Reassessing
Repossessed
by
Kristin Battestella
The Exorcist star
Linda Blair is all grown up and, according to our theme song,
“re-re-repossessed” in the 1990 head-spinning, pea soup spewing,
oft-maligned spoof Repossessed.
Priest Leslie Nielsen (Dracula: Dead and Loving It)
is on the devilish case, escalating to the Pope saving souls on live
television and an infamously low 11% Rotten Tomatoes score – if
viewers remember Repossessed
at
all. With today's cult-like administration practices, however, it's
time to reassess how the religious and political satire of the much
derided Repossessed
may
have actually been ahead of its time.
As
a kid, Repossessed
was
one of my VHS staples. 1990 was still very eighties and Reagan-esque,
so anything scandalous with tawdry nudity was treasured. When the
bimbo in the front row at Father Leslie's lecture is showing too much
leg, he asks her to pull down her dress. She of course responses by
pulling the top
down
and letting the bazongas free. Re-watching Repossessed
now,
there
were many more anticipated punchlines and rim shots that still made
me laugh – much to the chagrin of my never-seen-it-before husband
who was both annoyed at my predictions and didn't find any of it all
that funny. Such datedness is indeed much of the problem with
Repossessed.
Like
new viewers who won't understand the Glenn Miller jokes on The Golden Girls, Repossessed is
so overly reliant on eighties scandals, headlines, and pop culture
moments that you really had to be there to get it. You may think that
makes Repossessed
bad
now, but just think how all today's quip a minute movies will be
undiscernible in forty years!
Demure,
yuppie housewife Blair (Witchery)
who's supposed to have the ideal conservative life is once again
possessed by the devil, who discovers that exorcisms on television
are the gateway to spreading demons to leaders across the globe
thanks to America's sanctimonious floundering over the likes of Jerry
Falwell and Jessica Hahn. Telethon cameos from Body by Jake, Jesse
Ventura, and more people modern viewers probably won't recognize
anchor music montages to “Devil with the Blue Dress On” but, do
folks today even know that song? Yes, it's busy and messy, descending
into mixed meta, slow chases, and the Pope on guitar. Repossessed
does
not always succeed in its larger satire comedy thanks to a muddled,
stupid finale designed for the MTV generation. Had Repossessed
had
a more finely tuned script or edit then, maybe it wouldn't have
flopped into obscurity. The “Father Mayii” name in itself is
hysterically genius to every twelve year old.
Anthony
Starke (The Magnificent Seven) is
also here as Nielsen's priestly sidekick, and for a time, to me as a
precocious kid anyway, it seemed that he'd cornered the market on
satirical genre fare thanks to the likewise shrewd Return of the Killer Tomatoes. Blair
and Nielsen also seem to be having a great time with the
self-referential performances, confronting Blair's horror typecasting
while Nielsen lampoons it – like when our priest is caught on
camera calling his agent asking how to get out of this. For all the
nostalgic eighties floral prints, bright colors, and big hair;
Repossessed
actually
looks good when it comes to the expected Exorcist
effects,
making one wonder what might have happened if the story was told
straight. However, to be so chilling was not Repossessed's
intent. Unfortunately, viewing Repossessed
again
under the orange cloud that is Trump brings the film disturbingly
full circle. The devil shall enter in via the perfect housewife! How
can he spread evil to the masses? Television!
When
Repossessed
originally
bombed at the box office in the Fall of 1990, Trump was already a
well-known, notorious businessman with his Art
of the Deal ghostwritten
fakery – as parodied in much better in Back
to the Future Part II.
It wasn't until the 2004 reality show The
Apprentice that
Trump was re-imagined as savvy cool wealthy business leader who could
fire at will. Television had made the now seemingly downright demure
scandals of the eighties mocked in Repossessed,
and
the reality show era likewise capitalized on creating scripted shock
value. Now, the daily absurdities and constantly escalating extremes
of our current regime make Repossessed
perhaps
seem even weaker because it doesn't go far enough. We were too
innocent then to think you could pretend to be Jesus and piss off the
Pope and just get away with it. Our husband and son just want their
possessed mom back sans the demonic drama and split pea soup.
American families currently suffering the increasing sociopolitical
consequences can certainly relate to the desire for normalcy. Devil
with a blue dress blue dress blue dress devilwithabluedresson...we
impeached a president for lying about a stain on a blue dress but now
we let them tear down the East Wing and hawk edited Bibles with
Trump's gold seal of approval. Make it make sense!
Even
if you don't get all the pop culture puns or televangelist taboos and
thus some of the jokes fall flat, there's a lot of Repossessed
that's
eerily all too familiar thanks to the contemporary political climate.
Don't dismiss the comedy performances and social commentary just
based on that Rotten Tomato score. Reassess Repossessed
and
heed the horror comedy parable.
