Escape from New York - 17th May 2011
For film snobs there maybe more duds than greats, but they rarely know what they're talking about, for the average viewer the quality may vary slightly but mostly I think they find them enjoyable and for the hardened fan, I would say that Carpenter barely put a foot wrong during this period.
Even if you like some of the films more than the others, it can't be denied that he has one of the most creatively interesting, diverse, artistic and fascinating resumes since Hitchcock.
Escape from New York is his second collaboration with Kurt Russell and both of them have spoken about how Snake Plissken is a character created by and very close to both of them, sharing their attitude, strength and political beliefs. Russell plays him like Clint Eastwood's futuristic 80s love baby with a chip on his shoulder. Every single one of his mannerisms is an education in purposeful cool. The one thing you can say about Snake is Russell is playing him as a hard man without a care rather than necessarily being a hard man without a care. It's almost a pastiche of a performance but I think that's maybe one of the in-jokes, especially considering everyone else in the film from Lee Van Cleef to Issac Hayes comes up to his level nothing feels out of place and the whole film plays like the greatest B-Picture ever made.
It's got the futuristic setting mixed with the decay of the past, it's got the lone gun man with an iconic look who rides into town to do a job he doesn't want to do but he has no choice, it's got ball busting militarised police, crazy sewer dwellers, a bad guy called The Duke, a strong, gutsy leading lady with a low cut dress, a cast that includes b-movie and genre icons Donald Pleasance, Harry Dean Stanton, Ernest Borgnine and it's all filmed with a slightly hyper-real comic book style where the fact that everyone is taking it so seriously is the biggest joke in the movie. It's often been imitated and never ever bettered.
As Carpenter's career moved forward so, often, did his role. Occasionally he was just a director for hire, other times he maybe wrote, maybe did the score and in the quintessential, pure Carpenter flicks he did all three. Well just as Escape maybe the best modern example of the B-Movie it may also be the most all round John Carpenter film of them all. From the cast and crew of friends to the oh so recognisable brilliant Carpenter synth score, Escape from New York is perfectly crafted, beautifully shot and interestingly written with intentionally cliche and familiar dialogue set against an original and creative plot.
The thing you realise watching it again is it gives itself time to breathe, it's pace is deliberately slower and more artistic, allowing you to create an eerie, unsettling mood and take in the incredible art direction and set design but maintains interest, intensity and drive by using the time-running-out element.
Nowadays this film would have 50 cuts a second, a charmless non-entity in the title role, utterly redundant action scenes and a hero who, deep down would really care. A modern day Escape from New York would suck big hairless balls.
Unfortunately John Carpenter's films were raided by studios unwilling to fund a Carpenter original and instead made atrociously shitty remakes from his staggering body of work. Why? nobody knows, it makes little to no sense. I could rant, kick and scream right now but I am too tired and I hope, now that the whole Gerald Butler *shudder* remake is not going ahead that they leave this one well alone because it is just brilliant, visually interesting, amusing and cliché while at the same time being seriously original and inventive.
Nothing about it needs to be remade, it looks incredible, yes it says the future is 1997 but that's part of its charm, we don't need to update things for children, they can understand the concept of a film from '81 considering '97 the future, what are we going to do, reprint all the covers and re-do the title sequence of Space 1999 to read Space 2099?
Plus just a little bit more on remakes because John Carpenter's films have been victim to this current irritating disease (as have friend and colleague George A Romero's) so it is sort of relevant. If you must remake films and I have no idea why you must, you creatively bankrupt bunch of childhood rapers, remake old bad films with good ideas that didn't have the money first time round to realise the idea don't realise established classics.
I, for one, will not be allowing my children, if I ever have any, to watch remakes. They will watch the originals as they were intended to be seen. So that there is someone left to spread the word, it's already depressing having to add either the date or the words 'the original' to a film now when you're discussing it, lets not let these remakes take over and re-write a whole history of amazing art for future generations.
There are three main exceptions to this rule: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the 70s Don Sutherland version), John Carpenter's The Thing (because it draws mainly from the book and not the original film) and the Coen Brother's True Grit. The reason these ones are exempt from my wrath should be obvious.
