That’s good, but on the other hand I definitely prefer Russell as the sardonic working class type. I’m not so sure about him driving a fancy truck like in this one or wearing a tuxedo like in EXECUTIVE DECISION. I still like him on the right side of the tracks (he was still Elvis, after all), but not as much.

Speaking of EXECUTIVE DECISION, the gone-too-soon character actor J.T. Walsh plays a truck driver who stops to help when Kurt’s truck is broken down on the highway. He seems nice, but if you’re familiar with Walsh’s work you’ll have your suspicions. Long story short Kurt’s wife gets separated from him, he can’t find her, he thinks Walsh did something with her, nobody believes him. So it’s one of these paranoid ones – what happened? Who’s in on it? How will I prove it?

I don’t have a huge amount to say about this one, because I don’t have a huge amount to feel about it. Pretty good, pretty solid, pretty forgotten already. The director is Jonathan Mostow, who’s probly better doing mid-level movies like this. It’s not as underwhelming as SURROGATES, it’s just about the right amount of whelm. It’s not as exciting as T3, but also doesn’t have to suffer from being compared to T2. It only has to live up to, I don’t know, BLACK DOG or something. I forget what BLACK DOG was about exactly.

The part I thought was most interesting is a major spoiler, so here we go. I don’t have to write spoiler in all caps because I trust you guys. What I liked was how Walsh is this J.T. Walshian asshole, the ringleader of a group of bullies who fuck with tourists, extort money from them and murder them – but then he comes home to a wife and kid who have no idea what he does out there. They think he’s a regular guy. So when Kurt shows up to the house to try to rescue his wife it seems like he’s the maniac, the home invader threatening dad/husband. It’s easy to see how they see it. And the kid knows how to shoot. Then the wife has to deal with her husband’s secret underground chamber, which holds a TEXAS CHAIN SAW style freezer with Kurt’s wife in it. You gotta admit that looks bad. Honey, I can explain. It’s not what it looks like. She told me she needed a place to stay and that it had to be small, underground and refrigerated. I was just trying to help out.

I like those types of situations in movies. I was almost more outraged on behalf of this wife than on behalf of Kurt and his wife. At least they get away. This poor lady now has to raise her kid knowing that the father was murdering people for money. And what did he even do with the money? Was she living extravagantly? Doesn’t look like it. Plus if she keeps the property what’s she gonna do with that underground chamber? She could turn it into a video game lounge or something for the kid but it’s gonna have bad memories, you know.

So that’s why it’s called BREAKDOWN, because there’s this total breakdown in this relationship, a breakdown of communication, a breakdown of respect and trust. When two people are married there shouldn’t be this big of a secret between them, this big of a wall. And even between Kurt and his wife there is kind of this wall, and they gotta break down the wall. Because when they’re sitting there after their truck breaks down, they… oh wait, it’s called BREAKDOWN because their truck breaks down. I get it now. Sorry.

Anyway the lesson is: don’t ever leave your neighborhood. Strangers will get you. You don’t belong. On the other hand Walsh should’ve left his neighborhood. Doing business at home is what got him. So if you’re a good guy don’t leave home and if you’re a bad guy then do.

[ratings]

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So now I’ve seen it and I know TANGO & CASH is a fun but not all that great 1989 action movie that personifies (moviefies?) the excess of the ’80s, and not just because it has a monster truck in it.

Stallone plays Ray Tango, a neatly groomed supercop in a grey Armani suit and Roy Scheider glasses. He’s a wealthy stock trader who still works as a narcotics cop because he needs “the action.” Kind of the good guy version of Patrick Bateman. Meanwhile Kurt Russell plays Gabe Cash (you’d think the stock trader would be Cash, come to think of it), the sloppy t-shirt wearing, long-haired, cynical hero cop from another precinct on the other and totally different side of town. Both use Unorthodox Methods (playing chicken with a semi truck, choking information out of a prisoner who pretends he doesn’t speak English). Both are celebrities, sharing the front page of the newspaper in two different unrelated stories. They have alot in common and I don’t want to give anything away but there is a slim possibility that they just might hate each other but be forced to work together through extraordinary circumstances and then slowly but surely bond and help each other and gain each other’s begrudging respect but then continue to bust each other’s balls while giving each other the manly smile of secret friendship.

The villain, played by Jack Palance, wears a white suit, spends most of the movie in a board room and calls his weapons and drugs outfit a “multibillion dollar business.” He knows all about Tango and Cash and often talks about them by their full names or as Tango and Cash, never as Cash and Tango, even though at first they’re not even friends or colleagues, they only know each other by reputation and don’t like each other at all. But I guess he is an all-knowing villain who can sense the title of the movie.

So he sets them up for the murder of an undercover cop, they go to prison, get out and come after him. It’s like RICOCHET meets THE ODD COUPLE.

The music is cheesy ’80s style keyboard and drum machines courtesy of Harold “Axel F Theme” Faltermeyer. The two leads are constantly joking, making little quips to each other, usually not very funny ones though. The tone of the movie just doesn’t ever gel, it’s constantly trying to be clever but only pulling it off every once in a while. It’s definitely closer to a serious action movie than a comedy but they try to go extra-wacky. For example, Kurt Russell dresses in drag to leave a club unseen by cops, then flirts bats his eyelashes at them like he’s Bugs Bunny or something. Also there’s a scene where Cash is getting a massage but from what is being said and from Tango’s vantage point it totally seems like he’s fuckin Teri Hatcher! Do you get it? Can you believe what a crazy misunderstanding just happened there? It’s like Three’s Company! If these jokes were really racist or homophobic they could sell them to Michael Bay.

I like seeing Stallone (or any action guy) trying to stretch it a little. But with that voice it’s a little hard to swallow. Honestly I don’t really buy him as Mr. Fancypants there, it’s worse than Steve McQueen in THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR. I don’t care if Stallone is rich in real life, the guy talks and he’s working class. Nice try though, and when he’s not talking he looks very convincing.

There are some pretty good action moments. I like when they have to jump onto a wire and slide down using their belts. This is also some of the better funny-dialogue in the movie when they discuss how electricity works.

There’s a pretty good selection of character actors in here. Philo Beddo’s pal Geoffrey Lewis is one of their captains (uncredited for some reason), Eddie Bunker is another captain, Clint Howard is Stallone’s cell mate, Michael J. Pollard is a weird inventor guy who works for the police department and therefore makes souped up vehicles and prototype weapons for Cash, Brion James is one of the bad guys (doing a really bad British accent)… you also got James Hong, Michael Jeter, Lewis Arquette, and an uncredited Billy Blanks (I didn’t notice it was him).

