IGX

Just in case some of you guys have never seen this, YOU MUST GO RENT IT NOW.

I just got it on DVD, and remembered what a total off-the-wall, crackpot blast this movie is.
The premise (for those of you who have been living under a rock) is absurd on its face: in 1997 the US has federalized the police force and built a wall around Manhattan, turning it into the nation's only maximum-security prison.

When terrorists hijack Air Force One and crash it into a skyscraper (hmm...) on the island, the police recruit a former war-hero-turned-criminal named "Snake Plissken" (Kurt Russell) to go in and rescue the President. Did I mention that he has 24 hours to get it done before tiny bombs implanted in his carotid arteries explode?

At the time the idea of Kurt Russell doing this was a bit odd: although he had done some TV, he was mostly known as the teen star of various Disney family films. So here he was, running around in camouflage Spandex pants, cutting folks in half with a suppressed MAC-11.

This movie is from a time when you could still do whacky, fucked-up stuff in your action films, and before it was required for action heroes to do everything with a wink and a nudge. Russell plays Plissken straight: tired, strung out, and in it strictly for himself. The environment he enters, on the other hand, is more a lunatic asylum than a prison.

There are classic moments galore: Russell's gladiatorial combat with pro wrestler Ox Baker, Russell's wife Season Hubley getting eaten by CHUD's in the Chock Full O'Nuts store, Isaac Hayes as the Duke of New York...

This is a great popcorn movie. Lots and lots of fun, and it's one of those that influenced other dystopian and action films for years after.

Oh, and there's a sequel. It never happened. Ignore it. It will only irritate you.

I like the Kurt Russell Trifecta

EFNY
BTLC
and

Overboard

HAHAHhHAHAH

Shaf wrote:I like the Kurt Russell Trifecta

EFNY
BTLC
and

Overboard

HAHAHhHAHAH

I think that "The Thing" should supplant "Overboard," fo sho'. Although every living person in that movie is overshadowed by the monsters. That is some scary shit.

Oh, I forgot about The Thing.

Damn. That was some freak ass shit there.

The Thing is actually one of my favorite movies. It's like the cinematic equivalent of black metal, bleak and disquieting.

Fat Cat wrote:The Thing is actually one of my favorite movies. It's like the cinematic equivalent of black metal, bleak and disquieting.

It is also much, much closer to the original short story "Who Goes There?" (available online, BTW) than the earlier version with James Arness.

Jack wrote:Which of korse comes back to identity and how terrifying that whole subject can be when played with by a good author. SF/Horror makes a nice mix. Worked for John W. Campbell and for John Carpenter. The Thing, Price of Darkness, and They Live are all great short stories, (SF) and excellent movies.

Good thread.

I've never seen "Price of Darkness" (although I hear Andy buys unconsciousness pretty cheap on the reservation, and that's close) but "Prince of Darkness" and "Event Horizon" are the two best "Non-Lovecraft-Lovecraft" films ever made.

I haven't seen Event Horizon.

I'd like to see "Red Star, Winter Orbit" by Gibson as a movie.

Shaf wrote:I haven't seen Event Horizon.

It didn't do so well in release, but I like it. A salvage team goes out to the edge of the solar system to find out why an experimental space-warping ship has suddenly shown up after disappearing for ten years on its trial run. The ship has become uh, "tainted" with what lies behind the fabric of space. This is not a good thing.

It gets across that Lovecraft feel that just behind the veil of what we can see and understand something horrible is lurking, and if we jack around enough we're going to find it and really, really regret it.

ET rocked.

POD was a weird. I watched it first with a buddy who was much more catholic than I was and it disturbed him even more than it disturbed me.

Jack wrote: But dood, you have to admit, the dream messaging in POD and how it's done is just fucking scary as hell. Or, it was when the movie was new anyway. I watched that movie and then had to go home and sleep in my apartment all alone, my girlfriend soon to be exwife was outt'a town.

Good movies.

Oh, hell yes. My wife will NOT let me do the scratchy, static-y "This is not a dream KSSSHHHHHH" effect anymore, it freaks her out too much.

Carpenter ratcheted up the stakes way high in that; Dad was going to FUCK THE WORLD when he arrived.