Straight to Hell

Idiosyncratic even by director Alex Cox’s standards, the 1987 absurdist spaghetti Western Straight to Hell was scripted and filmed quicklywhen a planned Nicaraguan concert tour with Joe Strummer, Elvis Costello and The Pogues was scrapped, Cox cast the musicians as cowboys, bank robbers and the like in this over-the-top, comedic homage to Sergio Leone’s epics. Unsurprisingly, critics loathed the film, but with its punk-rock mentality, ramshackle plot seemingly pieced together from bits and pieces of Clash lyrics, and lunatic performances from counterculture heroes like Dennis Hopper and a pre-fame Courtney Love, the movie quickly found the cult audience for which it was always intended. The Times Cinema screens a remastered version of the movie through Saturday.