Escape From L.A. (1996)

[Wien 401]

There is NO WAY this is escaping your show. If it does, you fail.

 

[DubipR 485]

Hell, most of Carpenter's films post They Live (with the exception of Vampires because James Woods is fucking genius in it) can be an episode of HDTGM. Good pull on the film... shity schlocky fun.

[Grizwalled 1]

I'm dabating what I thought was more outrageous; the basketball game? or the fact the Snake whispers all his dialogue....

 

 

Either way, you guys have to review this movie...it's no--no--no--no-torious

[Nasher 29]

God yeah.. loved Escape from New York.. and you really need to see LA in the light of NY as there is a lot of self-parody going on that gets lost otherwise.. like the Basketball scene is an obvious pisstake of the fight scene in NY. I like most Carpenter films in some respect.. even the maligned Vampires, Mouth of Madness and Prince of Darkness.. only Ghosts of Mars gets my total thumb down for appalling acting from some good, and some poorly cast, actors and some crappy effects/miniatures.

[WinterDecay 3]

Have we really gotten to the fifth post in Escape from LA thread and not mentioned Snake Plisskin surfing or hang-glidding?

 

It was as if they had to think of ways to urinate on one of the coolest characters created.

[Nasher 29]

To be fair that surf scene was so bad.. you can only think they knew it was bad and were just going with it? Or maybe not... I can never decide. Maybe it was time and budget but I do recall seeing a clip of it and being put off the film for the longest time.

 

Thankfully I became more movie aware and had a double feature of the two and knowing Carpenter's work by that point had a rollicking good time with it.

 

The gliding scene was.. well one of the slowest and laboured actions scenes of all time but again with the campy tone I cant help but go with the idea they were just throwing stuff at the camera and it played best as slapdash. It always reminds me of the horribly undynamic hoverboards from Highlander 2 and how what should have been an exciting action scene it was instead so ponderously bad. Even worse was the added tram fight element that was likewise lacking in any speed or dynamism. In that light its actually a lot more fun to watch than a decrepit immortal playing tap-sword with leotard ninjas.

[Blast Hardcheese 636]

I used to work a Tower Outlet store in the mid-90's where all of the returned or slightly dinged merchandise would be repackaged and sold at a discount. We sold previously rented VHS movies, too, and we had A TON of Escape From L.A. video cassettes that just weren't moving. Like, at all. Nobody was a fan of post-apocalyptic surfing, I suppose. Anyway, after being on the shelf for nearly 6 months (!) and selling only one copy (which was promptly returned for being "...the worst movie I've ever seen!"), the manager decided to donate every single copy of this movie to Goodwill (the distributor wouldn't take them back due to the damaged boxes, Tower rental stickers all over the cassettes and all that). He offered everyone who worked at the store a copy of this film for free. I remember one of my coworkers remarking, "I'd rather get an enema than ever have to watch that movie again." I took one home, and instantly felt roofied by this movie. Yeah, this film was a pretty great disaster-piece, ripe for the HDTGM treatment.

[Rattrap007 52]

No mention of Bruce Cambell as the Surgeon General of Beverly Hills?

[BGUM926 4]

Can't believe they haven't gotten to this one yet. This movie is amazing in pretty much every horrible way, AND it's streaming on Netflix these days. I enjoyed it in the same way I enjoyed Double Team. Which is to say I enjoyed how little sense it made.

[RyanSz 3140]

How much weed did they need to offer Peter Fonda for him to show up for the four minutes of screen time that he had? I also love how they always find a way to get legendary or award winning actors in the Escape films like Peter Fonda or Cliff Robertson in LA or Ernest Borgnine and Lee Van Cleef in New York. And with how Carpenter has used practical effects to such a great effect in his films (The Thing and Escape from New York come to mind), it seems like the effects that were used in this film were studio mandated as CGI was starting to get huge at the time.

[Professor69 1]

Totally horrible schlock. The first one was so great but the sequel was just mind-numbingly bad and yet still entertaining. Talk about a ripe movie. This one is juicy.