Most memorable is Robert Z’Dar as an inmate who wants to kill Tango because he broke his jaw on the streets (”That jaw?” Cash asks). Z’Dar is a topic I don’t think we’ve ever discussed here. Holy shit. Have you seen this guy? He looks like they transplanted a dinosaur’s jawbone into him by mistake. He’s intimidating for all the traditional reasons but if you had him after you you just know you’d get distracted staring at that mother and then he’d bite your arm off or just give you a fatal chinbutt or something. He should just go by his last name so he sounds like an evil space dictator, because he’s earned it.

I should also note that Teri Hatcher is the female lead in the movie but she’s not that bad I guess.

One possible reason for the weirdly off feel of the movie is that the director was not a Hollywood guy. Starngely enough it was directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, the Russian director of UNCLE VANYA and SIBERIADE and co-writer of Andrei Tarkovsky’s ANDREI RUBLEV. And I imagine either he didn’t really know how to handle it or (equally or more likely) the Hollywood types kept second guessing him and fucking everything up. According to the usual internet sources Albert Magnoli, director of PURPLE RAIN, took over late in production. Stallone also fired original director of photography Barry Sonnenfeld (even though back then he seemed like a genius because of RAISING ARIZONA and all that), and the movie was supposedly rescued by LETHAL WEAPON editor and EXECUTIVE DECISION director Stuart Baird in the editing room.

I don’t know man, I guess I don’t really get it. It’s worth watching to see all these guys together, and especially the two stars, but it’s a little forced and has way too many winks at the audience. Okay, I get why it’s supposed to be funny when somebody mentions Rambo and Tango says “Rambo is a pussy,” but what about this part where they’re discussing breakfast pastries and he says “I hate Danish”? I had to read IMDb trivia to learn that line was supposed to be funny because he had recently been divorced from Brigitte Nielsen. So, uh, that is not really a joke that lasted 20 years in my opinion.

Still, it has something. Not sure what.

[ratings]

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The movie begins in the ’90s with a group of babies being taken out of a hospital into military custody (wonder if the parents noticed?) where they will be raised to be super soldiers. The opening is a montage of these soldiers from infancy to their 40s, being indoctrinated, training and participating in various intergalactic conflicts. I was impressed that I could immediately tell which kid was supposed to be Kurt Russell. I thought they did an amazing job of finding a kid who looked like him, but then I found out they just cast his son, which is kind of cheating. Anyway this character’s name is Todd, but don’t worry, if you forget that it’s tattooed on his face, they all have their names and numbers tattooed on their faces. (I honestly think it would be cool if the movie was called TODD.)

Of course, they get the usual kind of training – running, shooting practice, etc. – but also they have to watch three dobermans fight a boar without looking away. So you can understand how this kid grows up into a stoic, glassy-eyed Kurt Russell, sort of channeling Michael Dudikoff in AMERICAN NINJA. I don’t mean that as mockery either, I thought Kurt Russell was great in this role. He is credible as a great soldier and also as a sort of Frankenstein monster who doesn’t know how to relate to normal humans.

The real story begins when the soldiers are in peace time (”in between wars”), pretty much just sitting there motionless. (That’s what they do.) Todd is the best of the bunch, so he gets to sit at the front. Then Jason Isaacs (with sinister mustache) shows up to brag about his new model of super soldiers, distinguished by their tank tops and led by Caine (Jason Scott Lee, now bald and looking about twice as big as he was when he played Bruce Lee.)

Gary Busey, who commands the old models, wants to stick with them because they’ve done a good job and he doesn’t see how these new ones could be so much better. (Sort of how I feel about Blu-Ray vs. DVD.) The difference is that the new ones were created from ideal DNA profiles, no more of that bullshit of just taking any old baby and training it from birth. They’re starting earlier.
So to test them out, Todd and Caine are pitted against each other in a series of tests, including running 15 miles, climbing a chain, and fighting to the death. I like this because Busey is standing up for Todd and the others, he obviously feels bad for them being tossed off like obsolete machines, and yet he still treats them like machines, commanding them to fight other people. At best he’s treating them like fighting chickens.

Not surprisingly, Caine wins, and Todd and two others are thrown in the garbage. But Todd’s not quite dead, so he ends up a refugee on the landfill planet where all the garbage gets dumped.

So then it’s kind of a western, this mysterious killer drifts into a colony formed from the survivors of a space ship crash. They welcome him. He saves a guy’s life. But he scares the shit out of everybody, and their merrymaking scares him. It seems like anything could set him off. He trains by using a big metal engine as a punching bag. Then a guy gives him a scarf.

In a way, Todd is the classic troubled Vietnam vet. He is John Rambo. They taught him how to kill but they didn’t teach him how to turn it off. In fact, they literally didn’t teach him anything else, he’s been doing this shit since he was born. I bet he never even read Paddington Bear or anything like that.
So Todd gets cast away from the colony, but when those people are endangered by the super soldiers who also rejected him he chooses the side of the civilians.

This is a beautiful action movie setup for many reasons. He gets to prove himself to the colony by showing that his skills can help them. He gets to prove himself to the military by destroying their supposedly superior new models. And the geography and characteristics of the battleground have been carefully and subtly set up earlier in the movie, making for some satisfying payoffs. It’s also cool because he does take them on single-handedly. Connie Nielsen tells him they are not cowards and that they will help, so you figure he’ll teach them some moves and give them weapons. That’s what usually happens. But he tells them no, he will handle it himself, so you figure at some point he’ll be in trouble and then they’ll all come out and show their solidarity by risking themselves for him… but that doesn’t happen either. Nope, it’s Kurt Russell vs. everybody.

I can’t pretend to understand the reasons people hated this movie, but I bet part of it comes from the pedigree of the script. It was written by David Webb Peoples, one of the writers of BLADE RUNNER and the writer of UNFORGIVEN. At least one of those is a masterpiece, and most people would say both. They are movies that try to transcend their genre a little, and say something about the human condition or some shit like that. So that’s what people want from this movie, even knowing it’s the director of god damn MORTAL KOMBAT. Making expectations even higher, it was said that the script took place in the same world as BLADE RUNNER, and apparently there are some visual references to that in the movie (although I never noticed them).

Well, Paul W.S. Anderson is no Ridley-Scott-at-his-peak. I can see how this script could’ve been given to a better director and it could’ve been a masterpiece. If this same story took place in a more vivid and atmospheric type of world, like an ALIEN, it would be one for the record books. Instead it feels kind of like a precursor to CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK. I think that’s where my colleague Mr. Knowles was coming from 11 years ago when he complained that they didn’t have some battle that was in the script and the acting is the worst ever and the movie is shit. He was imagining the groundbreaking sci-fi masterpiece it maybe could’ve been, who knows.

But you know, coulda woulda shoulda. For what it is, SOLDIER is very enjoyable. When held up to UNFORGIVEN, yes, it is bad. But compared to UNIVERSAL SOLDIER it’s fucking great. If you see it as lowbrow sci-fi action it actually transcends its genre because it seems serious about this poetic idea of a killer finding a small piece of humanity. I’m not saying this is THEY LIVE or anything, but it’s somewhere near that neighborhood, the effective b-movie that also has a little something to say if you’re open to it.

