"Escape From New York" - stupid film, but.... Classic or Dud?

Remember being that age and making up stories that evolved as
you went along?

Exactly! Well summed up, Dan.

Watching it this evening, I could swear that guy is Michael Biehn, who'd later play in "The Terminator". IMDB disagrees, however.

Picture this dude with big frightwig hair.

"shit shit shit SHIT SHIT SHIT!"

(okay not 'escape from new york').

Also, EFNY is total classic.

i say this sheerly as an observation and without misogynist or sexist intent -- Adrian Barbeau's breasts were a thing of jaw-dropping splendor.

god i love this movie
and john carpenter
i feel like i have rediscovered something and it's changing my life all over again
and i'm not even a 12-yr-old boy!

Personally I love Big Trouble in Little China, who's with me?

i think this is my spring/summer of john carpenter (realized i've never seen 'ghosts of mars' or 'vampires' all the way through, so, hm)

i think it will rule

ernest borgnine and i have the same birthday

Jeez, Rrobyn. I'm a Carpenter fan, but those are both terrible movies.

realize the parenthetical - they will be in context of greater carpenter + i have completist tendencies

Ah, I see. Well, enjoy the good ones, then!

Pliskin's tat is out of control.

this movie hasn't aged well IMHO

seeing it again after all these years, it looks ... and SOUNDS ... like an apocalyptic episode of "knight rider."

soundtrack may be best part.

^ what he said

Some day I might write a blog about how the ending of the sequel has caused it to endure in my memory FAR longer than the tons and tons of better movies out there. It's really an awesome 15 seconds.

what is actually on the tape?

Easily Adrian Barbau's finest hour.

ADRIENNE BARBEAU for the love of FIRE

and her finest hour is Swamp Thing obv

Some day I might write a blog about how the ending of the sequel has caused it to endure in my memory FAR longer than the tons and tons of better movies out there. It's really an awesome 15 seconds.

this is totally true!

Its aged really well, prob the best thing Carpenter ever did!

This movie hasn't aged as well as Big Trouble in Little China or Halloween, but its pretty good, considering.

And Adrienne Barbeau's breasts are amazing to behold.

And Isaac Hayes' car is amazing.

I think it's a part of many St. Louisan filmlovers' development to see this as a kid, just dig it like any other wacky movie, find out it was shot all downtown because downtown looks like a post-apocalyptic New York, rewatch it, and fall totally in love with it.

Seriously, I've known at least people who've gone through this cycle.

at least six people

Just watched this for the first time as a followup to doing BTILC the other night (see thread). It's...okay? Like, it cleaves so close to being the world's most generic dystopian craphole movie (I'm thinking of MST3k fave City Limits here), just a string of terrible cliches...but then there's this great supporting cast, who really do elevate the hell out of this: Lee Van Cleef is awesome, Ernest Borgnine is charming, Isaac Hayes is basically cool, and Harry Dean Stanton plays the sleazy treacherous guy like a sleazy treacherous guy who's had all the sleaze dried out of him in a few years of living in New York.

Soundtrack's sweet too. So I guess what didn't click for me was either the plot (great premise, but the episodes went up to 5 when they needed to go up to 11) or, sad to say, Kurt Russell, who looks and feels like he's cosplaying the character. Maybe it's just after watching BTILC, where he gets so much more material to work with, good lines, some jokes...here he just wheezes and grunts his way through the scenes. I still basically want to see him escape from New York but I'm not cheering when he does.

So, based on the above, should I keep following Russell & Carpenter down the Netflix rabbit hole? I get the impression Escape from LA is to be avoided at all costs...

yeah this film has a lot going for it but it manages to squander way too much of that. there's a lot of neat stuff that shows up and just kind of fizzles out b/c carpenter didn't seem to know what do with it, plot-wise. this is true of a bunch of other carpenter movies: they live (which like escape from n.y. has a climax that feels very rote), the thing (ditto)... not to mention the horrible crap he made in the 90s and 00s.

like walter hill (a more unusual and somewhat better director IMO), he peaked early.

assault/halloween vs. the driver/the warriors??

Eh, I don't think Carpenter peaked early. He had a pretty much 100% successful run of movies from Dark Star to at least Big Trouble, or maybe They Live. That's nearly 15 years and 10 or so movies. I think it's more accurate to say that after such a strong run, he fell hard.

