. I thought this was going to be the best movie ever based on the start. Then it just gets tiring. The jokes aren't funny, the bad guy is rubbish and there are far too many secondary characters you don't give a shit about. There's a whole scene where some of the guys put lipstick on the cheeks of another guy and send him on a repo job. This is the kind of comedy you expect in an after-school special, not something that has a picture of a lumberjack with a shotgun on the cover. Incidentally, that photo must have been taken especially for the cover as I don't remember Jake ever holding a gun once in this movie.

I'm disappointed that the premise of a repo man with a shotgun kicking arse was not explored. Instead they went for the PG action comedy with bad 'dads jokes' and added softcore sex scenes to get the R rating, with only ONE explosion. Worth a watch with friends who are already drunk and on a high from a Billy Blanks movie and need some light entertainment, but warn them first. You might want to fast forward through the tedium and laugh at the highlights - smashing through the window, breaking Tiny's nuts, kissing the girl, guy with the flat top, etc. The movie ends with the fat guy rapping over the credits, which you can see in the trailer below. It sums the movie up nicely I think.

The Video:

Soft but representative of the source material and generally quite clear. The audio was fine but the low budget is evident when interior shots are filmed with a bad microphone causing echoes. Still, for this film the presentation is fine. Runtime 86 minutes. NOTE the following screenshots were located elsewhere, my DVD wouldn't read in the Mac for some reason.

Sourced From:

eBay on a double disc with Forced to Kill for a couple of bucks.

Trailer:

More Screens: