During a conference call promoting his new series Merlin, the shooting schedule for which is preventing him from doing any more work on Macbeth, Head seemed slightly passive-aggressive as he explained where the project stands:

"That last I heard of it, somebody called me who was editing it and said, 'We've got a few issues with various things that might need re-shooting. And I thought, 'Well, you kind of had me when you had me. I'm shooting in France. I can't really do it.' So I don't know what's going on with that, but there were just a few issues of things differing from one scene to another. What I saw and what I was in was great, and I sincerely hope it will get some kind of release."

The movie itself sounds gloriously weird. This particular Macbeth apparently started as an amateur film project before they managed to snag Anthony Stewart Head to play Duncan, and it involves gang warfare in a futuristic setting. The movie will retain the original Shakespearean dialogue, but apparently the radically different context has caused some changes, as one might reasonably expect.

Director Nicholas Paton, who adapted the play with Fergus March (who also plays the title role), provided a tantalizing description of Head's role way back in 2006:

"Tony plays Duncan as a spitting, cigar-chomping criminal leader, with a soft Glaswegian accent that can turn in an instant from warm and affectionate to fatally menacing. As Duncan he plays a pivotal role in the film - he is both Macbeth's boss and paternal figure, whom Macbeth is driven to murder by his own uncontrollable ambition. The murder of Duncan reflects the loss of the last of the old-school gangsters as a new generation rise to power, a generation without the same moral sensibilities and rules of conduct as Duncan's - much as Brando's Don Corleone is ousted by a younger more reckless generation in The Godfather."

Head's description of how he saw the role, on the other hand, is completely befuddling and only makes me want to see this movie all the more: "Basically I play Duncan as a used-car salesman." I have absolutely no idea how a combination of Macbeth, gangs, and the future could lead Anthony Stewart Head to see the King of Scotland as a used car salesman, but consider me officially intrigued.

[Sci Fi Wire]

What first attracted me to the film was Anthony Stewart Head, also known as too-sexy-for-his-age Watcher/librarian Giles of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Head lent spectacular and commanding vocals to that series' status-quo-busting musical episode, and he's quite fit to be the lead tenor here as the eponymous Repo Man who steals organs from the poor to give to the rich.

He's also the loving yet unsettling father to sweet, sick Shilo Wallace (Alexa Vega). The drama between father and daughter is at the heart of the show, set against the backdrop of a frightening future where health care is so dire that massive conglomerate GeneCo is out to rip the bloody viscera from the chests of anyone who can't front their bills. Among the many screaming denizens of this dystopia, Vega and Head are the talented, charismatic duo that hold this bewildering movie opera together.

Repo! grew out of a ten-minute stage show in 1999, and it's picked up lots of plot along the way: Each character comes with oodles of sizzling backstory and a few racy graphic novel panels that serve as explanation. There's a lot to keep track of here, meaning that devoted fans will have excess material by the boatload to pore over when all is said and done. Appearances by Sarah Brightman and Paul Sorvino lend significant vocal cred to the ensemble, and Terrance Zdunich's creepy Graverobber is the perfect de facto narrator. These five (Vega, Head, Brightman, Sorvino, and Zdunich) are probably the only sympathetic characters here – the only ones to whom the film has time enough to lend a bit of complexity. As for Paris Hilton, if you close your eyes and think of England, she goes away soon enough.

The look of the film is pretty much what you'd expect. The cinematography is heavy with highlights and shadows – Repo!'s landscape uses light only to emphasize the dark, and its indulgent sweeps of a grimy, holographic future city will be a delight to anyone who thrilled at Blade Runner. Of course Victorian goth suffuses every costume. It's no surprise that people were ready with Repo! outfits this Halloween, before the movie even came out. Plus, it features a cool new futuristic drug – the painkilling Zydrate, which can be extracted easily from fresh corpses.

There are simplistic though mildly insightful one-liners – "Why is genetics such a bitch?" croons Vega as Shilo, the girl with the seemingly incurable blood disease. Though it might not achieve the same critical acclaim, it has the Rocky Horror geek perv vibe: Repo is an overwhelmingly odd, shockingly sexual, rocked-out celebration of all that is gory and scary and alive.

So if you've already been keeping an eye on the publicity and feeling a tingle in your throat, trust me, Repo! delivers. It may not be polished or genius, but it's fun – and Hollywood could use a bit of crazy, idea-filled fandom, if you ask me. But if the idea of watching naked women get slashed open to song in a world of corruption and despair – yeah, those parts were not so fun and idea-filled, as Fantasy Magazine pointed out. So if naked gore is a dealbreaker, stick to rewatching Chicago and The Matrix back-to-back this holiday season. For the rest, it's time to shoot some Zydrate and get ready to rock.