phileastein

Escape from New York, John Carpenter, 1981

Screened at the Star and Shabby Cinema

Set in 1997, so the opening intro voice informs us, the entirety of New York has been turned into an open prison incarcerating the very worst of criminal society. Give us a break John. Sure the place was run down in the seventies and had many social problems, but are we expected to believe that Wall Street is going to relocate from all that prime real estate without a fight. I don’t think so.

So what is the story. Well it can be sumarised in the title “I’m a celebrity. Get me out of here” Following the hijacking of the US presidential airplane by a group of suicidal freedom fighters, with the Pres and his entourage on board, it is crashed into the hell hole that New York has now become. Ideas for 9/11 here folks? The Pres survives by ejecting in his escape pod, a rather unconvincing red egg shaped module which ejects from the doomed plane, but, unfortunately for him, into a chaos in which as head of state he has the honour to preside over. Hint of schardenfreude here?

Being the indispensable person that all right thinking, read brain washed, Americans believe him to be he must be rescued at all costs from this hell hole. Surely Mr Carpenter the story could have been more interesting having him try to assert his authority in what still is his rightful domain and let the outside world go to hell.

Enter the rescue party, organised by Hauk, Governor of this prison, and one assumes responsible for the lack of humane conditions which exist and Snake, ex war hero turned villain, but whose skills as a infiltrator into enemy territory has been successfully tested in Leningrad, so presumably we were at war with the USSR. Although given the proliferation of nuclear weapons had such a war occurred there is likely to have been little call for the services of Snake, before he turned bad.

Casting Kurt Russel as Snake Plissken and Lee Van Cleef as Hauk, Carpenter appears to be trying to recreate the Eastwood –Van Cleef relationship of a Few Dollars More. However this fails to materialise as there is limited interaction between the two roles to establish any rapport between them. Russel however does give it a go, paying lip service homage to Eastwood by hissing his lines through gritted teeth in the initial dialogues with Van Cleef. Perhaps this was the snake element of his character, although much later it is revealed that he has a tattoo of a hooded cobra, which is a more likely reason for the appellation.

Offered a pardon for all his past crimes, does that include all those killings in Russia on behalf of the state?, of course not, he was an American hero then, Snake agrees to rescue of the Pres from the nick. However there is a catch he has to do it in 24 hrs because the Pres goes on air then.

To keep him to the deadline he is provided with an incentive. A biological inserts in the neck which will explode in 24 hrs unless neutralised and a fancy digital watch which will tell him how long he has to do it.

Flying in on a glider he lands on the twin towers, so that’s why the presidential plan didn’t target them, using some nice green graphics little more sophisticated than the original Space invaders graphics of those days.

Dressed in Rambo style, minus the bandana, he shorts out some electrical wires to get the lift working and descends into the darkness, well they had power to the twin towers lifts but no street lighting.

How does he find the Pres. So, as well as being chained to his brief case the Pres has a gadget on his wrist the size of an alarm clock which transmits his location as well as his pulse. Snake with the latest technology, the size of a house brick, has a Pres locator. Come on John, even the Men from UNCLE had miniturised gadgets.!!! The loudest laugh resonated from the audience when Hauk picked up what used to be called a walkie-talkie hand set, twice as large as ever the real thing was. Even the weaponry looked like 70s hardware with scope sights attached. When it comes to futuristic gadgetry Carpenter falls flat on his face.

Following various escapades and escapes from the Crazies, a tribe of troglodytes who live in the sewer systems, Snake meets Cabbie, Ernie Borgnine, a greasy Yellow Cab jockey, at the camp, take that literally, concert party in a run down theatre and is taken to meet Brains, a former accomplice in crime and Maggie, who dresses in what appears to be a satin night gown and has a 70 porno star hair perm the main thrust of her character being the prominent embonpoint and generous cleavage. Both of whom agree to help in his rescue of the Pres.

The Dook, [Issac Hayes] that’s the Duke to you or I, is the evil black overlord of the prison with a nice line in 19th century cavalry jackets , references to Idi Amin and the Emperor of the Central African Republic who has captured the Pres with a view to getting the prison more open to the outside world. Is Carpenter making a statement about the taste for the gaudy and taudry by blacks, particularly when he shows the Duke driving his car adorned with chandeliers on the front wings and a disco glitter ball suspended in the front wind screen?