Anyway, back to Escape From New York, it's a really great movie, one of my faves, one of Carpenter's best and one of Russell's best. With heaps of independent spirit, a great little politically charged twist ending and even a cameo from Tom Atkins, what more could anyone want? oh and I also like the sequel, haters of the sequel are stupid and have forgotten what it was like to be young and not so judgmental.
9 out of 10 snakes in a baguette
Points from the Wife 8 out of 10
Halloween 4 & 5 - 13th May 2011
You might also have guessed that Evil Dead was what really cemented the horror genre for me because in that trilogy there is so much diversity and innovation that it pretty much sets you up for anything.
My first love though, in a lot of ways, was the original Halloween and by extension, therefor, John Carpenter films. I would've been a teenager when I discovered a lot of this stuff and I can remember at least one halloween night where Halloween one and Carrie were a notable double bill.
I am also a big lover of franchises, anything where the original people try, in some way, to forward the story, develop the characters, increase the gore and create new and innovative kills. Apart from maybe action, horror seems to be the genre where franchises thrive and why not give the audience more of what they want, you can't have too much of a good thing in my opinion.
Now purists and cynics will scoff, say it waters down the original and the sequels are only done for the money but I say nonsense, the original remains for those who want it and the sequels are there for people who want to get into the mythology and detail of the characters.
The same argument can not be used for remakes, if I have to explain in a conversation again that I mean the ORIGINAL Dawn of the Dead or the ORIGINAL Halloween, I may seriously snap, run out into the street and set fire to the first group of arseholes who look at me funny.
Now for all those who know the Halloween franchise you know that it breaks down like this:
There's the Laurie Strode Trilogy - 1, 2 & 7
There's the Jamie Lloyd Trilogy - 4, 5 & 6
There's the one that has nothing to do with Michael Myers - 3, Season of the Witch
and There's the atrociously crap one that we don't speak about in my house - 8
As for the two Rob Zombie remakes, I haven't seen them, I won't ever see them and there is a very special place in my make-believe hell for Rob Zombie next to child molesters, the CEOs of drug companies, Republican talk show hosts and Simon Cowell.
In a small side note the actress who played Jamie Lloyd in Halloween 4 & 5 then went on to be in the Rob Zombie remakes (Danielle Harris how could you!! You break my fucking heart...)
So with this blog we are dealing with parts 4 and 5 which take place 10 and 11 years respectively after the first night (parts 1&2 take place on the same night) and work from the premise that Laurie Strode and an unknown guy (someone LLoyd) had a child, Jamie, who was then fostered out into care when her parents were killed in a car accident.
Jamie now grows up in the Carruthers house hold, back in Haddonfield, where everyone is aware of who she is and, more importantly who her uncle is. Well done letting that one slip, whoever.
In the meantime Michael has been laying dormant on a gurney in the dark and spooky basement of a psychiatric hospital facility. I suppose it didn't cross anyone's mind that killing him, cutting his arms, legs and head off, sealing them in lead containers and burying them at the four corners of the globe, would have been a good idea then.
Then one dark and rainy night he is, of course, to be transported to another facility (when will bureaucrats learn!) in a rickety old ambulance where Michael, finds his moment, sits up, takes the opportunity to kill everyone and then heads off to Haddonfield to find and kill his niece.
Donald Pleasance as Dr. Sam Loomis then shows up, still scarred from the fire that you thought consumed him and Michael at the end of the second one, walking with a stick, wearing the same old raincoat and babbling like a lunatic about Michael not being human and predicting precisely where he'll go and what he'll do.
The rest of the film then plays out as an exciting and tense cat and mouse story between the whole of Haddonfield (this time the police and a gang of beer swilling, gun toting, lynch mob rednecks are in on the chase) and Michael Myers with predictable results (i.e. Michael kills almost everyone).
I personally really like Halloween 4 and I think real care was taken crafting something with a feel and mood of the first two, including a script which is peppered with very Carpenter sounding dialogue. Starting right away with the hospital orderly, who makes the most of a small role, rolling his eyes about like he's in an old Hammer horror and saying stuff about 'you never get used to their faces', through to the old preacher in the beat up pick up going on about hunting evil and of course in every single hokey warning that spews forth from Dr.Loomis' lips and which Donald Pleasance makes sound like effortless Shakespeare.
He is the reason I stick with the series, I could watch Dr.Loomis chase a plastic bag around in a garden for days as long as he kept muttering brilliant things about it being an inhuman plastic bag or possessed or something.
