Straight to Hell

Alex Cox’s anarchic homage to the spaghetti western.

Straight to Hell is Alex Cox’s glorious and anarchic homage to the spaghetti western; a surreal forerunner of the style found in Tarantino’s films. It features an all-star cast including Dennis Hopper, Joe Strummer, Courtney Love, Jim Jarmusch, Kathy Burke, Grace Jones, Elvis Costello and Shane MacGowan and music by The Pogues, Pray for Rain and Joe Strummer.

A team of inept hitmen (Joe Strummer, Sy Richardson and Dick Rude) oversleep on the day of their big job and find their target has already fled town. Fearing reprisals from their boss (Jim Jarmusch) they pull a bank job and escape into the desert with Richardson’s pregnant girlfriend (Courtney Love). When their car breaks down they seek shelter in a ghost town inhabited by the McMahons (The Pogues, Biff Yeager), a murderous and incestuous clan of gun-crazy coffee addicts.