[ratings]

The opening scene of the movie is classic. It fades in on Egg Shen, the driver of a tour bus in Chinatown, being interviewed by a lawyer about “what happened.” We know that something big and crazy happened, that a whole block erupted into “green flames,” and that people want to know where “Jack Burton and his truck” are. Shen admits that he believes in Chinese black magic and when the lawyer asks why he should believe in it Shen holds up his hands and shoots bolts of green lightning between them. “See?” he says. “That was nothing. But that’s how it always begins. Very small.” Then it cuts to a shot of a truck as the opening credits begin, and you realize “okay, a truck. This must be that Jack Burton they were so concerned about.” Classic!

So I was kind of surprised to learn from the commentary track that the scene was a concession to the studio. Barry Diller, chairman and CEO of Fox at the time, demanded and helped write the scene to make Jack Burton seem “more heroic.” Which is kind of going against the whole joke of the movie that he’s the main character but not exactly the hero. His buddy Wang (Dennis Dun) is smaller than him and seems like the sidekick, but is actually far more capable than him. This is probaly Carpenter’s most overtly comedic movie and that idea of this blowhard thinking he’s the reluctant hero when he’s actually not doing much is where alot of the laughs come from. For example during one of the big fights he fires his gun in the air causing a piece of the ceiling to break off, fall on his head and knock him out while the others do battle. Later he confidently pulls out a knife and you think “How does he know how to throw knives?” but then he throws it and in fact he doesn’t know how – it flops through the air and bounces off a gong.

And come to think of it, his adventures don’t begin “very small” either. Unless you consider gangsters kidnapping Wang’s girlfriend at the airport and luring them into a gun, sword and magic battle with people flying around shooting lightning to be “very small.” So I guess I can see how that opening scene doesn’t fit. I still think it’s a badass way to start the movie, though.

I’ve watched this movie many times since the ’80s and I’ve always enjoyed it, but I gotta admit it’s not as streamlined as the better John Carpenter pictures. In the middle section it gets pretty repetitive and hung up in that ’80s adventure movie thing where the characters have to climb around through an ancient underground structure with secret passages, traps and chutes (at least this one doesn’t look like a waterslide like they usually do). One way Carpenter makes it stand out from the other movies of this type though is the great special effects for the occasional monster or weird transformation. There’s a part where a guy puffs himself up like a balloon that looks pretty amazing, and even more impressive is when the villain Lo Pan glows from inside his head – I’m not even sure how they did that. And it also stands out by not treating these supernatural acts with any reverance. Whenever Jack sees another impossible sight he gets pissed off and starts ranting about it. When they face off with a big levitating ball of flesh covered in eyes called a “Guardian” Jack shoots it in the nose and says “You never know until you try.”

I also gotta admit it’s kind of a throwback to the racist days of Fu-Man Chu and Charlie Chan and Dragon Ladies and Opium Dens, the Exotic Mysteries of the Orient and What Have You. But I don’t know, I’d be interested to know what any of my readers of Chinese descent think of it. It does have the spooky old creep with long fingernails doing magic, but the rest of the bad guys are all pretty badass. And it’s got the lovable old Egg Shen who’s definitely a stereotype, but the rest of the good guys are more down to earth.

There’s better martial arts than your usual American movie of the time. The Three Storms, with their giant shinobi hats and wire-fu floating powers, seem like something out of an authentic martial arts film more than an American studio film. That said, it’s not like a great Shaw Brothers movie or something. That stuff is more like background mayhem for the real attraction, which is Jack Burton.

For Snake Plissken Russell seemed to be channeling Clint Eastwood, Jack Burton talks a little more like John Wayne. But he’s much more of an egomaniac and a doofus than Wayne ever played. It’s a really funny character, so not surprisingly fans still dream of a sequel. The only problem is that not only is Jack reluctant, he’s not very effective. So it’s not like if there was some new problem that came up they would need his help. I just learned that they did come close to making a sequel in ‘95, but it would’ve been a TV movie, and skimming through the script it looks like they didn’t even include the character of Jack! I’m not sure why anybody would want to see that.

The out of print DVD from Anchor Bay is a good one because it has a funny commentary track with both Carpenter and Russell. Russell sure laughs alot. This is the one where Russell goes off on a long tangent about his son’s hockey team before suddenly remembering that he’s doing a commentary track and that people might not be interested in that. The DVD also has a hilarious music video for the theme song – hilarious because it shows John Carpenter himself singing and rocking out. His bandmates in The Coup De Villes are Tommy Lee Wallace (writer/director of HALLOWEEN III and VAMPIRES: LOS MUERTOS) and Nick Castle (the original Michael Meyers and director of THE LAST STARFIGHTER). I do not recommend watching this movie when you’re sick like I did though, because having that song looped all night in your fever dreams is worse than when the same thing happened to me with the ROCKY theme. Under normal health conditions though this is a goofy but worthwhile viewing experience.

[ratings]

So in that sense GRINDHOUSE is even better than you realize at first glance. It’s a good time at the movies AND it lost money for some assholes. Two birds with one stone, in the form of two movies.

Down to business: I was one of the people who thought Rodriguez’s PLANET TERROR was kind of a fun fake movie but Tarantino’s DEATH PROOF was a good actual movie. I liked it. So that’s where I’m coming from reviewing the new DEATH PROOF dvd out today. A guy who bought the dvd because he likes the movie.

That’s right, the DEATH PROOF dvd. As opposed to the GRINDHOUSE dvd that would contain the original double feature as shown to packed houses on the outer edges of the United States. You may say wait a minute, why are these bloodsuckers releasing the two movies on dvd separately? No longer a double feature? Without even including the trailers? And as if we are so stupid that we don’t know they’re gonna release it as a double feature later?

These are all valid points and clearly those snakehearted fuckers are doing it for the money. But by accident there is a certain logic to it. Think of it this way. There have been many double features throughout time, it has rarely been a permanent state. I remember in the late ’80s for example seeing a double feature of I’M GONNA GIT YOU SUCKA and THE FLY 2. For real. So to me that’s how those movies were meant to be seen, but you can’t buy them on one DVD. A double feature is a fleeting moment in time, a limited time offer, like a Christo installation, a snow sculpture, or the “eggnog” milkshake that becomes “tom and jerry” when it’s not winter. You appreciate it when it comes around but you can’t have Christmas every day. Unless you work in one of those year round Christmas stores. In which case I hope you get paid well you poor bastard.

Also, I gotta be honest, there’s not much of a chance I would sit and watch the whole double feature again. I saw it twice in theaters but on home video how often are you gonna watch two movies in a row that are pre-programmed for you by the Weinsteins? Not often. I do like those double feature dvds with the trailers that Dark Sky puts out, but those I don’t watch the whole thing in one sitting either.

