Over the next eight years Cox delivered a biopic of punk icon Sid Vicious, a modern spaghetti western, the mercenary biopic Walker, shot in Nicaragua and made with the backing of the Sandinista government, and a Mexican language thriller about police corruption.

In 1996 he was removed from the gambling drama The Winner, set in Las Vegas, and the film was re-edited against his wishes. His follow-up, Three Businessmen, was a study in disassociation and dislocation set in Liverpool, his home town, but received poor distribution.

His latest feature, Revengers Tragedy - a 20-year dream project about a North-South war - is a futuristic glimpse of a Dystopian England based on the 17th Century play by Thomas Middleton. Always a rebel - he has been described variously as 'dangerous', subversive, offbeat, political, difficult, and 'maverick', a term he loathes and rejects as 'a debased catch-all' - Cox has been attached to a succession of ambitious projects that, for a variety of reasons, he parted company with. They include Mars Attacks! Let Him Have It (which he cast with eventual stars Christopher Ecclestone and Paul Reynolds, and wanted to shoot in black and white), Richard III, with Ian McKellen, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a $5 million indie project that mushroomed into a $30 million monster. It was later made by Terry Gilliam.

Cox revels in his reputation as an unpliable and unsafe filmmaker, castigates the Hollywood machine as "perverse and self-destructive" and, in reaction, has worked in Mexico, Central America, Europe and Japan. After years spent living and working in Mexico he recently returned to England and is now based in Liverpool.

Films as Director

1980 Edge City (aka Sleep is for Sissies, short)
1983 Repo Man
1985 The Pogues: A Pair of Brown Eyes (music promo)
1985 Sid and Nancy
1985 Joe Strummer: Love Kills (music promo)