Is it important to the story? Yes! Does the audience need to care about it? No! That’s a MacGuffin!

This month we’re celebrating one of film’s great narrative devices — coined by screenwriter Angus MacPhail and popularized by Alfred Hitchcock — and we’re going full punk with this new wave selection!

A quintessential cult film of the ’80s, Alex Cox’s singular sci-fi comedy stars the always captivating Harry Dean Stanton as a weathered repo man in a desolate Los Angeles, and Emilio Estevez as the nihilistic middle-class punk he takes under his wing.

The job becomes more than either of them bargained for when they get involved in repossessing a mysterious—and otherworldly—Chevy Malibu (It’s the MacGuffin!) with a hefty reward attached to it.