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

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.