I'd even go so far as In The Mouth of Madness, with the mis-step of Memoirs of an Invisible Man in between that and They Live. After that, though, ugh.

Mouth of Madness is okaaaay, and then yeah, massive drop after that. They Live is the last 'can be watched and enjoyed many times' Carpenter.

I didn't learn my lesson until paying to see Escape from LA *AND* Vampires in the theater...I was such a fangirl I kept hoping it would get better. But it really, really didn't. *cries*

Also Vampires is the reason I hate James Woods to this day.

banning amateurist...damn no ban button. banning alex in nyc in retrospect too for being such a dope.

banning me for what? i didn't say all his '80s films suck. some of them are pretty damn good, if flawed. big trouble is probably the best of the lot. but they do seem like a dropoff to me from assault/halloween which are unfuckwithable.

actually i think i was just taking alex's thread title and first post out on you. he's not around, i have to ban someone!

plus, i love this movie.

Pissed that Netflix has this streaming in pan and scan.

and i really like later walter hill movies too. trespass, wild bill, last man standing, crossroads, johnny handsome, streets of fire, red heat, extreme prejudice.

i'm actually more of a fan of streets of fire than i am of the 48 hours movies. though the first 48 hours is good.

though my fave three came out three years in a row: warriors, long riders, and southern comfort.

and speaking of walter hill, would watch:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_to_the_Head

banning alex in nyc in retrospect too for being such a dope.

Why don't you go gargle with a bag of your own filth?

ALEX!

If an eyepatch and camo pants is wrong, I don't want it to be right.

this is the weakest of the Carpenter/Russell troika but it is still great. Carpenter had an amazing 15 year run - Josh in Chicago otm about that. Even stuff like the Fog and They Live are loads of fun.

oof i should have known better than to summon the grouch.

lol

this is kind've the second worst thread title ever

http://countycrestpallets.com/images/netco-pbx-callback-essex.png

watching this now - so many plot elements lifted from neuromancer!

oh wait according to wiki it's the other way around

I WAS ABOUT TO SAY

gibson has acknowledged the film's influence iirc

this thread title fucking infuriates me btw

agreed. there is nothing stupid about this film that the film itself isn't aware of.

the other thread only has like 5 posts :(

revolver with a scope + unlimited bullets has got to be one of the best movie weapons ever

you know what is surprisingly entertaining and competently written? the novelization of this movie.

"this is the weakest of the Carpenter/Russell troika but it is still great."

otm

really enjoy the pieced-together open-endedness of this. fits the post apocalyptic crisis mood/premise far better than a tight, snappy plot.

Kurt slays in this and I do mean fuiud

agreed

Here is a thing that I meant to post last month & forgot

Not sure if it means anything but it's an interesting piece of esoterica

http://www.avclub.com/article/shot-shot-symmetry-escape-new-york-and-escape-l-225525

I'm not sure I'd call it weak - that is, there's nothing I wish was better - but it's definitely the most classically b-movie of the Kurt/Carpenter bunch.

xpost Plausible that Escape from LA was done as a passive-aggressive cash grab. Doesnt make it any better though...and pity the fool
who pored over it for hours but, bravo
I guess? idk

Ugh, I'm not sure I saw "Escape from LA" a second time after an advance preview I caught. Total bummer, and I'm not sure recycling some specific shots (and more than recycling the entire first film) counts as "symmetry" so much as laziness. All I really remember, though, is being distracted by the presence of the actress who used to be in "My So-Called Life."

I love this. Tough to pick a russell role between snake/ macready/ jack burton, three amazing roles. Also showing amazing range.

I paid theater money to see Escape from LA, Vampires, and Spiders from Mars or whatever that nonsense was called

Hours of my life, gone

ghosts of mars is spectaaaacularly bad. i mean like if carpenter hadn't done a BUNCH of schlock it would have to be a parody. highlight is when a character does a narrated flashback of all the scenes we just saw, to bring another character up to speed. "so then i went down the hallway..."

also when the one alien ghost is screaming on the hill like BAAGAAWUGGALAAAAAA, that was great. he sounds like Strong Mad.

whereas, like, 'prince of darkness' is just ... boring.

so boring

Prince of Darkness is not boring! I'll watch that movie all day. Maybe it loses some steam in the overly-long opening sequence, maybe Jameson Parker has some offputting conversational gambits... Once they finally go to the church lock-in, it's great. Wish Dennis Dun had been in more movies.

