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Repo Jake (1990)

Dir: Joseph Merhi

Jake Baxter (Dan ‘The Man’ Haggerty) takes a job in the big city as a ‘Repo Man’, picking up cars from reluctant owners who owe money.
Arriving in the city the first thing Big Jake does is rescue a babe called Jenny (Dana Bentley) from a wimpy robber.
Jenny just happens live in an apartment building (run by a horny old dame in a see-through nightgown) where a room has just become empty. Jake takes that room with his cheery grin of much niceness.

It turns out Jake needs to make $60,000 to save his plot of land in the sticks, so takes up his Repo job with great gusto.
Everyone at the Repo office loves him though because he’s such a super nice guy!
And with names like Bulldog, Jam, Waldo, Skid-mark, Lippy, Blondie and Amos, you just know Jake’s fellow Repo Guys are a back-slapping bunch o’ fun guys!

But when Jake reposeses a car owned by a child pimping porn monger, things suddenly aren’t quite as nice for lovable old Jake…

Head honcho at flamboyant, go for it, defy the low budget, straight to video action company ‘PM Entertainment’, Joseph Merhi has produced or directed some surprisingly large scale, pretty damn kick-ass movies for his operation like “Last Man Standing”, “Rage” and “Executive Target” , where some of the amazingly big, bold and explosion filled action scenes, chases and stunts would not seem out of place in the biggest Hollywood blockbuster.
But with “Repo Jake” Merhi must have run out of money and stamina…as there is absolutely nothing here in the way of action or pace.

The annoyingly jolly, jaunty music score that swamps the film (some good slide guitar cues aside) sums up just what a completely throwaway bit of unthreatening fluff this is.
The wacky Repo guys spend more time on their oh so jolly larks than actually getting cars. And oh what larks they are!
Hold in your sides and stem those tears as our lovable rogues crack bad jokes, have rap song get-togethers and draw lipstick rosy cheeks on the constantly snoozing Waldo.
Hell even Repo Jake himself gets mining that comedy gold with a played for laughs riding on the hood of a speeding car sequence (with jaunty, jolly musical accompianment of course)

And that of course brings us to the main man himself. Jake! Repo Jake! Big, cuddly, nice, nice , nicety nice …Jake!
We shall ignore that fact that when Haggerty (Mr children’s TV fave himself “Grizzly Adams”) walks up a flight of step he looks like he needs to lie down for a week and concentrate instead on how NICE he is throughout this film. And how NICE Jake is of course.

Haggerty is so sickeningly NICE he’s like cookie dough in human form, candy coated chocolate in blue jeans and a cutesy smile on a newborn baby (with a huge beard). Never has such utter blandness come in such a big package before.
Did I say he was just so damn NICE though? I did? Well tell Jenny that as she announces to Jake that her family “ want me to settle down and have a nice family”! has she not clicked?
Well jenny if you can bare to screw cuddly old Jake it’s impossible not to have a nice family! You will literally give birth to niceness!

Oh yeah before I forget in all this excitement, as well as being nice Jake is also perfect at everything too.
He’s the perfect Repo Man, the perfect hot rod driver, the perfect fighter and of course…the perfect gentleman!
By the 60 minute mark (with the main plot still not kicked in), just in case we have not yet noticed just how NICE he is, Jake is seen being given a cute balloon dog from a street clown that he instantly gives to an even cuter little kiddie being held in his Daddy’s arms.
Child and Father look on in happy wonderment as Jake walks off into the night.
*Sniff* We love you Jake!

To ensure the film pleases ‘the guy audience’ though and does not get a PG rating (as surely it would thanks to how NICE Mr Haggerty is, remember) we have some topless shots and nipple nibbling, a porn movie sequence, the odd slightly more violent than the rest fist-fight and a smattering of very ‘blue’ language (through all surely not approved by the fluffy Mr Haggerty and hardly ever in his mighty presence).

Talking of that mighty presence it is nearly always seen shrouded in soft focus cinematography of the kind Joan Crawford would have killed for (perhaps she did). Is it to smooth those age-lines, or to cast Jake with an Angelic glow such a nice guy surely deserves?
Perhaps it’s the former actually because Jake, as we see during a Repo job, is not afraid to grab a guy’s nuts…surely not the act of an Angel.

Nothing (including Jake) moves fast in this flick. Merhi keeps the entire thing as sedate as a doped-up snail listening to “101 different bird songs” on it’s headphones..
Only a banger car race speeds things up and it’s pretty well done, despite the hysterically over the top, good ol’ boy, announcer.
But in general “Repo Jake” is paced like a Sunday afternoon TV film.

As far as the plot goes it’s completely the opposite of the rotund Mr Haggerty, as in it’s very slight indeed.
Not even the late in the day arriving bad guys actually do much, and all in all there is no real threat or danger to anyone in the film.
So don’t be fooled by the shot of Haggerty toting a shotgun on the cover of the DVD as Mr Fluffy Nice Guy never goes near a gun! Perish the thought!
It all ends with a brief bit of comedic rapping by Jam just to remind us what a total donkey this film is.
A NICE donkey though, with sparkling eyes and tufty ears and a chocolate button nose…