In order for a film like Repo! The Genetic Opera to be taken seriously, it has to have a stellar cast, no ifs, ands or buts. There are three important aspects of Repo! The Genetic Opera that can be examined to see why it became the cult film that it has: the cast, the ambience and the music. GeneCo, run by Rotti Largo (Paul Sorvino) and his three children, is happy to give out loans to pay for the surgeries, but if you miss a payment, the Repo Man (Anthony Head) is sent to your house and either takes back the organ that you had transplanted or mutilates you.Īt the same time, there’s a rise in addiction to a painkiller called Zydrate - which comes in a little glass bottle - as addicts scramble to find the Graverobber (Terrance Zdunich) and beg him for the tiniest sample. It's a world where everyone is either entirely plastic, numb or both, and the Repo Man's daughter, Shilo (Alexa Vega), is slowly learning this horrific truth. The film takes place in a dystopian future where surgeries are handed out like ice cream cones and personal debt is on the rise as people take out loans to pay for their cosmetic fixes. The result was a subpar horror musical that has earned an army of devoted fans who re-enact it live every Halloween. Repo! The Genetic Opera was born out of passion, anger, reckless abandon and a DIY-punk attitude that would have made Sid Vicious proud. The director spent two months self-marketing with very little help from Lionsgate, and even though the film only grossed $147,000, Bousman succeeded in creating a new, iconic horror rock opera that was just as angry and revenge-seeking as he felt at the time: Repo! The Genetic Opera. Despite his success with the Saw franchise and his rapid rise to the top of the chain in the world of horror cinema, Bousman couldn’t get a studio to finance the musical.īy 2008, Bousman decided he didn’t need the support of Lionsgate, the same studio that distributed Saw, and financed 90 percent of the musical himself, taking it on a cross-country trip and handing out flyers to college kids to get them to see the movie. The script got into the hands of Leigh Whannell and James Wan, who had become overnight celebrities in the horror world thanks to their film, Saw, and invited Bousman to direct the sequel.īousman would hang on to direct the second, third and fourth Saw films before handing it off to David Hackl, and although he loved working on the movies, there was always another pet project that he wanted to launch: a horror-musical set in a dystopian future based on a play he staged in both New York and Los Angeles. In 2004, director Darren Lynn Bousman sought to ride a wave of horror films focusing on grotesque, boundary pushing imagery with his script for what would become The Desperate.īousman tried to sell The Desperate to a couple of studios but was told his story was too grisly for a mainstream audience. Whether that's the scariest movies you haven't seen yet or a look at a popular Treehouse of Horror episode, this is our tribute to the world of the strange, creepy and downright horrifying that exists within popular culture. 31, Polygon will publish 13 opinion pieces about different films, shows and specials that exemplify what Halloween means to us. Welcome to Polygon's 13 Days of Halloween series! Between Oct.