Repo! The Genetic Opera

You may have heard me exclaim over Repo! The Genetic Opera in recent weeks, so I thought it only fair to put up an actual review.

Repo! The Genetic Opera

Port O’ Call: Repo! The Genetic Opera, a 2008 American Rock Opera musical about organ repossession.

Mateys: Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II, III and IV), based on a script and stage show written by Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich. To coincide with the film’s release, several members of the cast participated in a Repo! Tour across America, performing a live version of the movie. It took the writers six years to whip the original small-time stage play into the awesome piece of cinema we see today.

Premise: In the not-so-distant future, people’s organs begin failing. So Rotti Largo – head of GeneCo, develops organ transplants to keep people alive. Soon, organ transplants and cosmetic surgery become the most popular trends. But people can’t afford all this estravagent surgery. So GeneCo developes an easy-payment plan.

However, if you miss a payment, GeneCo sends the Repo man to recover their property.

Blind Mag

The story centres around Shylo, a seventeen year old girl sequested in her room by her father Nathan, as she inherited a blood disease from her mother Marni, who died on Nathan’s operating table while he attempted to save her. Nathan is has a certain nocturnal surgeons job …

Meanwhile, Rotti Largo, the head of GeneCo and Marni’s scorned lover, has been diagnosed with terminal illness. Looking to leave the GeneCo empire to someone other than one of his three dipshit children, the aggro Luigi Largo, the narcissisti Pavi Largo and the surgery addicted Amber Sweets. So one night he contacts Shylo, and invites her to the Genetic Opera …

Why it’s Krieg: Well, first of all. It’s gory as fuck. Eviscerations aplenty. I can’t help but love that.

A number of strange and wonderful guest appearances and musicians make watching Repo! a continuous discussion of “Oh, it’s him!” My favorite character, Blind Mag, is played by Sarah Brightman, Paris Hilton does a fantastic cosmetic-surgary-addicated Amber Sweets, Ogre from Skinny Puppy plays Pavi Largo, Joan Jett makes a fantastic cameo, and some of the musicians include Tommy Clufetos (Ozzy, Rob Zombie, Alice Cooper), Daniel Ash (Bauhaus), Richard Patrick (Filter, Army of Anyone), Blasko (Rob Zombie, Ozzy) and Slipknot’s Shawn Crahan.

Despite it’s awesomeness, the film received mixed reviews, though it’s not a cult classic, which I think is exactly what the writers wanted. John Anderson, critics for U.S. trade paper Variety, said: ‘Paris Hilton, who delivers a limited but thoroughly appropriate performance in a movie in which almost everything is inappropriate.’

Paris and the Graverobber. Lordy, but he is HOT.

Many of the songs sound familiar. My favorite character, the Graverobber (played by Terrance Zdunrich – one of the film’s writers) sings several songs that remind me of the goblin king in Labrynth. “Testify” – sung at the Genetic Opera – sounds an awful lot like Rock Me Amadeaus. And a couple of the other songs sound so familiar, but I can’t place them.

The lyrics are super cheesy. You know when you wrote poems in primary school with stanzas like “That cat and the bat sat on the mat with a bat and a hat and another cat”. Yeah, a little like that. The lyrics often rely on puns and poor rhymes, but it’s done with such flair and lavish attention it’s adds, rather than subtracts from the story. The stunning visuals remind me of the movie Sin City.

With a soundtrack that’s part Rocky Horror Picture Show, part industrial, part metal, you cannot help but tap your feet. Repo! Is the musical for every person who swore they didn’t like musicals.

Why it’s Emo: We were hoping the Repo man would go on a murderous rampage or the daughter would pick up his mask and become the new Repo man to avenge his death. But this is

Quote: My favorite song from Repo! The Genetic Opera. (It hardcore reminds me of Magic Dance from Labrynth, for some reason)

Rating: \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/ for being a musical about organ repossession.

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