[Blast Hardcheese 636]

It has a surfboard-to-car chase sequence. C'mon!

[DanEngler 5249]

Blast, please search the forum for existing movie recommendations before starting new threads. Thanks!

[Blast Hardcheese 636]

Blast, please search the forum for existing movie recommendations before starting new threads. Thanks!

 

Oops! Sorry, Dan.

[cryptics 0]

Please do Escape from LA. There's a sweet basketball challenge, surfing in a ditch with Peter Fonda (which he jumps off of and into a convertible to fight Steve Buscemi, or are they friends at this point? Either way, Buscemi is there), and a general feel of wonderful campy-ness.

 

Make it happen!

[blackacre 5]

Escape from NY's hilariously bad CGI'd sequel that looks like something out of an early 90s CD-Rom game

[RyanMcKenna 2]

You know they did this movie a while ago, right?

[Gleep Glop 2]

It is on par with Ghosts of Mars. But Ghosts of Mars wins for the scene where Ice Cube runs down a hill shooting two machine guns in different directions and keeps turning his head back and forth super fast like he's doing it in order to get a good shot on both sides. It's the Mars' surfboard to car scene.

[DavidFisher_105351 1]

Oh god please!

 

John Carpenter is proof you have a finite number of good ideas in your life.

[GiveMeYourBaby 102]

Checks a lot of HDTGM boxes.

• Surfing
  
• Kurt Russell's Hair
  
• Dialogue where one character is whispering for no reason
  
• Conspicuous sequel cash in (see Jaws 4)
  
• Bizarre future scenario where one part of the US is fucked up but the rest is fine (Dredd and Demolition Man)
  
• It grossed half of its crazy budget
  
• Its director, John Carpenter the master of camp, came out and criticized the script as being too campy.
  
• Tagline: Snake is Back
  

[AbeFroman 70]

The budget on this thing was huge for the time : $ 55 million

 

Then you find out that most of that was paydays for the key players ($10 mil to Russell, $5 mil to Carpenter, another $5 mil to Debra Hill), and no wonder the film looks incredibly cheap.

 

This, Beverly Hills Cop 3 and Another 48 Hours could make up a series on "Belated Sequels That Ruined Your Favorite Films."

[Blast Hardcheese 636]

So, I'm home from work sick today and decided against my better judgement to watch Escape from L.A. It's been twenty years since I've seen it and decided to give it a go. How bad can it still be, right?

 

Bad. Bad bad.

 

The crappy acting, the rehashing of everything that made Escape from New York great but missing the mark completely, the scenes that defy logic and physics, lifeless "action": yes it's all in there. But above anything else that makes Escape from L.A. absolutely fuckin' terrible (and absolutely fuckin' perfect for HDTGM) is the abysmal CGI.

 

Remember that old television series Land of the Lost? The one where this family is transported back in time to the age of the dinosaur (right?) It spliced crappy stop motion with live action, and it's hilarious and cheesy. Well, the CGI in Escape from L.A. is essentially that, but somehow worse: live action cut seamfully with cartoon-looking CGI.

 

One comment on this board mentioned that it looks like bad video game cut scenes from the 90's (check!) The CGI honestly looks on par with Syfy Channel movies, but without the "charm." It's unforgivably awful. Like the plastic surgery addicts depicted in this film, the CGI has aged this movie, badly.

 

Bump. Bump. BUMP!

[DanielKilbride 0]

If the crew wanted to feature a genuinely bad film, they could not do better than this one. It's every bit as bad as The Shadow and Mario and Luigi.

 

But, if they wanted to feature a film more in the vein of Con Air -- a bad film made unforgettable by the batshit crazy plot and the 100% commitment of the cast to the insanity -- they could not do better than Escape from New York.

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

This is a terrible fucking movie. But it couldn't be more fun to wtch. There's just so much crazy shit being lobbed your way it's hard to keep up.

 

This would be absolutely perfect movie for them to cover.

[TrevorAlonzo 38]

This has to be done. Do it with They Live! That would be amazing.