So I really can’t be too upset about it personally. Your mileage may vary. (That is not some car pun because of the movie being about cars, I am just using a common idiom.) In order to justify the separation this is the longer European cut with the “missing reel” lapdance scene and other additions. I don’t know how the fuck they’re gonna do it with PLANET TERROR since you would never want the “missing reel” to be in there, and the movie is probaly a little too long as it is. But with DEATH PROOF it seems kind of like a movie that had a bunch of different releases and you’re seeing a version with parts you never knew were cut out before.

So you got the lapdance scene, that’s self-explanatory. (if you need it explained, what happens is she gives him a lapdance.) The other most noticeable addition is a long black and white sequence at a convenience store before Rosario, Kim and Lucy McClane pick up Zoe at the airport. Nicky Katt from THE LIMEY plays the clerk. The highlight is when Stuntman Mike pretends to drop his keys so he can lick Rosario’s foot. I was surprised it was Kurt Russell’s character that did that, you’d think Tarantino’s character Warren the bartender would’ve been the one to do it. It would make no sense for him to be out there in Tennessee stalking girls in a minimart parking lot, but I’m sure he could’ve figured something out. But he didn’t, he had Stuntman Mike do it for the sake of the story. Way to take one for the team Tarantino.

I liked seeing this scene, but I didn’t really think it needed to be in the movie. I especially didn’t see any reason for it to be in black and white, that just seemed like screwin off. It’s a good deleted scene but it doesn’t add enough to justify how much it slows things down. On the other hand, it does make the ending make a little more sense. Knowing how long this guy has been stalking them makes it a little more believable that they would want to kill him.

There are other scenes that aren’t new but are longer. One little thing that really changes the way the story unfolds is in the first half there’s a scene where Stuntman Mike is in his car laughing sinisterly and looking at the photos of his “girlfriends.” It kind of reminds me of MANIAC or one of those other early ’80s stalker movies. I liked in the theatrical cut that there really wasn’t an acknowledgment that he was evil until he turned left when Rose MacGowan wanted to turn right. You’d seen his car looking ominous but that could’ve always been a trick, he could turn out to be the guy who protects the girls from the slasher. In this “Extended and Unrated” cut you know that can’t happen because you see him cackling and collecting spy photos early on. The cat is out of the bag.

My favorite addition for this cut is in the Earl McGraw scene in the middle, the bridge between the two halves of the movie where he explains the concept that car crashes are “the only way that degenerate sonofabitch can shoot his goo.” The scene is a little longer and includes a part where he brings up the possibility of investigating Stuntman Mike, dogging him like Dr. Loomis, but he decides against it. I won’t give away the joke, but there’s some good new lines, it’s always good to see that character.

I know you’re supposed to want to see the longer, uncut version, but sometimes shorter is better. DAWN OF THE DEAD for example, the long one from Cannes is nice but I go for the theatrical cut. History repeats itself here, I liked the shorter version better. It was more efficient. The long one doesn’t ruin it though. I still like it.

The transfer looks real nice, whatever the process he’s using to make it look like a cheap ’70s movie at the beginning, it looks even better on here. If you like the movie like I do the extras are pretty good too, definitely better than on those KILL BILL dvds. (hey bloodsuckers, when you gonna double dip us on those?) The best is a feature on “The Legendary Drivers of DEATH PROOF.” One particular shot they talk about involves 3 generations of stunt drivers plus Zoe Bell on the hood of the car. In context it’s a cool shot but not one that would necessarily jump out at you, so it’s cool to see them explain the significance of it to the stunt drivers.

There’s also one called “The Guys of DEATH PROOF,” which talks about some of these actors you forget are even in the movie since you pay more attention to the girls, and should be ashamed of yourself. I heard Eli Roth interviewed a while back and he told the story of filming the scene where he makes fun of Stuntman Mike (”he cut himself falling out of his time machine”) and it’s funny because they actually show footage of it happening and everything is pretty much exactly how Roth told the story, including Russell throwing nachos at him and Roth proclaiming THE THING his favorite movie of all time.

The extra I was most excited for was “Quentin’s Greatest Collaborator: Sally Menke.” Unfortunately it’s not a real thorough study or retrospective on her editing. But it is kind of amusing. It starts with Tarantino singing Menke’s praises and ends with a long montage of takes where the DEATH PROOF actors turn to the camera and say “Hi Sally.” The best is Zoe Bell saying it from the hood of the VANISHING POINT Charger.

As usual for Tarantino, no commentary. Guess he’s not much of a talker. Real shy. It’s not an overwhelming amount of extras, and they have the balls to list the trailer for DOUBLE DARE (really good Zoe Bell-featuring documentary about stuntwomen) as a special feature. But it’s a good dvd. If you like the movie.

And alot of you hate the movie. I know when the double feature came out, DEATH PROOF was by far the least popular in the talkbacks. I didn’t take alot of you seriously because you were calling the characters bitches and cunts, but there were plenty of reasonable people who didn’t like it. And at least one of you asked me to explain why, exactly, I did like it.

I may be a charming fella but I’m not gonna be able to talk anybody into liking it. I will say a few things though on its behalf. (And before you say this review is too long, fuck you, you got eyes, you knew what you were getting into, and I thoughtfully divided it into three parts so you’d have plenty of chances to take the coward’s way out.) One of the complaints I heard was that it supposedly didn’t fit the “grindhouse” theme it was advertised under. I disagree. I took it as a tribute to movies like TWO LANE BLACKTOP, artier independent car movies marketed with their exploitation elements. (This cover even fits that, they show off the female curves and the box is made to look beat up and “grindhouse” but it also has the logo for “Festival de Cannes Official Selection.”) Those arty car movies tend to be dry and quiet though, this is kind of in the other direction, lots of talking before the car chase at the end.

And it’s true, especially watching it the third time around, alot of that talking is not as funny or interesting as what they’re talking about in the other Tarantino movies. That’s a fair criticism. Jungle Julia especially starts to seem a little too full of herself with her soliloquy about Butterfly and her poem and lapdance situation.

But people that hate it don’t acknowledge how the dialogue does its job under the radar. In the first half these discussions set up all the slasher movie expectations – we learn that our heroines smoke weed and drink booze, they like boys, they flaunt their sexuality, they’re going to a cabin, and Butterfly refrains from going all the way with her date. Visually, Tarantino emphasizes that she should be the “final girl” who survives at the end. She’s the only one who notices him following them, the only one afraid of him. So it seems like they should go out to the cabin and be picked off one by one until Butterfly pulls it together and, say, runs over Mike while yelling that poem menacingly.

Instead he kills them all in one crash, running down the whole slasher movie formula. Whoops, start over.

Then there’s the bridge with Earl McGraw which is like the end of PSYCHO, the explanation of the psychology of the character. (That’s the comparison that came to mind when I saw it, and Tarantino uses it in the extras on the DVD. dude, I’m totally on the same page as Tarantino, I must really GET IT! That’s the problem, you guys just don’t GET IT like I do. People who GET IT get it, why can’ t you?)