Otoh, I saw that Vampires was on Amazon Prime streaming the other day and decided to give it a go. Made it 15 minutes in maybe? I just found myself second-guessing every single move any character made.

I love how boring Prince of Darkness is. I love that budget/or lack of narrative imagination determined that it's like the most apocalyptic scenario possible played out in the most modest of situations. Like, a handful of folks padding around an old church while the fate of the world teeters on the brink. Talk about the banality of evil.

Prince of Darkness is awesome, maybe my favorite Carpenter after The Thing.

Think I've watched this Escape from NY about 20x times (uk tip: catch repeats on itv4 often). Plot is hammy - sophistication isn't what I was expecting. That's fine.

Soundtrack is superb. Dean Stanton is the best of supporting cast; Pleasance follows close by. Disagree on Russell, I suppose you could mistake the lack of expression for a 'couldn't be bothered' but fits the Snake tough-street style. Only relative flaw is there wasn't enough of him and van Cleef. Would see a sequel where they were a team (as van Cleef was offering by the end). Instead we got Escape from LA.

Saw the last hour of this after coming back home last Fri - renewed my appreciation of the tape switch.

I remember being incredulous about Prince of Darkness until it got to the scene where Alice Cooper kills the nerd guy from Riptide with half a bicycle, then I realized it could do anything it wanted. it's like the pacing of the fight scene in They Live applied to an entire movie.

Prince of Darkness isn't peak material but it's still v good and pretty batshit imo

zzzzzz

man between this thread title and the aliens one

i wish i could conjure back up the particular way i was annoyed and bored by prince of darkness, cause i'm remembering these bits and pieces that were good. it just felt like this ridiculously large cast all pacing around independently of each other. like we're still meeting new people an hour into the movie, and nobody seems really aware of anything else that's going on. there's this sense of non-urgency or disconnectedness, people having weird my-dinner-with-andre conversations about the anti-god equation off in a separate movie from the people trying to escape the green slime. it would feel dreamlike if it felt like it was on purpose, i guess.

and then there's like a twenty-four hour montage, sun setting, sun rising, as dennis dun (IIRC) slowly tries to break through a wall with a chair or a spoon or something, and in the last ten minutes he tries to get the people on the other side to actually help? the creepy computer was cool i guess.

vampires is the carp nadir afaic. james woods is one of those guys who is exceptional in the right role and this wasn't one of them.

what I most remember abt that movie oddly is that is was one of gregory sierra's last screen roles before his apparent retirement. I love when old school dudes show up, but this was no 'deep cover' kinda role for him.

I saw that in the theater and man so baaaaaad. apart from the guy who gets sliced in half. that was funny.

According to the original book's author John Steakley, the film contained much of his dialogue and none of his plot.

thing I remember about Vampires was just lots of misogyny, like every other vampire was a woman who was being tortured or burst into flames

also sealed my lifelong distaste for James Woods

I actually called Carpenter on that at the press junket (way back when), and iirc his and everyone's defense was they're not women, they're vampires! I guess he had a point, but still ... not biting.

"not biting"

baloney

why dress them in gendered clothing if their gender is irrelevant, why not make them more animalistic etc etc

it was a choice & a bad one, and that's a cowardly answer "but but theyre just vampires"

As a kid I was a bit obsessed with Frank Doubleday as Romero, he stole every scene. it took me years to find out his actual name and the name of the character, he's also the guy that shoots the kid in Assault On Precinct 13

http://i61.tinypic.com/15s7tia.png

Holy shit. I'd never made that connection before! I can't stand that scene though, even though it's what sets everything in motion.

don't order the vanilla, kid!

This is my favorite carpenter OST right now. So krautfully delightful.

I liked but was vexed by PoD when I watched it w couple of years ago. I wanna see it again. I like jarringly quiescent genre stories. I'm a huge fan of In The Mouth Of Madness (not that it's quiescent but it's late carpenter that no one mentioned)

Yeah, much prefer In The Mouth of Madness to boring old Prince of Darkness (tho POD has a mildly interesting commentary track where Carpenter sometimes seems quite irritated by his co-commentator Peter Jason).

