Escape from New York (1981)

Running Time: 99 minutes
Directed By: John Carpenter
Written By: John Carpenter, Nick Castle
Main Cast: Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Donald Pleasence, Ernest Borgnine, Isaac Hayes
Click here to view the trailer

2016 BLIND SPOT SERIES: FEBRUARY

Note: The whole "what I knew going in and why I chose it" thing didn't work for me last week, so again I'll be fooling with the review format here and there to try and find a nice fit. Ultimately, all the reviews will probably end up staying the same as they've always been...

Welcome back again this week, as I've taken to post dating the reviews so that you guys get some fresh content more frequently. This was actually written on March 4, but you won't actually be reading it until March 14. Just trying to spread things out a bit.

Being a huge fan of the original Halloween, They Live and, to a milder degree, Assault on Precinct 13, I always have an interest in any John Carpenter films I haven't seen. So when it came time to put together the 2016 Blind Spot list, it was a toss up between this and Big Trouble in Little China, as I knew both would be fine candidates. Both are films that I've always wanted to see & never got around to and both are films that your average film Joe should have under the belt.

The film is set in the future (1997, to be exact), in a world where the crime rate has risen over 400% from normal. In this future, Manhattan Island has been turned into the country's lone maximum security prison, a giant wall built around the island, so even if someone does make it across the East River, they still can't get out. There are no guards inside the wall - just every prisoner for him or herself. When Air Force One is hijacked by terrorists, the POTUS (Pleasence) takes to the escape pod, activating it and flying off to what he thinks will be safety. Not so fast, Mr. President! It turns out the pod manages to land inside the walls of Manhattan Island a.k.a. prison. When a team of men, headed up by Agent Hauk (Van Cleef), goes inside to retrieve the President, they're greeted by an unusual prisoner who produces the Commander-In-Cheif's ring finger (ring still intact) and tells the team to exit within thirty seconds or the PREZ "gets it". With no other alternative, Hauk recruits newly incarcerated Snake Pliskken (Russell) to penetrate the wall and safely retrieve the President. If he does so, he'll be pardoned of all his past wrongdoing and given a free ride out of New York. However, just in case he decides to take the opportunity to escape the clasp of justice, he is implanted with two tiny explosives, inside the arteries in his neck, which will explode if Pliskken doesn't make his time limit. Oh yeah - Snake only has twenty-two hours and change to get the POTUS, as the leader of the free world must appear at a summit that will end at that time, or else the United States could be on the brink of war. *heavy sigh of relief* That was a mouthful and really all I've given you is the setup and really none of the stuff that happens to Snake once inside the wall.

SPOILER ALERT!

Sure, the film is super action packed and has MORE than enough material to satisfactorily fill out it's ninety-nine minute running time. However, it's also set in the future - something that almost always turns me off when it comes to movie plots. I don't know what it is: Maybe it's because I already live past the future that most of these older films are referring to and really, not much has changed in regards to flying cars, all silver wardrobe and alien overlords - therefore deeming the films quite unrealistic. Seriously though, I guess my imagination just craps out on me when it comes to thinking and discussing futuristic societies and situations.

One things for sure, you really can't sneeze at the cast. You've got Kurt Russell, who is always solid. Sure, we're not overrun with stellar Kurt Russell movies or anything, but the guy is solid and anyway, this isn't really the type of film that calls for stellar performances. He's fine for the role and plays the badass well. You've also got Lee Van Cleef, Donald Pleasence and Harry Dean Stanton in there, not to mention the big breasted Adrieene Barbeau and the scary as hell Ox Baker. It's quite the fun house collaboration of actors and I'm pretty sure Carpenter wouldn't have it any other way. In fact, the wild, over the top personalities that the cast provides, fits right in with the whole futuristic, "all of New York is a prison" motif.

To be honest, I wasn't super thrilled with the ending. Did the President really have to be corrupt? Didn't we already have enough plot and subplots to follow along with, without making the President a heel? Couldn't we just be presented with the simplest of ideas - the President just inadvertently landed himself in a prison where there are no guards...GO! I felt like everything was just too muddled with the talk of the summit and then all of the stuff with the cassette tape and then finally, the big reveal that the President is a somewhat crooked and being taught an ultimate lesson by Pliskken. Okay - so maybe I'm making too big a deal out of all that. Maybe I should just relax, sit back and enjoy the fun that is Escape from New York. But the thing is, is that I just didn't like it AS MUCH as I thought I was going to and I really feel the need to nitpick and try to get to the reason why. It was a fine film, don't get me wrong and an audience of less picky movie goers, who haven't seen Escape from New York, are probably going to come out of it with a new front runner for favorite film. It's the type of film one can obsess over and go all fanboy on and hey, I really don't blame any fanboy who puts this at the center of their fandom. Ultimately, I've grown into too picky a film watcher and that's my own problem. I LIKED IT, but I had a hunch going in that I was going to like it more...