In the second half the conversations are more important because they’re setting up what’s really gonna happen instead of what you’re supposed to think is gonna happen. For example, there’s a funny conversation that establishes that Kim has a gun, and that she’s happy to use it. That she believes in killing someone who tries to harm her. And there’s the story about Zoe falling into the ditch that establishes the spectacular car chase scene that’s pretty much the reason for the movie.

The car gets to star in the poster, but to me Zoe Bell is the star of DEATH PROOF. She’s the main thing that makes it special. I have no doubt that if she looked like some Bratz doll and was on the O.C. even you “haterz” would be sacrificing animals at her altar. Instead she looks like a normal person. But she’s not a normal person. She’s Xena flying through the air on fire, she’s Beatrix Kiddo running up that handrail in the House of Blue Leaves, she’s Zoe the Cat falling in the ditch and not getting hurt, she’s fucking DEATH PROOF, as much the reason for the title as Stuntman Mike’s car is. I think what Tarantino did was brilliant, to take this likable woman and turn her into an actress to create the weird circumstance of now seeing this same woman who we have been hanging out with actually, for real, put in this death-defying situation. The car chase is great, the crashes are great, the old school way it’s all staged and filmed is great, the organic has-CGI-even-been-invented-yet?-feel is great– but it’s Zoe, in the middle, on the hood, clinging on for dear life, and then later picking up a metal rod and jumping on the side of the car, ready to beat the hell out of Stuntman Mike and his death proof car – that’s DEATH PROOF.

Okay, maybe you don’t like it. Can we at least agree on MACHETE? You motherfuckers want our money, you need to hurry up and make MACHETE!

Originally published at Aint-It-Cool-News: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/34089

[ratings]

PREAMBLE

Here in the US these two movies were designed and released as a double feature with trailers for fictional movies in between. They were released under one unifying name that starts with a ‘G’ that is a word used to describe the shitty theaters that used to churn out sleazy horror, sexploitation, kung fu and blaxploitation movies back in the day.

I am not going to be using the g-word in this review, because I am sick and fucking tired of hearing it. It’s a perfectly legitimate title for this concept, but here is the problem. Mr. Tarantino is a huge fan and expert on these types of movies, he is the human IMDb judging from some of those interviews. So I don’t mind seeing him talk about it in every article about KILL BILL VOLUME 1 and then KILL BILL VOLUME 2 and then when they announced this g-word movie, and then while he was filming it and now to promote its release. Tarantino can use the g-word all he wants, he has earned it. So I don’t mind him and the trailers for his movie trying to explain to the kids what the g-word means.

That’s him, that’s his thing. But it makes me want to jump out a window to read the guy from the local newspaper or the dumbed down weekly entertainment magazine deciding that he too has to explain to you what it is.

You know what man, we know what it is. If we didn’t know what it was, we could look it up on the internet like we did when they put out those ads for DISTRICT B13 that pretended like everybody knew what “parkour” meant. The point is, we can handle this without you, we don’t believe that you have any personal knowledge of this subject. So shut the fuck up.

A couple years ago you could’ve read 150 articles about the same movies being referred to as g********e today, and you wouldn’t see more than a handful of uses of the g-word. You would see them called B movies, exploitation movies, drive-in movies, cult movies, genre movies, midnight movies. Sometimes they’d use words to describe them like slashers, sleazies, cheapies, no-budget, grade-Z, and yes, every once in a while, g—-house. You’d probaly even see “psychotronic” or “video nasties” used at least as often as g********e. Now Tarantino drops the word in enough interviews, all the sudden it’s g this and g that. G this that and the other. This was already bugging me after KILL BILL, now it’s the fuckin bubonic plague. I’ve seen reviews by my internet colleagues where the word is used as many as ten times. Come on, man. If Tarantino used the phrase “jump off a bridge” too many times would you use the phrase “jump off a bridge” too many times? I hope not. Let’s put that bitch to rest, please.

The worst part is Tarantino really fucking loves these movies, for real, he sees beauty in them that Joe Local Paid Movie Critic will never see even wearing night vision goggles. But by the time it’s written up in the magazine it comes off like “hey everybody, let’s have some fun wink wink look at these funny old movies, it’s so stoopid I LOVE IT!”

Going to movies on 42nd street is not a part of my life experience. I understand it smelled like pee and a guy was jerkin off or something, I believe is what I read. Apparently the print quality was poor and a rat was fuckin two spiders over in the corner – I don’t know, I wasn’t there. But I do like alot of these movies. I had a chance to literally go to the mat for LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and I turned it down, but I would have to say I respect it more than the average joe. Most people don’t get the opportunity to turn down that opportunity. So I understand the nostalgia, the fetish for the look of scratches on film and old fashioned studio logos and the sound of the trailer narrator’s voice. I dig all those things, I want to see them, but I also want to see some good movies. I want to see that really good g-word movie you were hoping to see every time you went into the g-house, not the other ones that you usually got. The carrot on the end of the stick, the light at the end of the tunnel, the light that’s shining on a carrot. Don’t let me down, boys.

First up in the double bill is PLANET TERROR by Robert Rodriguez. This is a cartoony take on a gloomy zombie movie. Bruce has a small role as a special ops badass who, it is noted, killed bin Laden. (Yippee kay yay.) They don’t mention whether or not he let Geraldo bronze the head. Anyway, Bruce is involved in an incident which causes the release of a deadly gas which turns the inhabitants of the nearby Texas town into “sickos,” melty faced cannibal motherfuckers. The story follows a couple different characters as they try to fight off the zombies.

Rodriguez seems like a pretty cool guy, he’s a dude that took the money from volunteering for medical experiments and built it into a multi-million dollar full service movies studio and effects company that he runs out of his house. Holy shit now that I put it that way the guy is fucking Scarface. Anyway, I think he’s one of those guys who’s both underrated and overrated, depending on who you ask. I love his MARIACHI trilogy and some of the others are fun but usually a mixed bag. PLANET TERROR is no different.

This movie is the fetishistic all-surface homage that you expect out of the g-house project. But not so much an homage to the g-word as to my man John Carpenter in his sci-fi mode. The night skies and fog and the helicopters remind you of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. And the score (by Rodriguez, he has to play every role like Eddie Murphy in NORBIT or Tom Hanks in POLAR EXPRESS) is mostly retro keyboard blorts and buzzes like Carpenter used to do, with an occasional slice of Goblin. Good stuff. The movie is shot digital like he always does now but then he layers it with all kinds of phony grain, blur, scratches and broken splices. I think he kind of overdoes it but it’s a fairly authentic look.

