― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Sunday, 7 March 2004 22:30 (twenty years ago) link
Also, EFNY is total classic.
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 00:51 (twenty years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 01:00 (twenty years ago) link
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 01:19 (twenty years ago) link
i say this sheerly as an observation and without misogynist or sexist intent -- Adrian Barbeau's breasts were a thing of jaw-dropping splendor.
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Thursday, 29 July 2004 02:33 (nineteen years ago) link
― St. Nicholas (Nick A.), Thursday, 29 July 2004 13:50 (nineteen years ago) link
― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 14:20 (seventeen years ago) link
― the schef (adam schefter ha ha), Wednesday, 18 April 2007 14:22 (seventeen years ago) link
― kenan, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 14:27 (seventeen years ago) link
― the schef (adam schefter ha ha), Wednesday, 18 April 2007 14:31 (seventeen years ago) link
― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 14:38 (seventeen years ago) link
― the schef (adam schefter ha ha), Wednesday, 18 April 2007 14:39 (seventeen years ago) link
― the schef (adam schefter ha ha), Wednesday, 18 April 2007 14:40 (seventeen years ago) link
― kenan, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 14:41 (seventeen years ago) link
― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 14:48 (seventeen years ago) link
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!
― rrrobyn, Monday, 19 May 2008 23:26 (sixteen years ago) link
Personally I love Big Trouble in Little China, who's with me?
― chap, Monday, 19 May 2008 23:34 (sixteen years ago) link
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
― rrrobyn, Monday, 19 May 2008 23:34 (sixteen years ago) link
ernest borgnine and i have the same birthday
― rrrobyn, Monday, 19 May 2008 23:43 (sixteen years ago) link
Jeez, Rrobyn. I'm a Carpenter fan, but those are both terrible movies.
― Oilyrags, Monday, 19 May 2008 23:48 (sixteen years ago) link
realize the parenthetical - they will be in context of greater carpenter + i have completist tendencies
― rrrobyn, Monday, 19 May 2008 23:51 (sixteen years ago) link
Ah, I see. Well, enjoy the good ones, then!
― Oilyrags, Tuesday, 20 May 2008 00:01 (sixteen years ago) link
Pliskin's tat is out of control.
― Abbott, Tuesday, 20 May 2008 00:05 (sixteen years ago) link
this movie hasn't aged well IMHO
― Eisbaer, Friday, 1 August 2008 18:58 (fifteen years ago) link
seeing it again after all these years, it looks ... and SOUNDS ... like an apocalyptic episode of "knight rider."
― Eisbaer, Friday, 1 August 2008 18:59 (fifteen years ago) link
soundtrack may be best part.
― Steve Shasta, Friday, 1 August 2008 19:04 (fifteen years ago) link
^ what he said
― jaxon, Friday, 1 August 2008 19:08 (fifteen years ago) link
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.
― Eric H., Friday, 1 August 2008 19:11 (fifteen years ago) link
what is actually on the tape?
― Catsupppppppppppppp dude 茄蕃, Friday, 1 August 2008 19:13 (fifteen years ago) link
Easily Adrian Barbau's finest hour.
ADRIENNE BARBEAU for the love of FIRE
and her finest hour is Swamp Thing obv
― David R., Friday, 1 August 2008 19:25 (fifteen years ago) link
this is totally true!
― Simon H., Friday, 1 August 2008 19:31 (fifteen years ago) link
Its aged really well, prob the best thing Carpenter ever did!
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 2 August 2008 14:52 (fifteen years ago) link
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.
― B.L.A.M., Wednesday, 17 December 2008 04:50 (fifteen years ago) link
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.
― en i see kay, Wednesday, 17 December 2008 05:37 (fifteen years ago) link
at least six people
― en i see kay, Wednesday, 17 December 2008 05:38 (fifteen years ago) link
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...
― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, 28 February 2012 07:47 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, 28 February 2012 10:26 (twelve years ago) link
like walter hill (a more unusual and somewhat better director IMO), he peaked early.
assault/halloween vs. the driver/the warriors??
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, 28 February 2012 10:28 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 28 February 2012 15:00 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― A Full Torgo Apparition (Phil D.), Tuesday, 28 February 2012 15:03 (twelve years ago) link
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*
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, 28 February 2012 17:29 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― scott seward, Tuesday, 28 February 2012 17:51 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, 28 February 2012 17:59 (twelve years ago) link
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!
― scott seward, Tuesday, 28 February 2012 18:12 (twelve years ago) link
plus, i love this movie.
Pissed that Netflix has this streaming in pan and scan.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 28 February 2012 18:14 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― scott seward, Tuesday, 28 February 2012 18:18 (twelve years ago) link
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.
iirc Season Hubley was Kurt's girlfriend at the time
― Maresn3st, Tuesday, 26 March 2024 09:59 (two months ago) link
Lee Van Cleef's look in this scene, so good
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMGI0YzE1ZjUtZWE2Yy00NmQ5LThlMTgtZDFhOWRiNTE5MDkxXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjUyNDk2ODc@._V1_.jpg
― jmm, Tuesday, 26 March 2024 16:20 (two months ago) link
This film did have the same gritty, surreal atmosphere as The Warriors, an undisputed classic.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, 26 March 2024 16:28 (two months ago) link
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.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 26 March 2024 16:34 (two months ago) link
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.
― jmm, Tuesday, 26 March 2024 16:40 (two months ago) link
I remember liking Escape from LA and find myself surprisingly not hostile to the idea of an "Old Man Snake" sequel.
― Philip Nunez, Tuesday, 26 March 2024 17:04 (two months ago) link
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.
― jmm, Tuesday, 26 March 2024 17:16 (two months ago) link
To me the movie kind of reads like an 80s Wm. Gibson caper but like 20% more flamboyant?
― Philip Nunez, Tuesday, 26 March 2024 17:20 (two months ago) link