RATING: 6.5/10  Not bad, but I was hoping it'd crack the '8' marker and give me another favorite John Carpenter movie. Oh well...there's always Ghosts of Mars...

March 4, 2016  11:14pm

681. THE THING (1982)

Running Time: 109 minutes
Directed By: John Carpenter
Written By: Bill Lancaster, from the story Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr.
Main Cast: Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, Keith David, Donald Moffat, Richard Dysart

THAT THANG' THEY CALL 'THE THING'

I took a small break from the "Antonioni Week" festivities today and me and the wife decided to check out "The Thing" via the streaming portion of Netflix. "The Thing" is a film that I've wanted to see for the longest time and today I finally saw it and proved that hyping a film in your own mind, will usually lead to disappointment.

The film starts with a lone canine running across the snow covered ground of Antarctica. A helicopter approaches in the distance and the passenger wields a rifle and begins to fire at the galloping dog. The dog eventually makes its way into an American Research station and the helicopter, which is later revealed to be carrying Norwegians, doesn't halter, but continues to fire. The crew from the American research station run out to see what the fuss is and one of them is shot in the confusion. Eventually the Norwegian shooter is taken down by one of the Americans and the dog is safe. Seems like a lot of hubbub for a dog, but later it is revealed that the dog is no ordinary pooch and that he's actually doubling as a vessel for an otherworldly being, one that aims to cause harm (as opposed to the E.T., friendly kind of otherworldly being). Led my MacReady (Russell), the group of Americans is ten strong and due to some investigations by Doctor Blair (Brimley), he deduces that if the "thing" that is living inside the dog makes its way into any of them, it could potentially spread to the rest of the world in a matter of hours. Now paranoia reigns supreme, as the rest of the group become increasingly suspicious that other members of the group have already been infected.

POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT!

Maybe "disappointment" was too harsh a word, as me and my wife actually did have a lot of fun playing guessing games as to who was infected and yelling things at the television in hopes of saving the Americans. I guess, in the end, I just really shouldn't have over-hyped it for myself and maybe it would have been a lot more enjoyable. Once the film gets into the whole "One or more of us may be infected...No one can be trusted" angle, then it gets pretty riveting and really intense and that's where this film really picks up some steam. However, that takes somewhere between forty five minutes to one hour to get going, meaning we have to make our way through a lot of groundwork that just doesn't make for very exciting movie time. Another MAJOR problem I had with the film was WAY too many characters. At the risk of exposing my lack of intelligence, all of the characters were just too hard to keep track of and I found myself pausing the film a lot to ask my wife "Who's Windows?" or "Which one is Fuchs?".

Another big problem for me was the predictability of the whole affair. At about the halfway mark I told my wife, "If Kurt Russell ends up being one of the ones infected, then I'll boost the rating of this film." Guess what? Of course, Kurt Russell doesn't get infected, because that would just be too off the wall. Another angle they could've went with is to borrow an idea from that old Twilight Zone episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", in which it's basically a character study dealing with the effects of paranoia on a group of people. After the threat was contained and the twelve are still intact, have them become increasingly paranoid of one another, even though none of them are infected. Eventually the wind up killing each other one by one, because their paranoia becomes too strong to ignore. But, again, way too off the wall, I'm sure. I get that it's a remake and you have a certain responsibility to maintain the plot of the original film, but we could've changed it up a little bit and went in a more risque direction.

RATING: 6.5/10 Despite my griping, "The Thing" still provided me and my wife with a fun afternoon of movie watching and that's worth something. Lesson for today, when you get the idea to see a certain film...SEE IT and don't wait forever, because your anticipation will only heighten and you'll probably end up disappointed.

MOVIES WATCHED: 247
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 754

April 7, 2011 5:07pm

641. Halloween (1978)

Running Time: 91 minutes
Directed By: John Carpenter
Written By: John Carpenter, Debra Hill
Main Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, P.J. Soles, Nancy Loomis, Tony Moran

THE NIGHT HE CAME HOME!