The characters are .5 dimensional. Rose McGowan’s one-legged stripper Cherry Darling comes the closest to bringing something extra to her cartoon emotions. I like the opening credits of her dancing in the club, ending with her in tears. At the end she gets a machine gun for a leg and uses the same go-go moves to plow down motherfuckers. And when she does that she doesn’t cry.

The other main character is El Wray, played by Freddy Rodriguez (actually, Robert Rodriguez in disguise, another example of how he has to do everything in his movies [just jerkin your chain bud, Freddy is the guy from DEAD PRESIDENTS]). He is some sort of notorious in-trouble-with-the-law local who we sort of find out (although the explanation is purposely missing from the movie) also has a Seagalian past of some kind. The way the character is presented is cool and Freddy does what he can but let’s face it, he’s not Kurt Russell or Roddy Piper, and he’s not even Ice Cube. He’s a 5′6″ baby-faced little fella who is a good actor but just because he does a flip off a wall in one part does not make him a badass presence. Sorry bud just tellin it like it is.

And if you’re making a John Carpenter action movie but you don’t have a Snake Plissken or a Jack Burton or a George Nada, that sort of means you’re making GHOSTS OF MARS, doesn’t it?

I think the problem with Rodriguez is that he’s gone completely digital, but his talents are analog. He’s a guy who grew up making movies on camcorders and editing them together by dubbing from one VCR to another. So he knows how to edit together shots to tell a story well. In my opinion, it’s when he gets into all these green screens and digital whatsits or even old fashioned special effects that he loses control and starts making a mess of those basics he’s normally so good at. I think he’s best when he’s got an actual guy standing in the actual outdoors, with real sun shining on him. He knows exactly where to put the camera and how to edit it later. If you look at all those gunfights in DESPERADO for example, he knows how to put an action scene together, make it thrilling and beautiful, and in the process he invests these ridiculous characters with more emotional depth than should be possible. But ever since SPY KIDS he’s been doing his homegrown cartoon special effects and at the same time the stories get sloppier and less effective and it becomes harder and harder to think of the characters as people.

Actually maybe the best place to trace it to is the pre-digital FROM DUSK TILL DAWN. The first half is what I love about Rodriguez and the second half is what mildly amuses me about him. He puts in some clever gags and it’s kind of fun but it just turns into a bunch of chaos and cartoony silliness and you lose the character and story that you get when he’s more stripped down.

To be fair, ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO is shot digitally and has tons of effects shots in it, but it LOOKS organic. I had no idea. So maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, PLANET TERROR is more like the second half of FROM DUSK TILL DAWN. It’s a movie that has all kinds of cool stuff in it, which is a plus. They have Bruce in there, they have Tom Savini with a gorey death, they have Tarantino in a vanity role as “Rapist #1,” they have roles for Michael Biehn and even the original Mariachi Carlos Gallardo, they have a scene where a guy falls down and his mouth touches a severed testacle, and he deserves it. But what they don’t have, in my opinion, is heart. You have to really put some effort into it to convince yourself you care about Cherry and El Wray’s love at the end. This reminds me more of Rodriguez’s made for cable movie ROADRACERS than any of his theatrical releases. There’s a part where a little kid dies out of the blue but the context of the story is so un-serious that instead of getting upset you just wonder what that was all about. There’s nothing to make it work as a real horror movie and the jokes (although funny) aren’t enough to make it a real comedy. It’s not a real movie, it’s a nice homage to a real movie.

But Tarantino’s DEATH PROOF is a real movie. On the old double features the second one was supposed to be the B movie, the not as good one. Sure enough this one is smaller and cheaper, but it also happens to be better in every way. It takes some of the structure of a real good, serious slasher movie and it Tarantino-izes it. He builds to scares in a strong, traditional way but he spends most of the movie on dialogue and characters and good acting, the things nobody expects to see in a slasher movie.

Basically, this is a movie about girls hanging out talking, and then they run into a maniac who gets off on killing women in car crashes. Kind of a hard fetish to live with I’m sure, but I can’t really feel sorry for the guy. Kurt Russell is not exactly back in Snake Plissken mode, but man is he great as Stuntman Mike, the car crash pervert. But he’s not the star, he is actually a distant threat for most of the movie, he is the stalker.

The structure is perfect for a slasher story but the balance you expect is thrown off because most of the screen time is given to conversation and much less than usual is given to the actual horror. For the first half it doesn’t seem weird because you establish this car with an unseen driver following, then you slowly establish who Stuntman Mike is, you have him moving in, then suddenly he strikes and there are some deaths in one of the most amazing car crash sequences I can think of. At this point Tarantino brings in his recurring character Sheriff Earl McGraw (he was in FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, KILL BILL VOLUME 1, and even PLANET TERROR) for one scene where he acts as the psychologist at the end of PSYCHO, the guy who explains what’s going on here in this sicko’s mind.

In that first half there is all this talk of the girls going to a lake house, which is of course a common staging ground for some slashing. But just like we never saw the movie THE LAKE HOUSE starring Sandra Bullock, we never do see this lake house the girls are going to. Instead we meet another group of girls who Stuntman Mike is stalking (there’s a shot of him photographing that’s straight out of SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE). These girls are in town to film a movie, and two of them are stunt women, played by actual stunt women. [UPDATE: I was wrong, only Zoe Bell is an actual stunt woman, but I'm leaving my fuckup in to show how humble I am.] The most notable one (because she ends up doing some amazing stunts) is Zoe Bell, the New Zealander who was Uma Thurman’s stunt double for KILL BILL, and here she is playing herself. The end of the movie turns out to be about what happens when Stuntman Mike fucks with the wrong group of girls. I saw the movie a couple days ago and just today it occurred to me that DEATH PROOF not only refers to Stuntman Mike’s car, but to Zoe Bell, the world’s luckiest stunt woman.

Now, as a fan of the old slasher movies this structure is a little bit weird to me, and I’ll tell you why. There are two main types of slasher movies, the ones where the girl gets away and the ones where the girl goes back and gets revenge. But usually before the revenge the girl has to go through hell, especially in those movies like I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE. That one was obviously designed as a feminist story but because you have to watch the vilest shit imaginable to get to the girl power, nobody really believed it was sincere. Even in the good old fashioned rape-free movies you’re gonna see the killer rack up a hell of a body count before he gets an ax in the head, and the girl is gonna be terrorized all over town before she gives the killer what he’s got comin.

That is my one minor complaint about DEATH PROOF. There is one very impressive murder scene, and one very impressive attack scene, and then they immediately turn around and get their revenge. Gleefully. Not psychotic gleeful, but cute gleeful, bloody revenge as girl’s night out. And it’s all so sudden. The way it goes down is definitely fun. Really, I liked it. But I think if Tarantino had put them through some more terror first then the end would’ve been all that more earned, all that more satisfying.