Donald Pleasence, playing the Pres, looks as myopic as he did in his part as the prison of war master forger in “The Great Escape”, only that he has been on a course of steroids. One could almost hear the echo of those famous words he uttered in that film, “I can see, I can see perfectly. Take me with you, I won’t be any trouble”, as he pleads to be included with the escapees.

True to Carpenter’s plots there is the obligatory overlong fight scene. This time a gladiatorial combat ,reminiscent of the Coliseum of ancient Rome, between Snake and the Duke’s champion. Not content with mere baseball bats to knock the shite out of each other the have to up the tempo with base ball bats with six inch nails sticking from the end. Needless to say the bad guy, who looks like a cross between a Victorian strong man and Genghis Khan, gets nailed by Snake with one of those six inch nails.

Time is running out for snake as the glances at his personal timer tell us and he needs to get the Pres back to the outside world to get those explosives neutralised which following the demise of all the other characters, bar the Pres, he manages to do with only 2 seconds to spare.

Phew! A close shave that. Which is what the Pres is having as Snake gets his thanks and a job offer from Hauk.

So did the Pres have a change of heart over the conditions in the American penal system and vow to improve them. You betcha he didn’t.

What message did the film make about US attitudes to criminals and their reform. . Lock em up, throw away the key and let them rot in hell

Is the US President second only to God. You betcha he is and like God isn’t in the habit of getting his own hands dirty.

Cue credits to the end of to film to the sound of Carpenters’ music “Its Yesterday Once More” but not like I knew it John.

Phil Eastein

Stereo (1969) Director David Cronenburg

20 Minute Review

Set in some sort of research establishment the film portrays the events surrounding the experimentation into telepathy and eroticism on a number of volunteers .

Grainy footage, no doubt enhanced by the format [16mm] and possible deterioration of the print, provided a convincing effect that the viewer was watching footage taken from some sort of monitoring camera system. A commentary delivered in a drawled monotone accompaning the footage at intermittent intervals within the film added to the deception that the viewer was participating in some form of review, or report on the events as they unfolded.

Although purporting to be set in the future, how far [from 1969] this future was there was no indication. The capes and a walking canes favoured by the male characters for outdoor wear suggested the late Victorian era. Indoors doublet, of the late medieval style, and hose seemed to be the preferred apparel. This latter sartorial concept failed to convince me that the setting futuristic, giving more the impression of actors whiling their time between scene calls for one of Shakespeare’s “Wars of the Roses” plays.

Perhaps Cronenburg would have been better to follow on of the familiar clichés to suggest the future by kitting people out in metallic jumpsuits. He could have course looked at the changes to clothing in the past century and concluded that trousers and a shirt would still likely to be worn and dressed his characters so.

The story line is of the experimentation on a number of young adults, male and female, to ascertain the effects of telepathy on erotic behaviour.

This was developed by the narrative voice, which contained a good helping of psycho-babble. Using the voice of a young adult to deliver the narrative, adding a sprinkling of psychological/medical terminology and a pinch of “Gestant” , to suggest the link to Freud et al, Cronenburg encourages the listener to believe that the narration is a report and that this pretentious clap-trap is exactly what one would expect from the mouth of a young researcher out to impress his audience.

References to Stringfellow and eroticism also were liberally thrown out by the narrator. This was somewhat confusing to the reviewer. Could it be perhaps a reference to Stringfellow’s Club in London with its erotic dancers, etc, which was part of some formal study into erotic behaviour. It was not obvious at this point in the film.

Although not the mutant haggis variety of his later films we are shown in one scene the replica internal organs of a medical mannequin. a miniature female version of which later manifests itself in the film “Dead Ringers”.

Other scenes for future films also get their rehearsal outing. Through the narrator we are told that one of the volunteers drills a hole in his forehead to [successfully] release the pressure on his brain. Unlike the same event in Scanners we do not see the actual event, being limited to the suggestion of occurrence through the character probing his forehead.

At this point if one believes in the reality of the film one can have an interesting philosophical conundrum. Did the character have an original thought to drill his head, or being in the future, could he have been influenced by the scene in Scanners.

After twenty minutes I received a telepathic message through the film telling me to get an alcoholic drink to relieve the tedium. I therefore obeyed and went to the bar for a beer. Unfortunately only Cronenburg was on offer. So in the tradition of all good News of the Screws investigating journalists “I made an excuse and left”.

Review by Phil Eastine