Straight to Hell + Death and the Compass

Straight to Hell

Straight to Hell is Alex Cox’s glorious and anarchic homage to the spaghetti western; a surreal forerunner of 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.

Death and the Compass

Death and the Compass, one of Cox’s most ambitious, inspired and visually stunning films, is a deliciously dark adaptation of the short story by acclaimed Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. In a totalitarian metropolis of the future (shot on location in Mexico City), Erik Lonnrot (Peter Boyle) is a gifted detective investigating a series of strange murders and disappearances that seem to implicate the insane crime lord Red Scarlach. Enlisting the help of Alonso Zunz (Christopher Eccleston), a principled journalist, Lonnrot believes that he has uncovered a labyrinthine occult conspiracy. However, has the investigator’s brilliance merely precipitated his own destruction?

Straight to Hell

• Audio commentary by Alex Cox and co-writer/star Dick Rude.
• Back to Hell (interviews with cast and crew).

Death and the Compass

• Audio commentary by Alex Cox and composer Dan Wool.
• Paul Miller’s Spiderweb (short film based on the same story).