But oh well. It’s clear what Tarantino has in mind. The movie referenced the most in DEATH PROOF is not a slasher movie at all, it’s VANISHING POINT, one of the artier of the g.h. works. True, it’s more of a crowdpleaser than TWO LANE BLACKTOP, but it’s not just a bunch of cars flipping and going off jumps, there’s some quiet brooding and shit in that movie. This is much more upbeat, but it’s the same kind of thing, trying to go a little arty but also have some great car stunts.

I have learned from dipping into the dark underworld of the talkbacks that DEATH PROOF seems to be the less popular one, most people saying it’s boring because it’s all talk and the dialogue is terrible, and occasionally these talkbackers describe the women in the movie as bitches or cunts. Just for a touch of class. Well, more power to you guys but man oh man can I not relate to that. I’m not gonna say this is Tarantino’s best dialogue, and of course there is a bit of a formula to it, you notice any movie reference he makes and it can get self conscious at times. But I like watching these characters talk to each other. I like when Stuntman Mike is going through all the stars he’s doubled for, naming off shows like THE VIRGINIAN and VEGA$, the kinds of references Tarantino likes to make, and suddenly he slows to a stop as he realizes that these girls don’t have a clue about any of these people or shows he’s talking about, and then he goes away and sulks, realizing he’s an old man.

Some people say Tarantino’s dialogue is realistic, which is bullshit. That’s not the point. The conversations are stylized and structured into stories and create an artificial rendition of real conversation. And they slyly drop details that set up what would happen later in a regular slasher movie – and then it doesn’t. So when you get to the second gang of women and you listen to them talk shit to each other you don’t know if this is going to go anywhere or not, but what they’re talking about does indeed set up what you need to know for the thrilling no CGI car stunt finale.

And I honestly wasn’t bored for a second, not just because I think this is indeed well written dialogue but because of some damn good performances. Tarantino does both his “good performance out of somebody you didn’t expect it from” trick and his “good performance out of somebody you never heard of before” one. Rosario Dawson is better than I’ve ever seen her. Sidney Poitier’s daughter Sydney is great. Most amazingly, Zoe Bell is perfect as an actress, then ends up doing these incredible stunts. You become very invested in this character Zoe and then you see her – the character and the real person – hanging on for dear life on the front of a fast moving car. For real. Not since the old Jackie Chan movies have I felt so concerned about bodily harm being done to an actor.

One complaint I’ve seen is that these two were made with a combined budget of $50 some million, which is alot more than it cost to make BLOODSUCKING FREAKS. Well, it seems to me you guys are missing the point. This is not supposed to be some Dogme exercise, it’s a tribute. Please point me to the guy who expected STAR WARS or INDIANA JONES to be made with the budget constraints of the serials that inspired them. These guys are like every generation of directors, they get all nostalgic for the movies they grew up on but they turn it into their own thing. John Carpenter is always trying to make a Howard Hawks movie, but nobody gets mad at him for having a bigger budget, using color film and not putting Kurt Russell in a cowboy hat. Because that would be stupid.

Not that I would be against seeing what they would do using low budgets again. But keep in mind that H.G. Lewis’s BLOOD FEAST had more than three times the budget of EL MARIACHI, not even including inflation. So it’s not like they have anything to prove. Plus, wouldn’t it almost be an insult to the g-house directors if they tried to follow some kind of budget and schedule constraints to make it authentic? Hello, we are making movies with the same limitations they had back then, but because we are of the 2000s and are big time Hollywood directors ours will be really good and you should pay $9.50 to see them.

Anyway, the one drawback to this being a double feature is that it might make me hesitate to see it again in a theater. Maybe I’ll still do it but it’s really DEATH PROOF I want to see again. Still, it’s a fun night at the movies and a good value for the cash-strapped individuals like myself who would’ve paid separately to see both anyway. The fake trailers and vintage intros are great too. I do wish they hadn’t hyped what the different trailers are because they’re all pretty funny but would be better if you didn’t see them coming. They got one by Eli Roth (the narrator sucks but otherwise it seems 100% authentic as a low budget horror movie) Rob Zombie (the weakest but amusing), Edgar Winter or whoever (the funniest one) but my favorite was actually the one at the beginning, Robert Rodriguez’s MACHETE. Basically, this is a low budget action movie built around the scarred face of Danny (MARKED FOR DEATH) Trejo. Like a blaxploitation movie they work in themes specific to his ethnic background – references to day laborers, immigration etc., and he’s an assassin with a coat full of machetes who gets set up and then seeks his revenge.

The good news is Rodriguez has wanted to make a real MACHETE for years and is apparently planning to shoot it as a DTV release, expanding from the scenes he already shot to make the trailer. Now that’s the movie I want to see from Rodriguez. Let’s hope he really goes through with it.

In conclusion, PLANET TERROR is a fun warmup, DEATH PROOF is a great movie. If you like stunts, cars and Kurt Russell– well, you already saw it, so you can back me up on this.

[ratings]

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Of course, reading this horse shit got ME nostalgic for the old John Carpenter badass movies, so I watched THEY LIVE again, because that’s my favorite (sorry Kurt). And then I did something I never did before, I watched ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and ESCAPE FROM L.A. in a row, to get a better comparison. It’s sort of like one of those puzzles where there’s two similar drawings and you have to pick out what’s different. Hey, wait a minute, that baseball player is holding an ear of corn instead of a bat and shit like that. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a doctor’s office, but they have Highlights there sometimes.

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK is of course a classic. It’s a good dark-future concept, the idea of Manhattan being turned into a maximum security prison where the country’s most notorious outlaws are walled in and are free to live or fight as they please (they have prisons kind of like that in some countries, see the movie CARANDIRU for example). I’m not sure it’s meant as a comment on the “hard on crime” poses politicians took in the ’80s, but there is something beautifully horrible about the Statue of Liberty being turned into the lookout tower and security headquarters of the world’s biggest prison. Poetic injustice.

The low budget and the now-dated idea of futuristic computer technology help to create the cool, gloomy vibe of the movie. Almost the whole thing takes place at night, and the apocalyptic, burnt up city streets match pretty well with the fake but cool looking model shots of the city. All the maniac WARRIORS and ROAD WARRIOR types look right at home in this world, as does Isaac Hayes as the A-#1 Duke of New York. And it’s all glued together by yet another classic John Carpenter keyboard score with a catchy theme song and lots of atmospheric low droning bass vibrations. It’s a very dark and cynical feel only occasionally pierced by the cab driver played by Ernest Borgnine, who likes to play the American Bandstand theme song from his tape deck.

Just as great as this world is the concept of the story: the president (Donald Pleasance) has crash-landed in Manhattan, and he has in his possession an audio tape that is needed to stop a world war. The criminals inside have the president hostage and will kill him if the police come close. So they decide that the only way to save the world is to send a criminal – legendary war hero turned infamous bank robber Snake Plissken. And to secure Snake’s cooperation they inject him with an explosive capsule that they will only neutralize once he’s returned with the president and the tape.