PoD is frustrating, so many of the main roles are taken by bland, soapy actors which is a real shame as it has a couple of genuinely great bits, the 'this is not a dream' transmission sequences, the guy with the wobbly voice who says 'pray for death' then his head falls off cause he's made of bugs , the old homeless lady licking the Priest's hands.

But PoD does look really great in HD and the soundtrack is just a really menacing, slow building bassline with some ornamentation.

PoD definitely foreshadows the later truly incompetent films

nevertheless it is transmitting from the year one... nine... nine... nine

flipped through Ghosts of Mars last night on youtube due to this thread. had never dared before. it is pretty bad.

>also when the one alien ghost is screaming on the hill like BAAGAAWUGGALAAAAAA, that was great

^^

I will never get tired of this film. I've been catching up on some genre stuff with my daughter. The other night we watched "Evil Dead 2" (her English teacher also teaches a film class and has an "Evil Dead" poster) and ... I think that one I *am* tired of. But we watched "Escape" last night, and nope, definitely not tired of it. And she seemed to really enjoy it (and called the ending seconds before it happened!). Kurt Russell is so good in it. When he passes, whenever that is, I will feel about him the same way I feel about Ric Ocasek today.

I’ve seen ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK countless times since it came out and I only just now noticed that two characters are named Romero and Cronenberg.

Truly perfect.

I'm so obsessed with Frank Doubleday, how did he not get acres of work after that role?

I should say *still* obessed hah

We watched it last night (Ms. T hadn't seen it and it had been at least 10 years since I saw it last) and had to look up Doubleday afterward. Apparently he became a stage acting teacher here in LA. I had no idea that his daughters each had roles in TV shows I watched (Portia Doubleday in MR. ROBOT & Kaitlin Doubleday in EMPIRE)

I watched this a couple of weeks ago with a couple of my kids. It was a lot better when I was a drunk high schooler.

Saw it for the first time on an iPhone screen a couple of years ago, brilliant, loved it, fabulous ending, love the chandeliers on Isaac Hayes’ limo

https://moviedude.co.uk/Frank%20Doubleday%20%20Escape%20from%20New%20York%20(1981).jpg

For years I thought the Romano character was Willem Dafoe (spoiler alert: it's not)

Romero

I've always thought the ending was a bit (or more than a bit) cheap and baffling. Snake is pissed at the president, so he fucks everybody?

The ending is great

I guess? In that sort of "Ooooh, look, nihilism!" kind of way, but not all that satisfying. To me, anyway.

I mean he tricked Van Cleef with the tape? Are we talking about that film or the sequel?

I loved this film as a kid but was a little disappointed that the scene of the poster art (with the Statue of Liberty's head) wasn't in the film anywhere, that would have been rad.

The president didn't give a shit about him or the people that died rescuing him, so you know..

The novelization reveals the tape actually contained info the US was using to establish their nuclear supremacy, which I'm not using as a serious argument but otoh I don't think we get evidence that the tape is what the authorities say it is in the film either? Why would we trust them?

On a more thematic level, though, Snake is hardly just "pissed at the president" - he and his companions were gleefully used by Van Cleef and his system and spat out, this is the only way he has to make them suffer and it's cathartic to see him do it imo.

xposts

One of the all time greatest casts in this too.

Maybe I misunderstood it, but doesn't the tape contain the secret to nuclear fusion? Which would help everybody. Of course, it's a dumb plot device to think that such valuable information would be confined to a single C60 in the possession of the president.

So he makes everyone suffer.

It supposedly does but the only confirmation we have of that is from govt sources iirc.

Got to think this movie's greatest influence is in video games more than anything.

Add in Blade Runner and Mad Max and you have the bedrock for lots of video games.

So he makes everyone suffer.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Monday, 25 March 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Big leap to say that because there isn't going to be nuclear fusion that everyone will suffer!

Isn't it about securing the peace treaty rather than the nuclear fusion technology as such?

xp It would be a transformative technology. I think they even talk in the movie about how it will not only make life better, but avert nuclear war.

One of the all time greatest casts in this too.

― Daniel_Rf, Monday, March 25, 2024 10:23 PM (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Kurt Russell
Lee Van Cleef
Ernest Borgnine
Donald Pleasence
Isaac Hayes
Harry Dean Stanton
Adrienne Barbeau

Doesn't get much more A-list than that in my book

I thought it was about the president being at the peace conference, yes.