Other good things about the fourth part are:
The set up for the new family is nice, the interplay between the sisters works well and the little girl is not too annoying.
It's great how they bothered to explain Michael's attire of a boiler suit and a mask too, especially the latter allowing to have a neat little scare sequence in the costume dept. of a local drug store.
Lastly the idea of involving the police and the yahoos is a nice touch and feels quite authentic, even if when they do finally confront Myers, it is a little weak. Had that been the only ending I think it may have finished the franchise off right there but thankfully the proper ending, which harks back intentionally to the very beginning of the first one while setting up part 5 is absolutely brilliant and Pleasance's hammy cries of Noooooo! and the ludicrous slow motion are worthy of the price of the DVD alone.
The few downsides to this sequel are:
The pacing, there are some really slow bits in places; the acting, some of it is unforgivable in a relatively high profile film like this; the fact that they show way too much of Myers himself (although not as much as in future entries and at least there's some attempt to keep him in shadow) and yet some of the best kills are annoyingly off screen and, lastly, while the opening act has some very nice eerie feeling to it and a couple of good scares, the rest of it feels a little low on scares. These are minor quibbles, however, in the end it is a surprisingly good entry to the franchise and better than any part 4 has any right to be.
7 out of 10 pumpkins
It's a real shame that the same team behind 4 didn't then go on to make 5 because they had it right, they had the Halloween mood and feeling down and they seemed to be good at putting a story together.
That's not to say that Halloween 5 is bad, it just doesn't quite live up to the promise of the ending of number 4.
Basically Jamie is in a children's psychiatric hospital, Haddenfield has one for all ages and all occasions apparently, and she can't speak. She has endless crazy nightmares where she can physically feel, see or sense what Michael is doing, which is basically killing everyone he sees in a variety of increasingly gruesome ways. When her sister and her rampantly annoying, highly 80s friend aren't visiting and being teeth gratingly murderable, jolly mad Uncle Loomis is hanging around waiting to see if he can use the child's visions to find and capture Michael.
Nothing much happens for a while until some numb skull decides to host a party and this gives Michael the perfect excuse to splatter some red on the barn walls while he waits for Jamie to decide to talk again and then break free from the hospital with her mentally challenged boy friend and hunt him down instead, I am still not sure why. Neither do I understand why it takes him so long to kill the dark haired, crazily, hideously annoying one either.
After much shenanigans, using Jamie as bait, Loomis plans to lure Michael to his old house where the cunning old raincoat fancier has strung up a big heavy net. After spending the whole movie wandering just what the hell Loomis is doing hanging round the old Myers place and what is his grand master plan, it amounts to nothing more than what you might do to stop a bear, a tranq gun and a big net. I personally think even being in the old Myer's place is probably irrelevant.
Also Michael seems to have been redecorating because up stairs he has gothically laid out some coffins and lit about 35 dozen candles.
The film ends with them not, as I said previously, just hacking the fucker up into tiny pieces and feeding him to the birds but putting him in prison where... oh yeah the weird 'man in black' who has been wandering around following Michael ominously but who is never really explained (how threatening can he really be he travels by Greyhound bus for christ sake), has ample opportunity to blow up the police station and make his escape with Michael thus setting up part 6.
Ok so the film is mundanely directed and at no point really scary, the plot is somewhat confusing because it seems to have been scripted and edited by a mad man, or possibly by the directors ponytail, there are way too many shots of Michael, hardly any moody lighting, annoying, needless and very french moments of surreality (can anyone tell me who the very old woman in the chair, looking weird, at the party was?) and the soundtrack is utter balls.
On the upside, however, it includes a lot more gore in the far more inventive death scenes, a fairly tense laundry shoot sequence that is well done, includes the edition of the 'thorn' symbol that will be relevant in later parts and, of course, lots more Donald Pleasance genius, including him roughing up small children in a highly unsuitable way and that fearsome ending battle with Michael.
While 8 will always stand as the weakest of the series for me, mainly because it completely destroys the perfect ending of H20, 5 is probably the second weakest entry in the franchise (if my memory of 6 serves, I will have to re-watch it and add it to this blog).
Still it's better than most part 5's of anything, that I can think of, and it's important if you want to follow the mythology of Myers.
5.5 out of 10 big cookies (watch the movie and guess the reference)