Still, none of this would work that well if you didn’t have a great, charismatic anti-hero badass at the center. Luckily, Snake is just that. Russell is clearly copying Clint’s quiet voice and stoic presence, but he does it well. And his look (eyepatch, long hair, scowl, sleeveless black shirt) is as iconic as just about any character in the history of badass cinema. You barely see or hear from him in the first 15 minutes of the movie, but when they give him his mission his “I don’t give a fuck” attitude is established quickly. My favorite bit is when they start talking to him about the president and he asks, “The president of what?”

You also got a great supporting cast. Of course there’s Hayes and Borgnine, and COCKFIGHTER’s Harry Dean Stanton as Brain. But most of all there’s Lee Van God Damn Cleef as the government asshole in charge of Snake’s mission.

As great as this movie is, I have to admit that it is lacking a small little something. It has the characters, it has the story, it definitely has the atmosphere. But to me it doesn’t quite have the slow but powerful drive of the best Carpenter movies. ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, THE THING, HALLOWEEN, and yes, even THEY LIVE… these are movies that pull you along with the slow, determined rhythm of a heartbeat, and imperceptibly stack on the tension a little at a time as they march toward the climax. To me, no matter how many times I watch it, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK doesn’t quite have that. It makes me a little sleepy after a while. I’m not trying to diminish the legend or anything. I love this movie. I just have to admit that it’s not perfect.

Now, I’m gonna catch hell for this, but I gotta be honest. I don’t think ESCAPE FROM L.A. has that problem as much. In that one, the action escalates until it gets ridiculous, then Snake jumps from a flaming helicopter to have his ultimate showdown with the authorities and give the whole world the middle finger. A very satisfying ending, and the one I always point to when I get pissed off thinking about how Vin Diesel sold out to the government at the end of XXX and instead of turning the tables on them just took their money and hung out on a beach. Snake would rather cut off his own dick than do something like that.

This sequel definitely has other problems though. I can partly understand why it has such a bad reputation. The main thing is that it’s more of a remake than a sequel. They take the template of the first movie but mix things around to fit the culture and the landmarks of Los Angeles. Snake gets caught again, he’s given a virus again, he’s sent on a mission again. He comes in on a submarine instead of a glider, but his closeup inside the cockpit looks almost the same. Instead of Borgnine’s taxi driver as his guide and transportation he has Steve Buscemi as Maps To the Stars Eddie. Instead of facing the Duke of New York, who has chandeliers on his car, he fights Cuervo Jones, who has dollheads and a disco ball on his car. Instead of a tape he has to get a disc, and he pulls a switch again. He even uses some of the same lines (”Call me Snake”) and instead of “I thought you were dead” everybody tells him “I thought you were taller.” Instead of fake looking models there’s fake looking CGI (which is not as charming).

The best and most misunderstood remake element is what they chose to do as the L.A. version of gladiatorial combat. In the first one, Snake is forced into the ring to fight a huge, scary looking wrestler, and he ends up killing him with a wooden plank with nails in it. In ESCAPE FROM L.A. it looks like the same thing is going to happen, but they lead him through all the gladiatorial fighting and into a fenced off basketball court. Instead of fighting a guy he has to fight the shot clock. He has to make ten points going from hoop to hoop, but if he misses a shot or fails the ten second shot clock then they’ll execute him.

Plus, he’s getting tired and dizzy from the Plutonium-7 virus he’s been injected with. But of course, Snake turns out to be really good at basketball, and he pulls it off. Who would’ve ever guessed Snake Plissken was good at basketball? This is not something I ever considered. I love this scene.

There are other, more Californian encounters. Peter Fonda plays a surfer always looking to ride tsunami waves, and this leads to a hilariously ridiculous action sequence where Snake jumps from a surfboard onto a car. There’s also a little run-in with some OMEGA MAN type hooded freaks who kidnap Snake and bring him to Bruce Campbell as “the surgeon general of Beverly Hills” who needs fresh parts for vanity transplants. And the climactic battle (involving a phony looking hang glider battle) takes place at Happy Kingdom By the Sea, formerly Disneyland. (Apparently Anaheim is included in Los Angeles Island.)

So it’s a rehash and it’s a little more silly and absurd than the original, and that’s what people hate. But I think this movie is really underrated. The most important aspect of both movies is Snake Plissken, and I think he’s improved with age. He looks tougher, he gets to fight alot more, he gets to do more stunts, and he shows his amoral side even more. When he’s given a mission by the president at the beginning, he doesn’t even know who the guy is, then when he finds out he tries to strangle him. When he’s about to leave on the submarine he asks the agents in charge of him if they will be administering the antidote to him when he gets back, and when they say no he immediately tries to gun them down. He has a great scene where he’s surrounded by gunmen and he offers to “give you assholes a chance.” Then he beats them by cheating. I can’t get enough of this character. I wish he would come back.
Of course, Carpenter hasn’t made a theatrical movie since the bummer of GHOSTS OF MARS in 2001, he’s only done a little bit of TV. My internet pals Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan wrote two episodes of the cable anthology series MASTERS OF HORROR that were directed by Mr. Carpenter. I actually thought their “Cigarette Burns” was pretty good for TV, with a fun concept and some crazy fucked up shit (my favorite part is when Udo Kier casually reveals that he has a weird albino angel boy with its wings cut off chained up in his living room, and he keeps it on a turntable so he can properly display it to people. You don’t see that shit on CRIBS). But I’ve heard nothing but bad things about the series in general. Some people like “Homecoming,” the Joe Dante one where the restless dead Iraq veterans come back as zombies and instead of eating brains they demand the right to vote. Of course I like that concept, but I thought the execution was corny and didn’t ring true.

So it might be premature to be expanding on that type of Masters-of-You-Name-It format, but still… why not a MASTERS OF BADASS? We team the great badasses, new and old, with directors of action classics as well as visionaries who maybe wouldn’t normally work in action. And with the low budget and hour long format they will be more willing to experiment. Of course you gotta have Seagal, Van Damme, Stallone, Bruce, Chow Yun Fat, Wesley Snipes, Sonny Chiba, Gordon Liu, maybe dig up Bruce Li if he’s still alive. You could try for Clint. And of course Jim Brown, Fred Williamson, Pam Grier. Roddy Piper. You could ask Jet, Jackie, Tony Jaa. Brian Bosworth if you need a slot to fill.

For directors you gotta get John McTiernan, John Woo, maybe Andrew Davis, Michael Winner, Mike Hodges, Takeshi Kitano, John Flynn, Craig Baxley. You could ask Tarantino and Eastwood, might as well try.

But most of all you gotta have a John Carpenter/Kurt Russell episode. Maybe you don’t trust the tv anthology format, maybe you think Carpenter lost it because of GHOSTS OF MARS, maybe you’re one of those weirdos in the majority who don’t like VAMPIRES. But you’d still watch the Russell/Carpenter reunion, right? Come on pay cable, let’s do this.

[ratings]