Which is why jazz music is kinda better than whatever boring stuff was in that tape.

xp - the people saying this built the world that has a prison in the middle of NYC. I would trust Snake much more than them!

The novel also clarifies that the president's plan for the cassette tape is not benevolent. Rather than presenting to the world a new energy source in the form of nuclear fusion (as claimed in the film), the tape actually reveals the successful development of a "fallout-free thermonuclear weapon, which would grant the US supremacy in the global conflict.

OK, but that doesn't come through in the film, at least not as far as I could discern.

Really, I think it's just a giant middle finger to everyone. Which is fine, it's just always bothered me.

Another example of why it's importabt to read up on things rather than believing everything you see on the telly!

This movie is perfect. Lotsa John Carpenter movies end with the end of the world.

but yeah as I said the movie doesn't reveal this but also imo gives us zero motivation to believe the nuclear fusion thing is legit xpost

This kinda gets foregrounded in the sequel where it’s much more clear that the US has a orbital doomsday weapon, and Snake just EMPs the planet(or at least the continent) to burn it all down.

Bit overdone that he stares at a single lit match as the screen fades to black, of course, but Carpenter was pretty much done as a director by that point and ready for his 420-24/7 & video games retirement for the following decades

I will say, seeing Carpenter & Sons playing music live in the pre-pandemic world(including Dave Davies’ son on guitar), you felt it HIT when they played that theme in front of the crowd

It's such a banger. Italo version o Assault On Precinct 13 my all time Carpenter fave tho.

Kurt Russell
Lee Van Cleef
Ernest Borgnine
Donald Pleasence
Isaac Hayes
Harry Dean Stanton
Adrienne Barbeau

Season Hubley as "Girl in Chock Full O' Nuts"

Farewell, Girl in Chock Full O' Nuts. We hardly knew ye.

Very weird and cool that this thread was revived today! I watched the first two Mad Maxes this weekend in preparation for a run through the glut of (mostly Italian) Maxploitation flicks that followed in their wake but then realized, what with titles like 1990: The Bronx Warriors and 2019: After the Fall of New York and, uh, y'know, Escape from the Bronx, that the release of Escape from New York was probably nearly as influential an '81 milestone as The Road Warrior on the post-apocalyptic mini-genre. So this one is on the docket (along with the earlier films of Cirio Santiago, who I only just realized contributed no fewer than four Mad Max-inspired films to our culture).

iirc Season Hubley was Kurt's girlfriend at the time

Lee Van Cleef's look in this scene, so good

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMGI0YzE1ZjUtZWE2Yy00NmQ5LThlMTgtZDFhOWRiNTE5MDkxXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjUyNDk2ODc@._V1_.jpg

This film did have the same gritty, surreal atmosphere as The Warriors, an undisputed classic.

I like The Warriors more but I love both of them. I'm pretty much a sucker for dystopian New York movies of the '70s and early '80s, even lesser ones like Fort Apache the Bronx.

I hadn’t considered the idea of the tape recording as a threat. I like that interpretation. Even in the movie, where it’s not spelt out, you can easily read the President’s intended announcement as an implicit threat to China and the Soviets. That fits a lot better with what we see of this President and government.

As for the ending, Snake is ultimately just doing what he warned he was going to do the whole time, which is not to cooperate except under compulsion. It was their dumb mistake to assume they had more leverage over him than they did. He’s also not irrevocably dooming the world (nor irrevocably thwarting the U.S.’s plans for world domination, if you prefer that interpretation). They can probably create another copy of this nuclear fusion information, I assume? Maybe they couldn’t do it within 23 hours, for some reason? In any case, I figured the reason it was so important to get the President and tape in front of the cameras by that time is just that this is what the U.S. had announced (threatened) previously, and they need to project strength and competence. Snake’s basically just allowing them to screw themselves, and leaving it to them to clean up the mess.

I remember liking Escape from LA and find myself surprisingly not hostile to the idea of an "Old Man Snake" sequel.

I'd really like to find a book with something like this movie's style and approach to dystopian world-building. Genocidal Organ by Project Itoh seems like a possibility? The author wrote a Metal Gear novelization anyway.

To me the movie kind of reads like an 80s Wm. Gibson caper but like 20% more flamboyant?