I met him, fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes... the *devil's* eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... *evil*.

It is that statement, made by Dr. Sam Loomis in "Halloween" that, for me, is one of the most terrifying speeches in horror history. We don't have to know a thing about Michael Myers, except for these words that Donald Pleasence delivers. We simply have to see a psychiatrist giving up on his patient and deeming him pure evil.

"Halloween" is set in Everytown, USA, except here it is referred to as Haddonfield, Illinois. We first get the back story: When he was six years old, Michael Myers murdered his sister and was committed to an insane asylum. Fifteen years later, while Michael's doctor, Sam Loomis (Pleasence), and his assistant prepare to transport Michael to court, Michael escapes and steals their car. His destination? Haddonfield, to his childhood home. Loomis eventually makes his way into Haddonfield and warns the local police, who decide to believe him for the sake of the neighborhood. Meanwhile, we focus in on three high school girls, Laurie (Curtis), Annie (Loomis) and Lynda (Soles). The girls are setting up their Halloween night with Lynda and Annie referring to their hot dates for the evening, while Laurie's plans are quite mundane, as she plans to babysit Tommy Doyle. Annie will be babysitting too, that night, but she plans to sneak in a gentleman caller by the name of Paul. As the girls go to work babysitting and the sun goes down, Michael has already made his way into Haddonfield and is already beginning to stalk the girls.

Despite his prior directing efforts on "Assault on Precinct 13", this was really John Carpenter's big breakout movie, as it put him on the map as a name to be reckoned with on the directing scene. This movie was Carpenter's baby, as he directed, wrote and even created that chilling, recognizable score that we all know. And why wouldn't this be the film to put Carpenter on the map...it IS a great film and not JUST a mindless slasher film. When you watch "Halloween", that is exactly what you expect, as you go in expecting the same silly, B-horror movie, drivel and you come out realizing that there was something more special about this one, than you expected.

Maybe it's just a personal thing, but for me, everything in this movie clicks and I do mean everything. Let's start with the camera work, as Carpenter (and cinematographer Dean Cundey) use dozens of P.O.V. shots to get their point across. The P.O.V. shots really add to the suspense and intrigue of the whole movie and force the viewer to look out from behind the eyes of a killer, or a victim, in some cases. The atmosphere of this movie is also great and even the trees seem spooky, looming over the suburbs. A lot of the movie is set at night time, but there is a good portion of the film also set at day, which does absolutely nothing to subside the eerie feeling that we get, as we see Michael peeking around corners and through clotheslines to get a peek at the girls. I love the line in the film that refers to Michael as "inhumanly patient", which I think is a really good line of describing someone of Michael's caliber. It tells us that Michael will bide his time and wait for that perfect, opportune time to off somebody and it may be when we least expect it.

I'll tell you something else, I didn't even mind the acting in this one and maybe it was because the rest of the film was so good, that it was able to compensate for some less than talented/experienced actors, but nothing about the acting bothered me and I even quite enjoyed Pleasence and Curtis. For me, this movie holds an incredible amount of suspense and how fitting that we were just in the middle of watching films from the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock. I wonder if Alfred got a chance to see "Halloween", as I'm sure he would've loved it, as Carpenter is obviously a Hitchcock fan. I loved how the little boy's name in the movie is Tommy Doyle. Sound familiar? It's the name of Jimmy Stewart's police detective friend in "Rear Window". Honestly, this film has shades of "Rear Window" in it and they could've easily named the little boy, L.B. Jeffries, as he is always looking out the window and being suspicious. The final scene also reminded me of "Rear Window", as almost the whole time we see Michael Myers from afar, yet the climax brings Michael right inside the house, as he reaches to grasp and murder Laurie.

I can't really say enough good things about this film. For me, it's really one of the great horror flicks. The town, the atmosphere, the characters...they're all so familiar to me and every time I watch it, it doesn't fail to leave me biting my nails (figuratively speaking). The only beef I'll take up with the movie is that I HATED that they showed Michael's face near the end. He was a character that should've been kept masked and faceless to us. Also the ambiguous final ending is just a little too dramatic and I would've much preferred a decisive conclusion, and not a conclusion that spawned nine sequels/remakes.

RATING: 8.5/10 On a horror scale that'd be a definite '10', but horror really isn't my genre of choice and thus even my most favorite horror flicks only get up to an '8.5'.

MOVIES WATCHED: 179
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 822

November 1, 2010 3:01am